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In Snowden's Wake, Calls for Balkanized Internet Present More Harm than Good

posted by n1 on Thursday June 12 2014, @01:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the obsolete-voluntary-guidelines-solution dept.

skullz writes:

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.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday June 12 2014, @03:53AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 12 2014, @03:53AM (#54417) Journal

    He believes that if such proposals ever came to pass, any security or privacy benefits from regional control of the internet would be far outweighed by the negative impacts on commerce.

    How come? What negative impacts on commerce can arise from the fact that my email doesn't cross US jurisdiction anymore?
    Why should I be scared or indeed even care about?
    Why should I trade my privacy for some unspecified impact on commerce?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @05:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @05:33AM (#54438)

    Quite. The same protocol, the same services, local hardware. And maybe EU gets a stronger voice in the boliticks i.e. ICANN and all that.