Slashdot Mirror
German Chancellor Proposes European Communications Network
An anonymous reader sends word that German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to build a European communication network to keep data transmission away from the United States. She plans to discuss the issue with French President Francois Hollande.
"Merkel said in her weekly podcast that she disapproved of companies such as Google and Facebook basing their operations in countries with low levels of data protection while being active in countries such as Germany with high data protection. 'We'll talk with France about how we can maintain a high level of data protection,' Merkel said. 'Above all, we'll talk about European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn't have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic. Rather, one could build up a communication network inside Europe.' Hollande's office confirmed that the governments had been discussing the matter and said Paris agreed with Berlin's proposals."
Are there even any ...
I think you've missed the whole point of this. The basic problem is that any packets that touch american soil become subject to american surveillance and american law. Even if the data / email / web pages are only transiting, fron one "free" country to another.
This is clearly unacceptable and since the americans don't have any motivation to fix the problem, the rest of the world (or at least: countries in Europe, at this stage) will just find a way to bypass it.
As the old saying goes: The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When you are threatened by a great evil that wants all data you have, your choices are to firewall yourself off or surrender.
This is true on both micro or macro scale, and we have discussions on how to protect our data on micro scale here on slashdot all the time. It's quite sad that when people view it as "well it's our evil guy" suddenly massive theft of data becomes completely justified and counter measures undesirable.
The U.S. can do very much to an European citizen. Putting him on a no-fly list. Outbidding his company by tipping his bids to their own company. Stealing trade secrets and contract details to competitors. Damaging his reputation by disclosing secrets he has to keep to interesting parties. Letting some accidental data breach happen.
Yes, I'm sure those things will have an impact on 99% of all EU citizens... Since we all regularly fly to the US doing business versus US competitors. Not.
Your own government doing this is much more dangerous than any other government: google "schleppnetzfahndung" and "berufsverbot" for nice examples of Germany in the 70's versus the trade unions, dissidents, journalists... they ruined the reputation of hundreds of thousands of people who just didn't toe the line. And it didn't just happen in Germany, lots of examples of EU governments doing stuff like that. Hell, the Greek government only recently removed the requirement that your religion has to be on the passport.
I'm not a fan of what the NSA has been doing, but let's be clear here: it was with full knowledge and cooperation of most EU intelligence services.
Socialists say: "the enemy is at home". I find that to be more prophetic every time I read the news, lately.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)