Secret Portugal–US agreement exposed

"Portugal cedes data to the US without safeguarding the death penalty,” denounces Diário de Notícias, a little over eighteen months after the signature of an agreement that grants the US access to the personal data of Portuguese citizens. As a law specialist explains to the Lisbon daily, the agreement allows for "Portugal to cooperate in criminal investigations for crimes in which death penalty could be applied.” The agreement, kept secret by the government of José Sócrates, could prove unlawful, however. Portugal was the first ever European country to abolish the death penalty as early as 1867, enshrining the “Inviolability of Human Life” in its constitution.