EU Citizens Warned Not To Use US Cloud Services Over Spying Fears

Diamonddavej writes "Leading privacy expert Caspar Bowden warned European citizens not to use cloud services hosted in the U.S. over spying fears. Bowden, former privacy adviser to Microsoft Europe, explained at a panel discussion hosted at the recent Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference in Brussels, that a section in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act 2008 (FISAAA) permits U.S. intelligence agencies to access data owned by non-U.S. citizens on cloud storage hosed by U.S. companies, if their activity is deemed to affect U.S. foreign policy. Bowden claimed the Act allows for purely political spying of activists, protesters and political groups. Bowden also pointed out that amendments to the EU's data protection regulation proposal introduce specific loopholes that permit FISAAA surveillance. The president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (at a separate panel discussion) commented, 'If it is a U.S. company it's the FBI's jurisdiction and if you are not a U.S. citizen then they come and look at whatever you have if it is stored on a U.S. company server.' The European Data Protection Supervisor declined to comment but an insider indicated that the authority is looking into the matter."

Comments

You pretentious jerks!

[girlintraining]

Several EU member states have been cooperating with us to spy on their citizens since WWII. You're connected to a global network that provides instantanious monitoring of millions of communications in realtime; We peer our data with you. Our GPS satellites and cell phone technology can pinpoint where most of your citizens are at any given point in time and you thanked us for providing that technology under the guise of preventing terrorism, homeland security, tracking down neo nazis, or dozens of other groups.

And now, after decades of cooperation, you're being warned not to use... our cloud services. That's like this (holds up cell phone)... Not that impressive compared to that (points to a 100 story tall, 20 block wide, datacenter labelled 'EVERYTHING. EVER.') Seriously now, where are your brains? This is just a stunt to try and get your own domestic cloud services launched, I'm sure of it. So which one was it? Comeon, fess up.