71–80 of 105 posts
I would say: Canada, Britain, and Australia yes. They're consistent and steady allies. To the rest of the EU, who is hellbent on giving America the finger whenever possible... sorry about it. Clean up your act, kick the spies, human trafficking, blatant corruption, sympathy for murderous regimes out of your countries, and we'll think about this. We're not perfect either, but we're trying. Show the same effort and we…
Wait, we have a Privacy Act? I'm assuming it doesn't work, then.
Either way though as written it works well enough, the government was never going to raise privacy above the level of gaining military intelligence needed to win in World War 3, or to completely stop law enforcement investigations. Accordingly the Privacy Act would contain exemptions allowing for warrants to still work, if nothing else.
But this doesn't mean that the data, once captured by a warrant, need not be protected by privacy controls in accordance with the Privacy Act, and I think this is the argument Google is making, that the government should apply at least the same standards of data protection to data captured on foreign individuals (however it's captured) as it does to data captured on citizens. Additionally, if the government treats foreigners as if they were protected by Privacy Act it might also reduce the number of ways in which the government could compel production of evidence on those foreigners, especially data held by U.S. companies.
Privacy Act was never meant to prevent the collection of evidence for investigations, or to prevent legally-obtained evidence from being used in legal or administrative proceedings, but those are not the only protections Privacy Act gives, so applying it to aliens could well be a net gain. IANAL though, hopefully someone else can explain what exactly Google is going after here.
Sorry, but Google is probably the biggest threat to our privacy.
How many people have weev in their contact list? How many of those people have notes about Mr. Auernheimer in their contact entry (phone number, relatives, pets, favorite colors, etc.) that weev would rather not be accessible to anyone electronically? Multiply this by everyone with things to hide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> European countries [...] To which European countries are you referring? The ones that imposed the Dublin treate[1] which effectively turned Greece and Italy into an huge refugee camp overnight? These countries to give a damn about aliens too. Those Iraqi, Iranian, Pakistani (soon Syrians to be expected en masse) refugees do not risk their lives to come to Greece. They want to go to Germany, Sweden, France, the UK e…
That's interesting. Genuinely. Part of the public dialog about refugees in the UK is that we wonder why we get so many. I'm not sure of the numbers and I would be surprised if they are anywhere near as high as those in Greece but... The reasoning goes that if these people are genuinely in fear of their lives, if they're running away from somewhere, why are they not claiming asylum in the first peaceful, developed cou…
> [...] if these people are genuinely in fear of their lives, if they're running away from somewhere, why are they not claiming asylum in the first peaceful, developed country they arrive at?
Sorry but that's totally unrealistic. You're making assumptions that do not hold in real life. A refugee which will seek asylum from Greek/Italian authorities will end-up 99.99% in a concentration camp. He might very well be beaten first. Police brutality in Greece is renowned.
> There are slum-like camps in some parts of northern France that are full of people trying to find a way to smuggle themselves over the sea to the UK. This makes little sense to me, unless they are really economic migrants, not refugees at all.
They just try to go, to the place which they believe will be better for them. They might have a family, or some sort of link there, or they just heard from someone that it's better in London.
> Perhaps we should have some sort of europe-wide policy, where people must declare as soon as they arrive in the EU, and then each country agrees to take a quota so that the southern/eastern countries aren't swamped.
Perhaps it should be, or (given the raise of right-wing anti-EU all over Europe[1]) maybe it's just too late. The EU was marketed as something, but clearly turned out to be something else.
[1] Marrie-Lepen in France (clearly anti-EU), Syriza (is pro-EU officially, but there is a strong left-wing anti-EU segment inside the party) in Greece, Grillo in Italy (clearly anti-EU), UKIP in the UK (clearly anti-EU), not sure about 'Podemos' policy towards EU in Spain but they can't be very positive.
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"if american companies agreed with american government" Just as a reminder, The government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it did not immediately cave in and comply with the secret court order. http://www.wired.com/2014/09/feds-yahoo-fine-prism/ This blog post could actually be Google's way of silently signaling us that the US gov't is still strong arming american companies, and it needs the help of public…
>> "The government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it did not immediately cave in and comply with the secret court order." Do you think that really would have happened if the CEO or a high ranking employee came out publicly and explained what was happening? There is no way the fines would have happened or anyone would have been prosecuted. Sure the USG could have done it but they would have been insane to.
Why not solve the actual problem instead of making small amendments that at best serve as a sales arguments for Google in Europe?
Problem 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.
In general, whenever it comes to human rights - or civil rights as Americans like to call it - it's appalling that they distinguish between citizens and foreigners (or aliens as they label us). Imagine European countries denying human rights to non citizens: Okay to torture a Somali? No problem throwing Americans in prison without trial? Sure, let's wiretap cell phones of all Turks in Europe? I don't think so.
> Sure, let's wiretap cell phones of all Turks in Europe? I don't think so. Wait, Germany was actually shown to be engaging in surveillance of Turkish telecommunications... for 38 years . http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/23/us-germany-turkey-... And while you may argue that they're only targeting diplomats, policy makers, etc., NSA makes the same argument: they have to collect a lot to make it even possible to…
As for the question of Turkey being a valid target, let me remind you that several people in the Turkish government were planning a false flag operation in order to invade Syria.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/high-level-le...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting. Genuinely. Part of the public dialog about refugees in the UK is that we wonder why we get so many. I'm not sure of the numbers and I would be surprised if they are anywhere near as high as those in Greece but... The reasoning goes that if these people are genuinely in fear of their lives, if they're running away from somewhere, why are they not claiming asylum in the first peaceful, developed cou…
I'm glad someone found my rant interesting and I'm happy the this discussion is becoming part of the public dialog in other places as well. > [...] if these people are genuinely in fear of their lives, if they're running away from somewhere, why are they not claiming asylum in the first peaceful, developed country they arrive at? Sorry but that's totally unrealistic. You're making assumptions that do not hold in real…
If that really is the case I can understand why they don't want to stop!
>> Perhaps it should be, or (given the raise of right-wing anti-EU all over Europe[1]) maybe it's just too late.
You might be right. There is a lot of public discussion in the UK about leaving the EU entirely. It's not just UKIP, the conservatives have promised a referendum on membership if they win next year too.
This whole area of debate is very sensitive and I think it would probably steer the debate even more towards UKIP if it were to start now. Nobody wants to actually talk sensibly about this stuff.