This reminds me a lot of an article I read many years ago, I wish I was better at keeping archives. The article laid out how, while the EU was being formed, Gr

This reminds me a lot of an article I read many years ago, I wish I was better at keeping archives. The article laid out how, while the EU was being formed, Greece wanted in, and basically, Germany wanted Greece to change their financial laws somewhat, in order to be more German about it, as the article put it. Because as they saw it, Greek economic policy was irresponsible and not sustainable. The article went on to explain that while Germany was not wrong, Greece nonetheless was let in without all of the changes that Germany wanted them to make. The explanation for this that the article gave was that what got Greece in was the old old European system of aristocratic patronage, essentially, or if I'm remembering correctly, the enduring institutions that represent the interests of that longstanding group of Important Europeans. There would definitely be other factors of course - not wanting there to be a have-not country right there in the same landmass would be one. They seem to have problems enough with folks fleeing the wars for capital elsewhere in the world already. Also, good ol' White People Taking Care Of White People. Anyways, the occasion of the article was that Greece was defaulting on loans or something and it was causing serious problems for the rest of the EU, because of how fiscally intertwined they all are. If Europe is a family business, I suppose Germany must see Greece as the degenerate gambling brother that big daddy insists on allowing to run a company division or something. This seems a bit like that, only with allowing the US to play with Eurodata. I'm sure that any measure which causes a big player like Facebook to pull out will face some public backlash, though I haven't heard of any here in Canada yet about FB and Google news - I am fully aware of the political graft behind it but I'm 100% approving of anything that gets their filthy mitts as far away from our media as we can get them. The political grafters will get their graft regardless, the idea that that's a reason to not do something good is ridiculous. If someone wants me to consider that as a factor, that person would need to create a world without graft first. But here again there's other factors. EU spies and US spies are working together, as I'm sure are Russian and Chinese, and they probably even let North Korea tag along on a few picnics. It is far more efficient to allow each agency to harvest data directly in whatever ways are available to them, in order to ensure the greatest chance of them revealing something of strategic importance, even if it might not get passed on to the other agencies soon enough. In a geopolitical frame of reference, the EU does not actually want to be a data island. Nothing is clean and easy.