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EU Court of Justice Declares US-EU Data Transfer Pact Invalid
Sique writes: Europe's highest court ruled on Tuesday that a widely used international agreement for moving people's digital data between the European Union and the United States was invalid. The decision, by the European Court of Justice, throws into doubt how global technology giants like Facebook and Google can collect, manage and analyze online information from their millions of users in the 28-member bloc. The court decreed that the data-transfer agreement was invalid as of Tuesday's ruling. New submitter nava68 adds links to coverage at the Telegraph; also at TechWeek Europe.
From TechWeek Europe's article:
The ruling was the court’s final decision in a data-protection case brought by 27-year-old Austrian law student Max Schrems against the Irish data protection commissioner. That case, in turn, was spurred by Schrems’ concerns over the collection of his personal data by Facebook, whose European headquarters is in Ireland, and the possibility that the data was being handed over to US intelligence services.
The court simply stated what looks obvious to anyone in good faith: if you do business in a country, you have to abide by the local laws. And given Snowden's revelations, it's purely ridiculous to claim that privacy rights can be respected if foreign data are stored in the US.
So google, facebook, twitter, microsoft, cloud computing services, etc... will have to open their wallets and create data centers inside single EU countries. Otherwise GTFO.
Technology must respect the law, not the other way around. Sorry billionaire nerds.
Simply keeping the data in the EU won't fix anything so long as that data is still being held by US controlled entities, as those entities will still be forced to hand over the data regardless of where it is (lets face it, Microsofts battle against that particular issue is destined to fail).
The only real way this is going to be solved is to force all EU data to be stored by entities that are not owned or controlled by a non-EU entity. Which means Amazon SaRL will be unconnected to Amazon.com and effectively competing against each other.
... All euro courts are invalid. Seriously, eurosluts, what do you think you can do? Where are your carriers? Har har har.
Yes but we'll laugh back when highly polluting VWs have to be accepted on US roads because they meet European standards
any western government (not the US) who is trying to 'shake down' google or FB gets my 100% blessing in anything they do to reduce the force, power and evilness of both of those companies.
anything that causes either of those companies PAIN is a good thing in my, uhm, 'book'.
corporations are evil and the biggest ones have the most evilness to them. anything that knocks down the evil corps even a little is a Good Thing(tm).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If you look at how this law case started, it was initiated by a private citizen. Not by the EU executive branch. The EU justice branch made a decision that the EU justice branch is visibly not comfortable with, because it places a lot of companies in legal limbo. Read more here:
http://www.economist.com/news/...
Because the EU executive branch did nothing about it themselves . . . well, it shows that they were in cahoots with the USA/NSA folks.
So in this case, it is not a shakedown by the EU. The EU governments and Executive branch were perfectly happy with the way things were. It was a private citizen who appealed to the EU highest court that caused this.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Nope, the real motivation is compliance to EU laws, like every company has to. Companies who believe they can fully own data about EU citizens and do whatever they want with it are in for a lot of trouble, whatever their nationality. European companies, and even governments, have been condemned too.
There's nothing like $HOME
I assume this ruling helps US cloud providers since even more small companies will be compelled to not host their own servers. I can easily spin up servers on AWS in Ireland and Frankfurt, but not so easily set up my own data center.
Its rare for any increase in regulation to not help large companies, since they have the scale to deal with the lawyer fees necessary to comply.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The European union will be isis by the time they are done.
Looking at some of the appeasers here it wouldn't surprise me
Wow, you guys have really been taken in by the US media's propaganda. They want you to be afraid. A frightened populace is a controllable populace.
Do you really not see how the fear of Muslim terrorists has been used to curtail your freedoms and tighten control of the authorities? We now have the NSA and who knows who else spying on everyone, the FBI looking at what you read, border checkpoints miles from any border and police using evidence collected in secret, all in the name of protecting us from terrorists.
Terrorists use violence to put fear into a population. Well who is really putting fear into our population? The media and the government spokespeople who feed them information. They want you to be afraid so you'll support their wars (that they lie to us about) and their restrictive policies at home, and keep watching their news channels. Don't fall for it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Google is just doing what any corporation does. The bottom line is their own aggrandizement. Anything they can get away with to that end they will do. Why do you have this fantasy that they are special?
Capitalism is all about strife and self-interest. It's inherent in the system. You can but-but that by bringing up the "invisible hand of the market", but it is a truism.
If ISIS want to send infiltrators to Europe, they can do it much more quickly, easily, and reliably with a few fake passports and some plane tickets.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Wow, you guys have really been taken in by the US media's propaganda.
I live in the US and I have no clue what you're referring to. These are just idiots. The media here is bad but not this bad or in this way. The extreme right republicans would do this but most of the media is on the left.
At the risk of sounding smug, you aren't supposed to notice. The message management is subtle enough that it's hard to detect. I would recommend the film "Manufacturing Consent" and the "Century of the Self" documentary series. You might also read the book "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays. From Bernays' book:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
That's what I'm talking about. Bernays went on to revolutionize the fields of advertising and public relations. His methods work to influence the thoughts, opinions and attitudes of people without their knowledge. They really do work; power now relies on it. Look into it, if you're interested. I find it quite fascinating.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
As a point of reference, if you think that "most of US media is on the left", you are so far on the right end of the spectrum from European point of view that expression and practice of many of your ideas has been outlawed in much of Europe after our last bout with national socialism.
Haven't connected your Windows machine to the Internet yet, I see.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Who knows. But a few or even a few hundred idiots are not a substantial threat to Europe. CNN just published this graph, showing that the risk for Americans to be killed by firearm in the US is more than two orders of magnitude greater than the risk of an American being killed by terrorism (home or abroad). And if you exclude 9/11, it's more than three orders of magnitude. If the US can survive the NRA, then Europe can survive a couple of other fanatics.
Stephan