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EU High Court To Review US-EU Data Safe Harbor Agreement
jfruh (300774) writes with news that a complaint in Irish Court against Facebook for possibly sharing personal data of EU citizens with the NSA has escalated to the European Court of Justice which will review the continuance of the U.S./EU Safe Harbor Framework in light of PRISM.
Under European laws, personal data of EU citizens can't be transferred to countries that don't meet EU standards for data protection. The U.S. doesn't meet those standards, but American companies have worked around this by using EU standards for the data of European citizens, even that data stored on servers outside of Europe. Now the EU's highest court will decide if this workaround is good enough — especially in light of revelations of the NSA's Prism data-mining program.
Considering that the USA don't even need it but could essentially siphon the data directly from European countries with the aid of European governments... does it really matter?
That's essentially pondering whether the front door should be locked when the back door is opened from the inside by those we employ to guard it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The decision by the Irish DPC not to investigate makes perfect sense - this case is essentially all politics, and nothing more. The finding is inevitably going to be that the existence of the NSA violates European data privacy laws, but there really isn't a whole lot the EU could do about it - they can't tell the US to shut down the NSA, and they can't revoke the ability of non-EU servers to host EU data without effectively creating a second Great Firewall. Nothing can ultimately be done about it, and so the only real result would be this "Europe-v-Facebook" group scoring some political points.
When are the US-based companies going to simply shut down their satellite offices in the EU, keep all personnel in the USA, and change their TOS such that any use is under US and California law? They could simply outsource their sales operations to a third-party in foreign jurisdictions.
The site must be shut down and everything there destroyed (except the employees), effective IMMEDIATELY. DO IT NOW.
It was announced this week that GCHQ don't need permission to snoop on UK citizen's activity when the services being used are located abroad as they class it as "external communication" (for the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google). It wouldn't surprise me in the light of recent events, if the UK government back this plan, to only turn around and say, "Yes you need to keep the data in Europe, but we don't want it here." just so they can continue to *legally* spy on the people via this "external" (overseas) communication loophole.
With the safe harbour agreement american companies basically "promise" to follow some rules related to privacy, which are compatible with European values. But to make such an approach effective, someone has to verify that the "promises" are real and eventually impose sanctions if they are not. That someone is -- in theory -- the FTC.
The problem with safe harbor is that it is been very weakly enforced. In the first decade since it was created, there has been no real enforcement action that I've heard of. This gives the impression that Safe Harbor is pretty toothless. FTC has only recently (2014) began to enforce this framework, because Europeans threatened to abandon it.
Most of the euro governments willingly handed over information to the NSA so they could stick their fingers in the big ass pie the US was baking.
UK, Germany, France, all complicit.
Clean your own house europe.
Put all of your personal data on a commercial US web site, and expect privacy?
Duh
Even if the servers were located in the UK - they would snoop on them as they'd be snooping on overseas traffic coming into the servers, or just route the traffic offshore and back again (fat pipe to the Isle of Man or Ireland?) so they can snoop it.
USA can route traffic via Canada to legally snoop on American citizens, as its being snooped in Canada.
Considering that terror attacks in Europe have been far more frequent and ongoing the various nations need to collect information and share it to an even greater level than the US. Most people will never make note that revolutions occur across cultures. For example France, England and the US had revolutions close in time to each other. We are almost one culture and share a common majority race. Right now revolutions are in progress in the Arab nations. The cultures of Arab nations vary a bit but the majority race is about the same. In response to that Arab revolution we are seeing a revolution is spying and data collection within the US which may well be far more lasting than the violence in the Arab world. The hope is that intense data accumulation can provide all kinds of incidental joys as well as prevent future attacks. For example we may be able to kind cures for diseases or causes of diseases by using data compilation. We might even help solve traffic congestion or problems that we are unaware of completely. To that end the compiled data should be released across the board so that all research and every industry could make use of the fruits of all of that publicly funded data collection. Think for a moment of the tens of thousands of convicts who have either escaped or jumped parole. Data mining could probably be used to capture all of them.
The translation of all this is: "build more data centers in Europe; we need the jobs, and our governments want to have easier access to the data directly on European soil".
Are you kidding? Many European nations have gigantic loopholes in privacy protection when it comes to government spying on their own citizens. European governments absolutely hate your data being on US servers because, while the NSA may be able to get at it, the US won't share that data except when it serves its own interests, which is rarely. Furthermore, European nations don't have a prayer to tap data in the US by technical means.
European governments are itching to force their citizens to store their data on their domestic servers, both so that it becomes more easily accessible to European spy agencies and police forces, and also because European telecoms are lobbying and hoping to be able to take back a slice of the market that they lost.
By "external communications" GCHQ meant that the communications left a person's house, not the country. Once the signal leaves your property line, it's fair game for them, no matter what technology is used to transmit it [copper, optical cable, airwaves]
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Because the UK GCSB still intercepts the data without a warrant.