3 ms·

My fear is that this gives the EU commision a justified target (US tech companies) when they look for something to bargain with once Trump fires first shots at

by tobias3 10y ago

My fear is that this gives the EU commision a justified target (US tech companies) when they look for something to bargain with once Trump fires first shots at EU (German) car companies (which he will). A EU directive could look something like: * EU citizen data must not leave the EU to the US since EU citizen privacy is not respected there * If US tech companies are not able to segregate data (difficult for small tech companies and e.g. Facebook) they will be blocked And there we have it. The balkanization of the (western world) Internet.

mavdi 10y ago
Yup, Trump keeps forgetting the fact that trade blocks work both ways. Or perhaps he doesn't care.
- masklinn 10y ago
  Worse, trade blocks kills the WTO, and any of the rules it oversees.
mike-cardwell 10y ago
This doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. I think countries in the EU are being incredibly stupid by allowing a foreign nation to maintain databases of pretty much all of their citizens movements, conversations, plans, history and relationships.
- Udo 10y ago
  Yes, each country having its own internet is bad. When I'm as a European are prohibited by law to talk to an American because I might transmit personally-identifiable information, and you as an American are prohibited from talking to me because you can't exchange data with a foreign entity that has not been totally scrutinized by your government, that's bad. I believe most big companies already want this, they're just waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger. The big web companies already segregate people by origin IP address, serving them different content. In many cases, GeoIP even has precedence over the language settings in your user account when logged in. Totally separating each country or region, imposing new pricing schemes and locally-maximized restrictions on content, and preventing people from exchanging information across borders sounds like an absolute corporate utopia to me.
  - mike-cardwell 10y ago
    I don't feel like you addressed my concern. Which is a foreign nation having a database of my nations citizens movements, conversations, plans, history and relationships. Apparently you don't see as that leading to any problems?
    - Udo 10y ago
      > Apparently you don't see as that leading to any problems? That's not exactly a charitable assumption, and it's also untrue. First of all, that database is already in American hands. Don't for a second assume those "equivalent privacy" rules actually apply behind the scenes. It should be perfectly obvious how these rules cannot possibly be honored even in principle. What's prompting the supposed withdrawal from the data exchange agreement now is not how data is treated in practice, it's merely the loss of an already-weak public declaration that provided plausible deniability up to this point. So yeah, I see problems from in every corner of this thing, but arguing for a balkanized internet is not the solution either. For starters I don't quite like the fact that my government feels the need to treat me like a child by preventing me from sharing information on Facebook under the pretense of "protecting" me, but then turns around and exchanges all the official data it has on me with the American intelligence community anyway. When it seems like every move is about shafting the private citizen, the problem needs to be addressed on another layer. Plunging the world into a new information dark age is not a price I'm willing to pay.
JohnStrange 10y ago
It's not really a very strong bargaining chip for the EU commission, because ECJ and ECHR can independently rule certain decisions to share data as unconstitutional or as violations of the human rights of European citizens. So the commission cannot simply agree to set up particularly lax data sharing standards that the US would like to have, for instance. It's already dubious enough whether the Privacy Shield would withstand additional legal scrutiny by ECJ, and this also depends on actions of the current US government to conform with it.

by tobias3 10y ago

mavdi 10y ago

Yup, Trump keeps forgetting the fact that trade blocks work both ways. Or perhaps he doesn't care.

masklinn 10y ago
Worse, trade blocks kills the WTO, and any of the rules it oversees.

mike-cardwell 10y ago

This doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. I think countries in the EU are being incredibly stupid by allowing a foreign nation to maintain databases of pretty much all of their citizens movements, conversations, plans, history and relationships.

Udo 10y ago
Yes, each country having its own internet is bad. When I'm as a European are prohibited by law to talk to an American because I might transmit personally-identifiable information, and you as an American are prohibited from talking to me because you can't exchange data with a foreign entity that has not been totally scrutinized by your government, that's bad. I believe most big companies already want this, they're just waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger. The big web companies already segregate people by origin IP address, serving them different content. In many cases, GeoIP even has precedence over the language settings in your user account when logged in. Totally separating each country or region, imposing new pricing schemes and locally-maximized restrictions on content, and preventing people from exchanging information across borders sounds like an absolute corporate utopia to me.
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  I don't feel like you addressed my concern. Which is a foreign nation having a database of my nations citizens movements, conversations, plans, history and relationships. Apparently you don't see as that leading to any problems?
  - Udo 10y ago
    > Apparently you don't see as that leading to any problems? That's not exactly a charitable assumption, and it's also untrue. First of all, that database is already in American hands. Don't for a second assume those "equivalent privacy" rules actually apply behind the scenes. It should be perfectly obvious how these rules cannot possibly be honored even in principle. What's prompting the supposed withdrawal from the data exchange agreement now is not how data is treated in practice, it's merely the loss of an already-weak public declaration that provided plausible deniability up to this point. So yeah, I see problems from in every corner of this thing, but arguing for a balkanized internet is not the solution either. For starters I don't quite like the fact that my government feels the need to treat me like a child by preventing me from sharing information on Facebook under the pretense of "protecting" me, but then turns around and exchanges all the official data it has on me with the American intelligence community anyway. When it seems like every move is about shafting the private citizen, the problem needs to be addressed on another layer. Plunging the world into a new information dark age is not a price I'm willing to pay.

JohnStrange 10y ago

It's not really a very strong bargaining chip for the EU commission, because ECJ and ECHR can independently rule certain decisions to share data as unconstitutional or as violations of the human rights of European citizens. So the commission cannot simply agree to set up particularly lax data sharing standards that the US would like to have, for instance. It's already dubious enough whether the Privacy Shield would withstand additional legal scrutiny by ECJ, and this also depends on actions of the current US government to conform with it.