Slashdot Mirror
EU May Forbid the Transfer of Personal Data To the US
An anonymous reader writes: As the Snowden revelations have shown, personal data stored in the United States of America is not protected from the US government, be it through warrantless eavesdropping or national security letters. In light of this, the general attorney for the Court of Justice of the European Union has just issued an opinion requiring the US to be removed from the list of "safe harbors", where the transfer of personal data of European citizens is permitted. If the court follows his opinion, the change will have deep impact in the operations of large transnational Internet companies, between a US government that wants to keep on spying, and European authorities that will punish them if they let it happen.
The US needs to wake up to the fact that it doesn't set policy for the world, and that other jurisdictions have their own laws and regulations that US companies have to abide by if they want to do business there.
Enough with jackboot "treaties" that the US doesn't even try to abide by after signing them. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
FIrst.....first damn you....first !!!!!
I'll check it out later, thanks for the post!
Corporations don't comply with open European laws...... execs get fined (maybe)....
Corporations don't comply with secret U$A laws........ execs get "rendition" to Federal prison.
Which scenario do you think they'll choose ?
Cough, Germany, UK, etc. etc. Cough cough.
This is just more "Anti American Company" bullshit that parts of the EU pull every once in a while because they're mad all the big internet companies are in the US and stuff and not in the EU. Oh sure, the proposed purpose SOUNDS noble. Except plenty of countries in the EU already do the same thing they're protesting so loudly about. So really it has nothing to do with privacy, and everything to do with throwing a hissy fit that they don't have their own Apple or Facebook.
The EU isn't going to forbid the transfer of personal data to the US. That's an outright lie.
The safe harbor treaty allows certain companies to apply for certification, but in most cases this isn't necessary at all. EU law still allows for these transfers. Safe harbor granted certified US companies some privileges with respect to transfer of data between the EU and US. Ending this simply means they have to play by the same rules as competitors that don't have such certification. It also means those companies can't aid mass surveillance in the US. It doesn't mean they won't be subject to surveillance in the US, but they won't be able to voluntarily give their data to US agencies en masse. Instead, the government will have to go through the process of obtaining data on individual suspects the way it's always been done.
From the reuter article:
"If the United States doesn't change its laws in order to guarantee a minimum of data protection to European citizens, U.S. companies will have to process their data in the EU,"
Spot on.
The government of the United States of America has lost all credibility.
What once represented freedom for many now stands for oppression.
Why does the state need to spy on its own citizens?
Answer - to identify and stamp out dissent in order to preserve the status quo.
Time to go back to sleep sheeple..... Nothing to see here.
The linked article in the summary is from Sep 8, 2015 1:13 PM. Today is Sep 24, 2015.
This is a ruse.
How can 'they" (you decide who) monopolize spying on and controlling all data if other countries can legally do it back? One giant monolithic world? What could go wrong?
Microsoft is synonymous with global consumer backstabbing and global spyware as of Windows 10. They are reported to have back-ported many of those features to 7/8/8.1 too. That is the real story, not how Microsoft is savior of Irish privacy. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7958349&cid=50460317
Every EU politicians is totally aware that their porn surfing, the nasty secrets of their family, those embarrassing things they did with their penis to the mouths of dead pigs etc. All of that is in leverage hands of a foreign power. So it won't happen, they'll be afraid and compliant, and those who aren't.... well can they remember what dead animal they orally fucked while drunk at Uni? Do they know what dead animal their children fucked at uni?
And if it is *revealed* that a politician had sex with a dead pig at a University initiation ceremony? Well he's obviously upset someone with informational advantage, and that is being used against them. The question is how many times has it been used against them previously? They were elected on a stance of restoring privacy and rights, and turned into one of the most surveillance happy, right stripping politicians ever, how come the 180? How many other necrophilia bestiality revelations to come?
Information is power, and the more information you have the more leverage. Hence privacy is essential.
Couldn't the pope say something similar to Catholics? Have it be a bad morning for the U.S. information industry?
Pretty nasty, so is what they're doing. Seems fair.
now since this move may hurt tech gaints' (from US) business, this will teach them a lesson on user privacy
The story doesn't make any sense. The U.S. government is demanding Microsoft hands over information stored on servers in Ireland. Microsoft through its upgrade system is collecting information on everybody who uses Microsoft Windows 10 8 and 7. The British, government have been sending medical records and so on to the United States for over a year. Germany, has been passing information about its own citizens to the U.S. since 2001. Red Hat, has been sharing data about where and who around the world is using its products with the U.S.. And the airliners even when not travelling to the U.S. have been sharing passengers data with the U.S. on a daily basis. And Visa, has been collecting the most personal information about Europeans for literally years with the encouragement of European countries. The only thing that does need sorting out is European countries having to abide the data protection Acts among European nations, but not applying the law when it involves the U.S., bring in the laws into disrepute. the U.K. is created an industry out of sending information to the U.S. they even have a lobby group http://www.techuk.org/about lobbying politicians to make sure that they can continue sending European information to the U.S.
Ironically, Snowden's own revelations indicated that the data would be more secure in the US than in Europe, since we collect foreign data with wild abandon, and still apply some limits to domestic surveillance.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
dammit. About half of our customers have a few employees in Europe. We mainly support US companies, but most of them have remote employees outside of the country. This might kill us. Thanks Obama.
Do as we say, when we say it. We, the USA, rule the world. If it wasn't for us, you would all be speaking German. Now shut up, and get back to your grubby housing and state income! Leave the real business decisions to us. When you are as rich as us, and can stand on your own feet, come and talk to us, but not before!
It's really shameful that no European country has offered Snowden refuge. They'll talk and talk about how he did a great thing, but to actually help out one person and risk upsetting the USA...
Since it has become public knowledge that US authorities can demand the "protected" data at any time, even from subsidiaries abroad, the value of any certification or demonstration is questionable.
That alone could end up making the Safe Harbor rules unusable for US companies, regardless of FTC enforcement. Depending on the EU court's ultimate decision of course.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The US isn't a safe place to store anyone's personal data. Never has been. The subtext/attitude has always been 'anything you give us is ours to do with as we please'. The irony here sadly is that "EU" includes the UK (for the time being at least) and here the GHCQ do whatever they like. There is no meaningful oversight nor will there ever be.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Why does the USA always take the lions share of any fines or damages from any (multinational) companies when they screw up? I appreciate the US is a big market, but if you fine a company to near bankruptcy then you're basically saying - f### you to every other country who had citizens affected by those same actions. I hear of these record breaking fines, never hear about how they are being spent - is the money recovered to the people who lost out or simply ends up in the black hole that is the government coffers?
Shortly after the data protection rules in the EU were enacted, the EU Commission agreed to a shady compromise to avoid problems for the internet industry. This compromise is known as the Safe Harbour deal from 2000.
Today, the European Court of Justice is hearing a case where this practice is in dispute, and it may end with the Safe Harbour deal being ruled invalid. It would not be the first case where a law or international contract is found illegal after the fact.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The Safe Harbor rules have been under scrutiny for years. The EU is quite nonplussed about how they are enforced in the USA. So the stakes are if the treaty will be amended or if it will be nullified.
There's nothing like $HOME
The "special relationship" the USA has with the UK allows the NSA to login into the UK's GCHQ servers and browse all the personal data of UK and European citizens that GCHQ is illegally collecting (which includes not just meta-data, but full telephone and Internet content etc).
The Advocate General (not general attorney!) serves a function similar to the Solicitor General in the United States. He presents his opinion to the court, and it is (more often than not) persuasive to the European Court of Justice, but the opinion is NOT binding binding on the Court or anyone else. We need to await the decision of the Court.
> And then we get into a tit for tat situation [...] It'll be bad for the world in general.
Yeah. Still perhaps the right thing to do at a moment in history where corporations are quickly annihilating what's left of democracy and state of right. For a case in point: does your representative know what's being negotiated "in your name" in some obscure international treaty (be it TTIP, CETA, TPP or whatever the current abomination is called)?
Mine neither. But the "industry" lobby groups are privvy to that. More, they are co-authoring it. Time for that to stop.
Good idea. It is unbelievable how naive some people are on facebook and elsewhere when they share their personal information:
1) it almost certain FB and other social network information is collected by many different government agencies around the globe (usa, china, uk..)
2) even if your data is not particularly interesting they can calculate collective statistics how people are behaving, acting, travelling, using money, how many friends they are, how opinions change overtime etc. etc.
3) if you are activist or somehow otherwise significant anybody can collect your data and use them to attack you: manipulate your photos to contain child pornography, destroy your reputation, try to get your fired (knows company you are working for), impersonate you, destroy your friends or turn them against you and finally you, try to do credit card or other financial fraud, use your date of birth to guess your social security number.. (at these are just my first ideas)
...love how they are trying to "avoid" countries who "do" things.
All while their member countries "do" the same thing.
You lying cheating evesdropping bastards.
"Now NATO have added basically all of eastern Europe, and are trying to incorporate Ukraine."
Incorrect, NATO has not been trying to get either Ukraine or Georgia to join, it has offered them support with things like troop training, but has been well aware of Russia's sensitivity on the issue. If joining NATO was on the cards, they'd already be members.
Unfortunately, despite NATO rejecting membership for the foreseeable future, Russia felt it was okay to impose it's will on them by force regardless. When NATO says no, and Russia says "tough shit, we're invading you" I don't know how anyone can rationally try and paint NATO as the bad guy. NATO doesn't make anyone join by force, countries only join NATO because it's the democratic will of the population, and because NATO is happy for them to join - you cannot paint a mutual democratic agreement as ever unacceptable without arguing that Russia's paranoia should trump national sovereignty. It's effectively an argument that Russia gets to dictate what sovereign nations can and can't do, hence revoking their sovereignty. Making that argument whilst turning a blind eye to outright Russia invasion of countries like Ukraine and Georgia is twisted at best.
"But without this context it is not actually possible to understand the situation."
It's possible to understand that even with a clear rejection from NATO, Putin still invaded, hence making the argument that joining NATO is actually the best option, because if they had managed to join, Putin wouldn't have invaded, and because they weren't able to join, he did.
"Consider how the US would react if Russia were spending billions toward unconstitutional regime change in Mexico with the aim of installing a virulently anti-american regime there? 'Cause that is pretty much what happened in Ukraine."
Yeah, except that didn't really happen. A bit of typical funding for NGOs that support ideas like democracy and so forth is hardly akin to billions spent influencing actual political parties, you know, kind of like how Russia is pouring money into the far right across Europe pretty much like in your example?
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Oh, and by the way - the fact you used the word "unconstitutional" is what gives you away as a Russian shill. There was nothing constitutional about Ukraine's regime change. A majority voted (73%) to begin the impeachment process which required an investigation into Yanukovych, and should that investigation find there were grounds for impeachment a 3/4 majority of 75% would've been required to remove him. Unfortunately, as soon as that 73% vote to begin the process passed, he decided to renounce his presidency and leave the country. He then decided to change his mind, but unfortunately that IS unconstitutional.
But even without that, there was a clear majority will against a continued Russian quasi-dictator running the country, so democracy must be allowed to trump authoritarianism regardless. Should a leader become so unpopular a few years into his rule that people are willing to risk their lives to overthrow him, then it's not unreasonable to hold new elections (preferably without your protection squad shooting a bunch of protesting civilians and police officers trying to maintain order dead). This may not have happened had it not been for actual Russian meddling in Ukraine for years, you know, like poisoning presidential candidates Russia didn't like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The current problem with Russia is all on Russia, I know you Russian shills like to try and play the victim, but at the end of the day had you not spent 15 years trying to enforce a quasi-dictatorship on the Ukrainian people that they did not want, had you not continued to oppress them, invade them, and generally make life shit for them, and had you instead simply given them the sa
You should perhaps stop projecting your own sexual desires onto other people. Not everybody shares your fantasies.
Facebook almost certainly does some things with personal data about some EU citizens against their will. For example, by uploading the contents of users' phone books, it would be collecting personal data about everyone in those phone books, not just their owners. Because phone numbers are effectively unique IDs, and because Facebook appears to be collecting that data systematically from a large number of people, it would also be building a database about the social relationships of everyone in those phone books. It is now well established that Facebook could derive other potentially sensitive details about those people with a high probability of being correct based on that social graph.
Now consider that not everyone uses Facebook, and indeed some people actively choose not to because of privacy concerns, and there is clearly a concern about the legality of such a system in Europe.
If you're about to argue that it's not Facebook's fault and everyone shouldn't just upload their phone books and give up their friends'/family's/colleagues' details, then we next get into arguments about incitement/coercion and about misrepresentation, which are things the law typically takes a dim view of. It is also now well established that many people using these on-line services don't fully understand the implications for themselves or for others, and that sometimes people find the reality surprising and undesirable when it is fully explained to them.
In any case, it doesn't matter what the Facebook users themselves think in the scenario I've been discussing, because the people who didn't sign up are entitled to have their personal data protected under EU law regardless of what their friends do. That doesn't necessarily mean the data can't be used or shared, and there are certainly interesting ethical and legal questions when it comes to service providers that need some information to provide their service but operate at a scale that has deeper implications for privacy such as, say, Google Mail. But what Facebook reportedly does with personal data about individuals who didn't opt in seems pretty far towards the shady side of legal in Europe.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"between a US government that wants to keep on spying, and European authorities that also want to continue spying"
Your data is probably safer in the US than it is in the EU. European countries have spies too, you know...
At least, US citizens seem to make a big deal out of it and they are allowed to speak it out. In the EU, we don't need a Snowden to know that the government spies on us, yet, few people seem to care, of their control of the press is much more effective than in the US.
The U.S. government are nothing more than mega-corporate bitches. They should be shunned and marginalized
I'm not condoning the actions of the US government, but they don't give a shit what any other country says they can and cannot do. They'll just do it anyway. What is anybody really gonna do about it?
Change your diet: Eating your words != Good Nutrition Dave420 http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
No, but the British Prime Minister apparently does. You should catch up on current affairs some time.