The US Office of the Trade Representative (USTR) is complaining about the European Union's suggestion for a EU-only cloud. The EU decision was taken as a direct result of the revelations by Snowden regarding NSA mass surveillance techniques, including the communications of leading European political figures.
USTR complain about Europe plans for EU only cloud. From the article:
The USTR seems to have a worrying need to blame other countries. Alongside the infamous Special 301 Report which puts a selection of nations on the naughty step because of their failure to bend to the will of the US copyright industries, there's the less well-known Section 1377 Review , which considers "Compliance with Telecommunications Trade Agreements." Here's some information about the latest one (pdf):
The Section 1377 Review ("Review") is based on public comments filed by interested parties and information developed from ongoing contact with industry, private sector, and foreign government representatives in various countries. This year USTR received four comments and two reply comments from the private sector, and one comment from a foreign government.
Clearly something of a specialist area, then. One of those comments comes from the United States Council for International Business, which describes itself as "among the premier pro-trade, pro-market liberalization organizations." A concern it raises is the following:
The ability to send, access and manage data remotely across borders is integral to global services, including converged and hybrid services such as cloud services. However, the tremendous increase in cross-border data flows has raised concerns on the part of many governments. Given that cross-border services trade is, at its essence, the exchange of data, unnecessary restrictions on data flows have the effect of creating barriers to trade in services.
That seems to be reflected in the following section of the USTR's review:
Recent proposals from countries within the European Union to create a Europe-only electronic network (dubbed a "Schengen cloud" by advocates) or to create national-only electronic networks could potentially lead to effective exclusion or discrimination against foreign service suppliers that are directly offering network services, or dependent on them.
The article goes on for quite a bit longer, but the bottom line is that the USTR believes it is wrong for the EU to try to protect itself from NSA interception and sees the entire thing as an attempt at trade protectionism.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 11 2014, @12:35AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @08:10AM
Protectionism of what?
The whole problem is we don't have anything comparable to the big cloud names like Amazon and Microsoft. No local companies to protect.
For that reason, any law that say that sensitive data cannot be stored on any cloud outside the EU or owned by a company outside the EU[1] boils down to "you cannot use a cloud service", making it MORE expensive to run any business that need to store sensitive data in the EU. "Sensitive data" may include such personal things as credit card numbers and purchase history, so basically any business that deals with consumers.
[1] Patriot act doesn't care where the data is, if the data is in the hands of a company based in the US (such as Amazon or Microsoft) they have to comply with requests from the NSA.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Bob9113 on Friday April 11 2014, @01:03AM
The US Office of the Trade Representative (USTR) is complaining about the European Union's suggestion for a EU-only cloud.
As well they should! And how did the NSA respond to their complaint about the impact of NSA espionage on trade?
Given that cross-border services trade is, at its essence, the exchange of data, unnecessary restrictions on data flows have the effect of creating barriers to trade in services.
Good thing these are not unnecessary restrictions, then. When you find out that someone is engaging in economic espionage when they have access to your data, it is entirely necessary to stop handing them your data.
I'm imagining the guy who had to type this thing up. How many times did he have to turn to the state department jackass and say, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but... umm... really? You really want me to type that? Do you think they're going to take you seriously? I don't intend any disrespect, but, ummm, I mean... just, really?"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @03:18AM
Now that is a subscription to an intriguing newsletter I'd pay a reasonable price for.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @04:56AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Friday April 11 2014, @03:42AM
I don't like what the things reinforced by Snowden's leak did to global trust between various governments either. But you know what? Maybe they should have thought about the consequences on trade and such before becoming such caricature-level asshats and implementing the surveillance in the first place hrm? But who am I kidding. The NSA especially considers themselves above the rest of their country and indeed the rest of the world. So to them other countries taking issue with what they're doing is just incomprehensible and well... Just downright mean!
and yes I am a US citizen but remember: I am not my government.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by einar on Friday April 11 2014, @09:59AM
And no, sorry to tell you, you are your government. It is "us the people", FFS! And is you task as well to stop the indecent behavior of your nation.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday April 11 2014, @02:00PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Friday April 11 2014, @03:06PM
That was true at one time, but the US justice system has since declared that corporations are people and people are not. "We, the people" no longer legally refers to actual people, it refers to Amazon and Google and such.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 11 2014, @01:01PM
"I am not my government."
Your government perpetrates such crimes because of your failure to participate, not in spite of it.
Not that I can blame you - I've seen what passes for politics and debate in America, it was jaw-droppingly childish and certainly not something to have the least bit of pride in. I thought the UK government (to which I am beholden) was silly at times, but the prize for the most feeble excuse for a democracy easily goes to the USA.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday April 11 2014, @02:03PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 11 2014, @07:26PM
You pay taxes, therefore you support the system of Government, therefore it governs with your consent whether you agree with it's actions or not. The other options are not paying your taxes and going to prison or emigrating, neither of which is palatable for most people, and so Democracy causes the disenfranchisement of it's own population.
Understand, I never implied it was your fault. Given that your consent is taken for granted and your opinion not sought on the matter, how could it be?
It seems that both America and the United Kingdom are becoming examples of how democracy breeds contempt for the opinions, desires and basic expectations of freedom their populations hold dear. It appears I've had rather more success opposing systematic injustice over the last two decades than you have. Don't give up dude, there's always a way, you just have to keep trying until you find it.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday April 11 2014, @07:42PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday April 11 2014, @04:04AM
They want a private network, what's the big deal? I doubt it would serve much of the EU though. If it's airgapped then normal citizens would prefer the real internet to a tiny EU one (good luck downloading updates to any of your software!). If it's not airgapped then anyone could provide services. Most cloud services are regional anyways. They would pick a cloud provider in Europe over one in the US because of latency. Failover in the US maybe.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by Jesus_666 on Friday April 11 2014, @12:26PM
A truly local alternative to offshore cloud offerings seems like a reasonable idea from that perspective.
(Score: 2) by Bartman12345 on Friday April 11 2014, @04:25AM
Given that cross-border services trade is, at its essence, the exchange of data, unnecessary restrictions on data flows have the effect of creating barriers to trade in services.
So I guess we can expect media companies to abandon region codes then...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @07:20AM
Quite a few people seem to think that Europe would attempt to create their own isolated version of the internet. What makes you think that?
If I live in Europe and don't want to be spied upon by the NSA, I would use a European email provider instead of Google. If I want to store my data in a cloud, I might use a European business instead of one based in the USA. Why is this a problem? I can still send email to people in the US. (With the risk that NSA will see whatever crosses the border) People in the US can still visit my website hosted on a server anywhere in the world, and buy/sell/discuss stuff. And I can still visit other servers around the world. I could use a .nl or .eu name instead of a .com if necessary. The only losers would be American businesses for lost trade and the NSA no longer able to spy as easily.
Sure I would lose some functionality. I would no longer have gmail's nice web interface, and the other cloud might not be as easy to use as dropbox. But I would still be able to use twitter/google/facebook for trivial information if I were so inclined. (Assuming the fad hasn't already passed or a competitor arisen)
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Friday April 11 2014, @07:53AM
This sounds like a bad comedy skit gone wrong.
It sounds like these people aren't sniffing glue, they're mainlining it along with stiff doses of LSD-25, at the end of a 10 day meth binge.
Lately I have been feeling overwhelmed and dumbfounded by the level of idiocy in this country(USA).
Stuff like this makes me ashamed to be a US citizen.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 11 2014, @12:53PM
It was with exactly this kind of situation in mind that the EU passed legislation requiring that all customer data transferred outside of the European Economic Area must be protected by data protection laws equal to or better than the laws enacted within the EEA. Without such geographic restriction legislation, anyone wanting to use data they've collected inside the EU in a way that would violate EU data protection law simply has to transfer it to a country in which such an invasion is not illegal, effectively making any privacy requirements passed in EU law trivial to side-step.
When the EU passed this law, US data protection legislation was considered inferior and so the US and EU launched the Safe Harbour initiative to ensure American corporate citizens could continue doing business with customers in the EEA. Now it turns out the whole program was never worth the paper it was printed on. The NSA-induced betrayal of the trust placed in the US by EU is one thing, but they’ve also stirred up some resentment between EU members by co-opting some of them in their spying program. In this context, trade protectionism against the US is not only a justified sanction but also desirable to strengthen the economies of those EU member states whose intelligence operations cooperated with the NSA out of fear of what the US might do if they refused, reducing the risk of further such infiltrations.
The EU Commission gave the US an ultimatum back in January* to fix the situation by summer or Safe Harbour would be scrapped - the US should consider itself lucky that calls for it to scrapped immediately weren't put into practice. The US has yet again proved itself incapable not only of preserving any trust placed in it but also of maintaining a friendly diplomatic relationship under anything other than it's own terms. The USTR’s rants about trade protectionism are the US trying to make out like it’s the victim here. I can only assume they’re trying to stir up some internal anti-Europe sentiment as no-one outside US borders is listening to a word America has to say anymore.
(FD: I’m a UK citizen, one of the worst collaborators in this whole mess and the only reason I think we haven’t been kicked out of the EU already is that our economy is currently the best performing in the region. IMHO we still deserve a good hard slap.)
*link - http://www.euractiv.com/infosociety/eu-threatens-s uspension-data-dea-news-533093 [euractiv.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12 2014, @06:36AM
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/fe b/23/opensource-intellectual-property/print [theguardian.com]