European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#2Ultimately the only language the US government understands is the massive fines and restrictions about to be levied against its corporations. Should Apple be operating in Europe for example? Would it be possible to levy a fine for each iPhone sold? Perhaps the tax authorities could take a different view on their profits...
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#3As 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 television news show carried a short segment about it. Today I read that Merkel herself wants to bring this up at her next meeting with Obama.
[1] http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/sendung/ts42578.html at about 7:30
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#4It'll be interesting to see what happens to those global (US-based) cloud providers whose business strategy of poor profit margins in exchange for reduced costs of sale fair after this PR catastrophe. When it comes to the economics of this, the US is going to lose a huge amount of business due to this and potentially could in theory cause several businesses to go bankrupt. Since, government's are naturally fiscally motivated, I suspect the real way for Americans to complain is "with their wallets". In other words there is definitely an argument to be had for "We can't compete in the world's technology game because they don't trust our security. We can no longer innovate because of the government's haphazardness. Fix this US government." At least then when another terrorist attack happens in the US, the government can say "Well, you wanted your economics, so we gave it to you, but now you lack security. Pick one or the other."
This is going to be great for EU-based providers. They've been struggling for awhile to compete with Amazon, Rackspace, etc. I'd bet my money today on private, country-based cloud providers in EU. It will be nearly impossible for the US to dig itself out of this one.
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#5Ultimately the only language the US government understands is the massive fines and restrictions about to be levied against its corporations. Should Apple be operating in Europe for example? Would it be possible to levy a fine for each iPhone sold? Perhaps the tax authorities could take a different view on their profits...
In theory if someone knew they were subject to data being collected about them they could bring a law-suit against the companies involved for breaching data protection and privacy legislation.
The immunity that companies get from co-operating with the US government only covers them in the US, not in other countries.
But in practice the only time people know this information is being collected on them is when a company (i.e Twitter) refuses to comply with such an order.
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#6As 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…
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.
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#7Ironic as one of their member states (Sweden) has a potentially even more wide reaching program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#8Ultimately the only language the US government understands is the massive fines and restrictions about to be levied against its corporations. Should Apple be operating in Europe for example? Would it be possible to levy a fine for each iPhone sold? Perhaps the tax authorities could take a different view on their profits...
If not providing the right browsers with a OS is a reason to enforce huge fines, then large scale espionage is a reason for much higher fines. Probably enough to fix the Euro crisis...
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#9As 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.
Re: European Parliament Up In Arms Over PRISM
#10It'll be interesting to see what happens to those global (US-based) cloud providers whose business strategy of poor profit margins in exchange for reduced costs of sale fair after this PR catastrophe. When it comes to the economics of this, the US is going to lose a huge amount of business due to this and potentially could in theory cause several businesses to go bankrupt. Since, government's are naturally fiscally m…
It seems the EU has better privacy laws, but it would be foolish to think that there isn't any surveillance and spying being done here.