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from the obsolete-voluntary-guidelines-solution dept.
Steve Durbin of the ISF was interviewed regarding the fallout after Snowden and the push by governments and organizations to try and wrestle some control of their communications away from the US.
"From a European point of view it fuelled political hysteria." He adds that regardless of one's opinion on the value of this type of surveillance there are political gains to be made from stirring up a reaction to Snowden's disclosures.
The idea of having an EU internet, Russian internet, US internet, etc doesn't sit well with Durbin because he feels it will hurt the functionality and that governments by themselves cannot actually get the job done.
"Government can't do it all", he warns when reflecting on proposed regulatory responses to privacy and surveillance issues. "By the time they get their act together, the world and technology has moved on significantly."
As a reminder in February the German government started discussing an EU internet:
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel "is proposing building up a European communications network to help improve data protection" and prevent European emails and other data passing through the United States where it can be, and has been, harvested by the NSA.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday June 12 2014, @03:18AM
This has nothing to do at all with spying. It's like how Vietnam was about drug smuggling, and not a fight against Communism.
EU governments want control over the Internet, and the juicy spoils that go with it. GoDaddy gets rich off pure Grade A Bullshit. The DNS system has been hijacked, and of course they want more TLDs. How else can the market expand? You don't think some elites in the EU haven't figured out how lucrative this stuff can be?
From a tactical point of view related to spying, EU governments have everything they need already. Hell, their story is so fucking rich right now, as they are completely ignoring the math of the Five Eyes. One eye is the US.... and where are the four other ones? Uh huh. Well unless they modified the EU to mean Not-UK, their biggest problem is in their own backyard.
China operates just fine without control over the Internet. Great Firewall does work. They can block Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. The methods in place for governments to exert control already exist.
Controlling the allocation of IP addresses and the DNS is all they are after. It represents money to operate that stuff, and those people don't care if they do a good job or not. When was the last time "good job important" was taken seriously with government run operations and contracts?
I'd like them to explain just what it is they actually gain. Not the PR bullshit, but what do they actually gain with the control, that they didn't have before, that affects intelligence gather operations either foreign or domestic?
It sounds like all the gains have massive implications for business and the shifting of markets and wealth, and no real tangible security benefits.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Thursday June 12 2014, @02:12PM
"This has nothing to do at all with spying. It's like how Vietnam was about drug smuggling, and not a fight against Communism."
Everyone knows Vietnam wasn't about drug smuggling - that was Nicaragua.
Mas cerveza por favor.