Speaking as an Australian: Hello! Yes please?
You're under the Five Eyes, no reason to cover you any differently than US citizens :P
It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#12Yeah, well this wouldn't be as much of a problem if Google didn't harvest all the data just because they can, would it?
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#13Problem is quite a few european countries right now don't trust american companies anymore so they are working on their own mail service, cloud, network and hardware components, ... (you know if american companies agreed with american government to spy on us they kinda deserve a nice f k off). So who is damaged by this european behaviour? American companies. And now Google is suddenly concerned about our privacy. Mid…
Middelvinger. But seriously, got some more info on these European services? I don't watch these matters very closely lately, would be interested in looking into it.
I am italian, would be surprise if a member of our government is even able to switch on a computer.
But I know that in Germany (for example) this problem is a big thing http://www.zdnet.com/worried-about-your-email-security-in-ge...
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#14Wait, we have a Privacy Act? I'm assuming it doesn't work, then.
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#15Problem is quite a few european countries right now don't trust american companies anymore so they are working on their own mail service, cloud, network and hardware components, ... (you know if american companies agreed with american government to spy on us they kinda deserve a nice f k off). So who is damaged by this european behaviour? American companies. And now Google is suddenly concerned about our privacy. Mid…
Middelvinger. But seriously, got some more info on these European services? I don't watch these matters very closely lately, would be interested in looking into it.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonmail is an example
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#16I find the situation where we grant rights to our citizens without granting them to foreigners (particularly citizens of our close allies, but also foreigners in general) bizarre and backwards. While I'm sure that there are some rights that cannot be extended to non-citizens, it seems that the default should be to treat all people independently of their country of origin unless there are strong arguments why we canno…
Rights (as they exist today) are based in legislation. Legislation is fundamentally political. Politics is glorified tribalism.
While the people who formulate and enforce our rights are put there by geographic tribes, you won't see rights that stretch far beyond your borders. It's only when a community that is no longer geographic in nature forms tribes that we see the geographic tribes pay attention to the rights of "foreigners", and not because they're foreign, but because they're important to their own voters.
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#17Sorry, but Google is probably the biggest threat to our privacy.
I couldn't agree more. The concept of trusting what is essentially an Ad company with a penchant for spending it's profits on projects to convince the tech community it's "cool" on anything privacy related is either the greatest practical joke of the 21st century or the reason we can't have nice things.
Why in the world would Google disclose information about you to its customers when it can probably make more money by being squarely in the middle?
>> Hello, do you need to find someone who might be interested in buying Toyota cars? What's the message that you'd want plastered all over the Internet for this guy? OK, just sign this check and it will be done.
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#18Meanwhile in US Congress:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/new-spy...
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#19Wait, we have a Privacy Act? I'm assuming it doesn't work, then.
And you're probably right. Is this the same 30 (?) year old Privacy Act that allows law enforcement to get our emails after 180 days without any warrant, because they are considered "abandoned"?
In the meantime, Google is trying to push everyone to archive rather than delete emails with its new Inbox client, making it once again very convenient for law enforcement to get this sort of data from us without too many obstacles.
And what's happening with that E2E plugin for Gmail? Is it still coming? What's the progress on that? Will it even work with Inbox? Because they seem to have pretty opposite goals. Maybe I wouldn't mind it too much, if I didn't know Google wants to eventually kill Gmail.com and replace it with Inbox.
Re: It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens
#20It's often claimed that politics in the US is run by / dominated by corporations.
I find the contradiction in that claim at times like this to be especially dramatic. The biggest corporations in America - Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc - are actively being harmed by the US Government. US telecoms are having the doors shut to business in Europe and Asia, because of this stuff. Countless billions in profit are at stake.
Another headline from today: corporations are holding $2 trillion overseas, because of the wonky corporate tax policies of the US. If corporations actually ran anything, that wouldn't be a problem.