EU Commission issues burner phones, basic laptops to staff visiting US over spying fears, says report

The European Commission has issued burner phones and basic laptops to its US-bound staff to avoid the risk of coming under surveillance, UK-based The Financial Times reported on Monday.

Officials said that the US-bound staff should switch off their phones at the border and place them in special sleeves to protect them from surveillance if left unattended.

According to four people familiar with the situation, the commissioners and senior officials travelling to the US for IMF and World Bank spring meetings next week will come under this security measure.

The measures are traditionally reserved for trips to China and Ukraine, where standard IT kit can’t be brought into the countries given the risk of espionage, the people cited above said.

“They are worried about the US getting into the commission systems,” one official said.

The European Commission confirmed that the security advice had been updated recently, but refused to comment on the specifics. It said that the bloc’s diplomatic service had been routinely involved in such security updates.

The White House and the US National Security Council did not give a response to the development.

EU-US TRADE WAR

The development comes as the EU and the US have been locked in a bitter trade war since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.

Trump has claimed that the EU was set up to “screw the US” and set 20 per cent reciprocal tariffs on the bloc’s exports, which he later halved after announcing a 90-day pause on the levies.

The EU has paused its retaliatory measures against 21 billion euros of US exports that it approved following the US’s tariffs on steel and aluminium.

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic is holding discussions with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Washington DC on Monday in a bid to resolve the escalating trade war.

‘NOT SURPRISING’

Luuk van Middelaar, director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, a think-tank, said the security measures on European Commission officials travelling to the US were not surprising.

“Washington is not Beijing or Moscow, but it is an adversary that is prone to use extra-legal methods to further its interests and power,” he was quoted as saying by The Financial Times.

The think-tank director recalled that the Barack Obama administration in the US was accused of spying on the phone of then-German chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013. “Democratic administrations use the same tactics. It is an acceptance of reality by the commission,” he said.

Border staff in the US have the right to seize the phones and computers of visitors and tourists to check their content.

There have been instances of tourists and visiting academics from Europe being denied entry to the US after having their social media profiles checked on their phones or laptops and finding comments or posts critical of the Trump administration’s policies.