31–40 of 41 posts
Ironic as one of their member states (Sweden) has a potentially even more wide reaching program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
AFAIK, Sweden doesn't host gmail or facebook servers.
As a someone from Europe (Germany), I can say that this whole affair is definitely a public relations disaster for the US over here. In the beginning, I was really unsure if regular people who are not members of the tech community would become aware of this or if it was perceived as to much of a niche topic. Well, I guess that question has been answered: Yesterday tagesschau[1], the biggest and most trusted evening t…
Here in Belgium it's brushed up as an Obama blunder and an american-only problem that only affects social networks (aka facebook). Online press gigles about pictures of Obama looking at computer screens.
I'm sure this seems strange for Americans reading this, but that's how Belgian state television goes. Bjorn Soenens is somewhere to the left of MSNBC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in information security for a large international corporation, and I can add another anecdote to back up yours. We've discussed the news informally as a curiosity, but there's no business drive to really do anything about it. We're not trying to hide our business operations from the government, we're trying to hide them from our competitors. You're absolutely correct that businesses care about security from ci…
Well, if you were a large enough non-US company, and you had large US competitors - especially defense contractors - you would think differently. You would think about Echelon and industrial espionage. But I expect those kinds of companies not using foreign IT services already.
Seriously wonder if we should sack the politicians in the EU and just replace them with jornalists, as they seem to be more on the pulse of whats going on and have more control of the people.
But as no EU contry can control it's TAX then who or what gets at leaked data is no supprise.
Been enough details and facts leak out about this being in place before this PRISIM leak, still will only hurst USA based cloud providers and that is the only crux of it.
With the news out that UK and Dutch law enforcement have been fed data from PRISM, I really don't think anyone should take this feigned outrage seriously.
To give some numbers: according to Wikipedia[1], about a third of MEPs have previously held positions in country parliaments, and about 10% in country ministries.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_the_European_Parliame...
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..it already is. E.g. german companies with a data protection comissioners/officers usually don't store data outside EU coutries, since the data protection level is considered to be to low. §4b Abs.2 S.2 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz prohibits conveyance of personal data outside EU borders if the interest of persons concerned outweighs it (mostly it does). This PRISM-surveillance substantiates those concerns.
My startup has faced this issue -- but it's easily solved using American cloud providers (for example: AWS Ireland). But, frankly, I don't know how Amazon would respond if they received a national security letter asking for data hosted by Amazon in Ireland. It'd be nice to see a country take a very strong stand on data privacy. They could be to hosting servers what Switzerland is to hosting money.
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It will be interesting to see the real effects though. How long will people remember about this? How much will it affect their actual choices? The US "brand" overcame so many scandals, I'm not sure this one will be different.
In terms of the public it will probably be forgotten quickly, politicians probably wont be so forgiving.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in Belgium it's brushed up as an Obama blunder and an american-only problem that only affects social networks (aka facebook). Online press gigles about pictures of Obama looking at computer screens.
Actually Bjorn Soenens, the "America watcher" for the largest Flemish television station VRT, went out of his way to say that this is not the political responsibility of Obama. I'm sure this seems strange for Americans reading this, but that's how Belgian state television goes. Bjorn Soenens is somewhere to the left of MSNBC.
[1] Actually, the ink and paper press. But on screen. Mainly.