8 ms·

It’s time to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens

127 points by howlden 12y ago

nl 12y ago
Speaking as an Australian: Hello! Yes please?
- nly 12y ago
  Exactly. Just EU citizens? How about the entire frickin world.
- Aoyagi 12y ago
  You're under the Five Eyes, no reason to cover you any differently than US citizens :P
- tete 12y ago
  May be related to Australia being a part of the Five Eyes. Keep in mind though that the UK is a special case in the EU in many many ways. However there are many organizations, countries and interests involved here. There are the US, the rest of the world, the EU, the NATO, the Five Eyes, other trade agreements and even lots of special agreements (partly known for a long time, partly due to the Snowden revelations) with countries such as France, Germany and others, like Austria (there is a UN HQ, next to a espionage outpost by the NSA). We now know that pretty much every US embassy also has a lot of SIGINT going on, same for US military bases (they still exist!) in Germany. There are "privately" owned places by the NSA, secret agreements with governments, companies, institutions, etc. When a country secret laws (or interpretations of such), operates secret prisons, outposts, spies on embassies and international institutions, operates spy satellites that happen to be next to telecommunication satellites, etc. then it's really naive to think they you change some laws and things won't be happen anymore. Do you really think in a country where agencies spy on the senate, where there are secret interpretations of laws by secret courts that democratic means have any chance of working? Also given economical and military power how do you want to put pressure on the US? Even with some economic power the US military is still the biggest and best funded and as history has shown it's not only there for defense. I don't think this can be changed easily, not because of thinking bad of the US (government), but because the system is big and strongly relies on these things. Big, complex systems are incredibly hard to change. The technicians here probably understand that. Don't get me wrong. It may be possible, but the chance is low and fundamental changes might even lead to unrest. That's sad, but changing the system has been tried in many ways, even in the US, but the way the economic and military system works right now usually got strengthened or made more static. It's maybe what you'd call a technical debt in the sense that you build up on something that's not right. You might wanna try a rewrite, but think about "rewrites" are in the context of a country. I am thinking about the French Revolution or "tearing down" of Germany after World War 2 here. The US also has no history of that really being possible, because they never lost in the sense of needing to rebuild, while in Europe alone in the past 100 years everything changed completely in the couple of 100 years. You can't blame the US for not doing that. It's not nice. Maybe a better way is possible, but so far history has no real examples of it, especially not for countries (or realms) that were so big and complex. Maybe it would even be better to do it small scale, maybe even by the states in the US declaring independence, because big realms tend to end up with one or two totalitarian systems in between and millions of death. Smaller countries or simply groups of fewer people tend to be more flexible (see startups). Maybe there is another way. It would be really great if a lot of things would change, because currently civil rights that were made in order to prevent a lot of bad things from ever happening again are by many not considered something of value anymore (even though people like to pretend otherwise, but civil rights, human rights are by definition and intention nothing that you only care for when things are good).
  - tete 12y ago
    Can't edit anymore, so here a second posting. Since what I wrote probably sounds a bit bold I want to add a reference tho this. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who advised many US presidents in the last couple of decades wrote many books. Among those books there is The Grand Chessboard. It explains a really large part of the US politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
  - nl 12y ago
    That's a very long posting based unfortunately on an entirely false premise. The act already has exclusions for national security. That seems unlikely to change for foreign citizens.
mariusz79 12y ago
Sorry, but Google is probably the biggest threat to our privacy.
- stephenr 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. The concept of trusting what is essentially an Ad company with a penchant for spending it's profits on projects to convince the tech community it's "cool" on anything privacy related is either the greatest practical joke of the 21st century or the reason we can't have nice things.
  - minot 12y ago
    Why in the world would Google disclose information about you to its customers when it can probably make more money by being squarely in the middle? >> Hello, do you need to find someone who might be interested in buying Toyota cars? What's the message that you'd want plastered all over the Internet for this guy? OK, just sign this check and it will be done.
    - stephenr 12y ago
      At what point did I say Google was disclosing information about me? Every software product Google puts in the market, from web search to Gmail to Google Apps to Chrome to Android - they are all about collecting personal information, building a huge bank of data about individuals. I don't care if they never intend to disclose that information to someone else. I care that they are actively engaged in collecting the information in the first place. Further more - online advertising can work just fine without collecting such ridiculous amounts of information about people. Let me give you an example. A Toyota dealer (or the marketing department of Toyota itself) buys ads from a search engine.. let's call it.. Hoogle. I decide i want to buy a new car, so I go to my favourite search engine... Hoogle... and I search for "new cars in <location>". Somehow, through the magic of common sense, an ad, placed by Toyota, a CAR company, registers as being related to a search for "new CARS". They show me the ad. Oh and look. They didn't need to circumvent browser security policies around how cookies are handled, they didn't need to scan all my email, they didn't need to track the SSID of my local Wifi network...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- lucaspiller 12y ago
  It's pretty easy to say that, but even if you are a customer of a company using US services this affects you. It isn't always obvious or user facing either; what if you go to buy a house and the estate agent uses Salesforce?
tgb 12y ago
I find the situation where we grant rights to our citizens without granting them to foreigners (particularly citizens of our close allies, but also foreigners in general) bizarre and backwards. While I'm sure that there are some rights that cannot be extended to non-citizens, it seems that the default should be to treat all people independently of their country of origin unless there are strong arguments why we cannot.
- jeremysmyth 12y ago
  Rights (as they exist today) are based in legislation. Legislation is fundamentally political. Politics is glorified tribalism. While the people who formulate and enforce our rights are put there by geographic tribes, you won't see rights that stretch far beyond your borders. It's only when a community that is no longer geographic in nature forms tribes that we see the geographic tribes pay attention to the rights of "foreigners", and not because they're foreign, but because they're important to their own voters.
- wtbob 12y ago
  > I find the situation where we grant rights to our citizens without granting them to foreigners (particularly citizens of our close allies, but also foreigners in general) bizarre and backwards. I find the idea that subjects of a foreign state have any rights not arranged by agreement between our state and theirs fundamentally bizarre. That's what states are for, in a post-Westphalian world.
- mkempe 12y ago
  We've gone from the assertion that absolute rights are inherent in human nature and inalienable, to the post-modern world where nations supposedly grant "rights" to the populace -- and subject them to massive surveillance. The two visions are incompatible. If you believe rights are granted by government, then you don't believe in the universality of individual rights -- which take precedence over governments and nation-states.
abaco 12y ago
Problem is quite a few european countries right now don't trust american companies anymore so they are working on their own mail service, cloud, network and hardware components, ... (you know if american companies agreed with american government to spy on us they kinda deserve a nice fk off). So who is damaged by this european behaviour? American companies. And now Google is suddenly concerned about our privacy. Middle finger?
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  Middelvinger. But seriously, got some more info on these European services? I don't watch these matters very closely lately, would be interested in looking into it.
  - abaco 12y ago
    I am italian, would be surprise if a member of our government is even able to switch on a computer. But I know that in Germany (for example) this problem is a big thing http://www.zdnet.com/worried-about-your-email-security-in-germany-safe-messaging-is-on-the-rise-7000029018/ http://www.zdnet.com/worried-about-your-email-security-in-ge... http://www.bohnen-kallmorgen.com/root/index.php?page_id=123 http://www.bohnen-kallmorgen.com/root/index.php?page_id=123
    - BillFranklin 12y ago
      In Germany the privacy laws are incredibly strict but fair to consumers rather than corporations.
  - voxic11 12y ago
    https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonmail https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonmail is an example
  - jdimov 12y ago
    There's the EU-funded FI-WARE cloud platform. Completely free to use for European start-ups and comes with 80 million euros in EU grants for start-ups using it. http://www.fi-ware.org/ http://www.fi-ware.org/
higherpurpose 12y ago
Meanwhile in US Congress: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/new-spying-laws-cybersecurity-nsa-fbi http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/new-spy...
Aoyagi 12y ago
Yeah, well this wouldn't be as much of a problem if Google didn't harvest all the data just because they can, would it?
- Oletros 12y ago
  Yap, they harvest email data because they can /s
mcmillion 12y ago
Wait, we have a Privacy Act? I'm assuming it doesn't work, then.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  And you're probably right. Is this the same 30 (?) year old Privacy Act that allows law enforcement to get our emails after 180 days without any warrant, because they are considered "abandoned"? In the meantime, Google is trying to push everyone to archive rather than delete emails with its new Inbox client, making it once again very convenient for law enforcement to get this sort of data from us without too many obstacles. And what's happening with that E2E plugin for Gmail? Is it still coming? What's the progress on that? Will it even work with Inbox? Because they seem to have pretty opposite goals. Maybe I wouldn't mind it too much, if I didn't know Google wants to eventually kill Gmail.com and replace it with Inbox.
- mpyne 12y ago
  It's actually very difficult to comply with, but that's a topic for a different conversation. That spreadsheet you keep of customer orders that you've mailed goods to from your personal eBay business? Definitely not Privacy Act-compliant. Either way though as written it works well enough, the government was never going to raise privacy above the level of gaining military intelligence needed to win in World War 3, or to completely stop law enforcement investigations. Accordingly the Privacy Act would contain exemptions allowing for warrants to still work, if nothing else. But this doesn't mean that the data, once captured by a warrant, need not be protected by privacy controls in accordance with the Privacy Act, and I think this is the argument Google is making, that the government should apply at least the same standards of data protection to data captured on foreign individuals (however it's captured) as it does to data captured on citizens. Additionally, if the government treats foreigners as if they were protected by Privacy Act it might also reduce the number of ways in which the government could compel production of evidence on those foreigners, especially data held by U.S. companies. Privacy Act was never meant to prevent the collection of evidence for investigations, or to prevent legally-obtained evidence from being used in legal or administrative proceedings, but those are not the only protections Privacy Act gives, so applying it to aliens could well be a net gain. IANAL though, hopefully someone else can explain what exactly Google is going after here.
adventured 12y ago
It's often claimed that politics in the US is run by / dominated by corporations. I find the contradiction in that claim at times like this to be especially dramatic. The biggest corporations in America - Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc - are actively being harmed by the US Government. US telecoms are having the doors shut to business in Europe and Asia, because of this stuff. Countless billions in profit are at stake. Another headline from today: corporations are holding $2 trillion overseas, because of the wonky corporate tax policies of the US. If corporations actually ran anything, that wouldn't be a problem.
- Tombone5 12y ago
  The wonky thing being that they would have to pay tax on that money if they take it to the US, but they've already made all that effort not to pay tax on the income in the country of origin! (sad face)
  - adventured 12y ago
    It's part of the absurdity that is the US tax code. I think it was Bill Clinton (among countless others) that elaborated how the obvious thing to do, is to compress the corporate tax rate down to close to 20%, and eliminate most of the tax gaming (simplification). We could continue to tax corporations at a reasonably competitive rate (vs the rest of the world), simplify the tax code drastically, and keep tax revenue approximately the same. That we can't seem to do something so obvious, which has lots of support from both parties, draws a pretty big sad face from me.
- shitehawk 12y ago
  If Apple is actively being harmed by the US Government it sure doesn't seem it as they are making more than they ever have.
  - adventured 12y ago
    The calculations on business lost to the Snowden revelations, is tallied in at least the tens of billions, and it's likely to get more dramatic over time by encouraging new European and Asian competition (to build matching scale replacement services) where there previously was not as much.
Achshar 12y ago
Why just EU? The EU delegates can pressure US to cover anyone under the act not just EU residents. If US bends to EU's demands about privacy but doesn't treat rest of the world similarly then it says something about US.
- jdimov 12y ago
  EU "delegates" don't have what it takes to pressure the US on anything. It's usually the other way around. EU regularly bends to US demands, not vice-versa. E.g. providing the NSA with personal data for all airline passengers flying in or out of Europe...
  - shitehawk 12y ago
    The US and EU are sharing data both ways. That is not a popular fact because then you can't demonize one side.
flexie 12y ago
In general, whenever it comes to human rights - or civil rights as Americans like to call it - it's appalling that they distinguish between citizens and foreigners (or aliens as they label us). Imagine European countries denying human rights to non citizens: Okay to torture a Somali? No problem throwing Americans in prison without trial? Sure, let's wiretap cell phones of all Turks in Europe? I don't think so.
- rmc 12y ago
  Imagine European countries denying human rights to non citizens: cough European countries have a history of doing just that. Hence why they don't tend to do it anymore.
  - thirsteh 12y ago
    So the same as the U.S., then?
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    Yep the world used to be horrible and barbaric pretty much everywhere but we're talking about modern day.
    - rmc 12y ago
      It was less than 100 years ago. Which in Europe, isn't that long ago.
      - freehunter 12y ago
        Not that long ago? It's longer than I've been alive. Any my parents. And my grandparents. You'd have to get to my great-grandparents before they could say they've been alive for 100 years or are able to remember anything about World War II. In relationship to the age of the planet or the age of the species, no its not a long time. In relationship to the age of the people, it's been long enough.
        12y ago
NiftyFifty 12y ago
Any observation by Google of the EU Safe Harbor Act in this post? http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/eu/eg_main_018365.asp http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/eu/eg_main_018365.asp
- M2Ys4U 12y ago
  The Safe Harbo(u)r agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. In fact I'd bet that it will struck down in court for breaching human rights.
IBM 12y ago
Looks like Google is really worried about the antitrust movement getting steam in the EU. That's probably why MG Siegler is in the EU now.
chappi42 12y ago
Google: You'd better listen to us than opposite. Other than in UK I'm more than happy with European privacy legislation compared to US. It's imageable that we could grant Snowden asylum, but you would put him in jail for 20 years at least. There are also - afaik and except UK - no laws which enforce corporations to spy on behalf of the government without being able to stand behind these actions. Right to forget. Would such a thing come from the US?
- sschueller 12y ago
  We in Switzerland also have our own privacy laws and we don't care much for the US ones. There was a scandal recently with a political staff member being involved in pornos. US papers plastered her face all over while censoring any naughty parts. In the Swiss press her face was covered to protect her privacy while the rest was not covered. Also if you are accused of a crime and are a public figure you won't have your name and face printed all over the papers because you might actually be innocent.
  - eyeareque 12y ago
    The US says we are innocent until proven guilty. But as soon as you are arrested that information is public. They shouldn't be able to destroy you publicly if you haven't been convicted. We really need to fix this.
tete 12y ago
Given the secrecy on this topic, the anti-democracy that was revealed by Snowden and how the US government (and other institutions) deals with this makes that sound very naive. As sad as this might make me I do not see ordinary democratic ways working anymore in the US. However I'd love to see someone proving me wrong.
- shitehawk 12y ago
  >However I'd love to see someone proving me wrong. Legalization of marijuana. The government is absolutely against it but helpless to stop it.
  - tete 12y ago
    I have been thinking about this, but it actually seems kinda weird. So we see a country where there is capital punishment, but it's fine to smoke weed. It feels a bit like government are more in favor of drugs than they want to pretend, not only for the good of drugs being legal, but because someone who is under influence of drugs - any kind of - is less likely to be politically active or reject orders. This has been used in military and in many authoritarian governments. It could be even worse. It's a topic, like many others that are mostly artificial. It's not a complex topic at all. It's a good distraction from other things. When it comes to people dying, be it the death penalty or wars then the US looks like a one-party system. Republicans tend to be for death penalty, but even Obama is according to Wikipedia. When it comes to war politics it remains the same. Most anti war movements are killed off in many ways: controlled media, violence and arrests at demonstrations, infiltration of social networks (as outlined by Edward Snowden releases), the suicide letter to MLK, that just was on the front page, COINTELPRO, overthrowing (democratic and non-democratic) governments, ... There has been no change in more than 50 years on these. There doesn't seem to be strong opposition to marijuna, just it gives you a bad image to start out with.
    - shitehawk 12y ago
      Occam's razor. People wanted to make it legal and voted that way. The mental contortions needed to support your theories are too great.
4684499 12y ago
EU is a part of the US, surprise.
exabrial 12y ago
I would say: Canada, Britain, and Australia yes. They're consistent and steady allies. To the rest of the EU, who is hellbent on giving America the finger whenever possible... sorry about it. Clean up your act, kick the spies, human trafficking, blatant corruption, sympathy for murderous regimes out of your countries, and we'll think about this. We're not perfect either, but we're trying. Show the same effort and we can move forward.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  > We're not perfect either, but we're trying No, we're really not. We still completely in bed with the ones that are advantageous to us.
- rofl1234 12y ago
  USA supported murderous regimes in Dominican republic, Chile, Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, South Africa, Indonesia, Iraq, and many others.
- rotinomlled 12y ago
  Hah! And I thought HN was for the most part troll-free.
hoozters 12y ago
If only Obama was in some sort of position with power to do something....................................
malandrew 12y ago
I think it's time the reverse is also true, since governments are only half of the problem. Companies are the other half. EU privacy rules need to be applied to US citizens as well. Between apply the US Privacy Act to EU Citizens and applying EU privacy rules to US citizens, both US and EU citizens will enjoy less surveillance from governments and corporations.
BjoernKW 12y ago
That or the NSA could simply stop indiscriminate spying of the general public. Why not solve the actual problem instead of making small amendments that at best serve as a sales arguments for Google in Europe?
alimoeeny 12y ago
While you are at it, why not include all humans? Why just EU?
- tete 12y ago
  Thousands of employees of all the agencies would become jobless. You don't really want that, do you? ;) Contracts with private organizations would also be affected. The whole economy would break down! [sarcasm]
Spearchucker 12y ago
There is a lot I like about the US. Trust the US however, I cannot. Whether this passes or doesn't. There's been to much of the bad stuff for too long.
sigzero 12y ago
Get your own Privacy Act! And get off my lawn!
drderidder 12y ago
EU privacy laws are already stronger than in the US. All Google needs to do is to actually abide by them, but being based in the US, evidently they can't. The fact that they have to try to change US government policy in order to extend privacy to their international users is a pretty sad state of affairs and a warning to potential international clients.
bubblemachine3k 12y ago
Careful, we really don't want to set any precedent for pushing American law onto other countries - PATRIOT ACT anyone?

127 points by howlden 12y ago

nl 12y ago

Speaking as an Australian: Hello! Yes please?

nly 12y ago
Exactly. Just EU citizens? How about the entire frickin world.
Aoyagi 12y ago
You're under the Five Eyes, no reason to cover you any differently than US citizens :P
tete 12y ago
May be related to Australia being a part of the Five Eyes. Keep in mind though that the UK is a special case in the EU in many many ways. However there are many organizations, countries and interests involved here. There are the US, the rest of the world, the EU, the NATO, the Five Eyes, other trade agreements and even lots of special agreements (partly known for a long time, partly due to the Snowden revelations) with countries such as France, Germany and others, like Austria (there is a UN HQ, next to a espionage outpost by the NSA). We now know that pretty much every US embassy also has a lot of SIGINT going on, same for US military bases (they still exist!) in Germany. There are "privately" owned places by the NSA, secret agreements with governments, companies, institutions, etc. When a country secret laws (or interpretations of such), operates secret prisons, outposts, spies on embassies and international institutions, operates spy satellites that happen to be next to telecommunication satellites, etc. then it's really naive to think they you change some laws and things won't be happen anymore. Do you really think in a country where agencies spy on the senate, where there are secret interpretations of laws by secret courts that democratic means have any chance of working? Also given economical and military power how do you want to put pressure on the US? Even with some economic power the US military is still the biggest and best funded and as history has shown it's not only there for defense. I don't think this can be changed easily, not because of thinking bad of the US (government), but because the system is big and strongly relies on these things. Big, complex systems are incredibly hard to change. The technicians here probably understand that. Don't get me wrong. It may be possible, but the chance is low and fundamental changes might even lead to unrest. That's sad, but changing the system has been tried in many ways, even in the US, but the way the economic and military system works right now usually got strengthened or made more static. It's maybe what you'd call a technical debt in the sense that you build up on something that's not right. You might wanna try a rewrite, but think about "rewrites" are in the context of a country. I am thinking about the French Revolution or "tearing down" of Germany after World War 2 here. The US also has no history of that really being possible, because they never lost in the sense of needing to rebuild, while in Europe alone in the past 100 years everything changed completely in the couple of 100 years. You can't blame the US for not doing that. It's not nice. Maybe a better way is possible, but so far history has no real examples of it, especially not for countries (or realms) that were so big and complex. Maybe it would even be better to do it small scale, maybe even by the states in the US declaring independence, because big realms tend to end up with one or two totalitarian systems in between and millions of death. Smaller countries or simply groups of fewer people tend to be more flexible (see startups). Maybe there is another way. It would be really great if a lot of things would change, because currently civil rights that were made in order to prevent a lot of bad things from ever happening again are by many not considered something of value anymore (even though people like to pretend otherwise, but civil rights, human rights are by definition and intention nothing that you only care for when things are good).
- tete 12y ago
  Can't edit anymore, so here a second posting. Since what I wrote probably sounds a bit bold I want to add a reference tho this. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who advised many US presidents in the last couple of decades wrote many books. Among those books there is The Grand Chessboard. It explains a really large part of the US politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
- nl 12y ago
  That's a very long posting based unfortunately on an entirely false premise. The act already has exclusions for national security. That seems unlikely to change for foreign citizens.

mariusz79 12y ago

Sorry, but Google is probably the biggest threat to our privacy.

stephenr 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. The concept of trusting what is essentially an Ad company with a penchant for spending it's profits on projects to convince the tech community it's "cool" on anything privacy related is either the greatest practical joke of the 21st century or the reason we can't have nice things.
- minot 12y ago
  Why in the world would Google disclose information about you to its customers when it can probably make more money by being squarely in the middle? >> Hello, do you need to find someone who might be interested in buying Toyota cars? What's the message that you'd want plastered all over the Internet for this guy? OK, just sign this check and it will be done.
  - stephenr 12y ago
    At what point did I say Google was disclosing information about me? Every software product Google puts in the market, from web search to Gmail to Google Apps to Chrome to Android - they are all about collecting personal information, building a huge bank of data about individuals. I don't care if they never intend to disclose that information to someone else. I care that they are actively engaged in collecting the information in the first place. Further more - online advertising can work just fine without collecting such ridiculous amounts of information about people. Let me give you an example. A Toyota dealer (or the marketing department of Toyota itself) buys ads from a search engine.. let's call it.. Hoogle. I decide i want to buy a new car, so I go to my favourite search engine... Hoogle... and I search for "new cars in <location>". Somehow, through the magic of common sense, an ad, placed by Toyota, a CAR company, registers as being related to a search for "new CARS". They show me the ad. Oh and look. They didn't need to circumvent browser security policies around how cookies are handled, they didn't need to scan all my email, they didn't need to track the SSID of my local Wifi network...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lucaspiller 12y ago
It's pretty easy to say that, but even if you are a customer of a company using US services this affects you. It isn't always obvious or user facing either; what if you go to buy a house and the estate agent uses Salesforce?

tgb 12y ago

I find the situation where we grant rights to our citizens without granting them to foreigners (particularly citizens of our close allies, but also foreigners in general) bizarre and backwards. While I'm sure that there are some rights that cannot be extended to non-citizens, it seems that the default should be to treat all people independently of their country of origin unless there are strong arguments why we cannot.

jeremysmyth 12y ago
Rights (as they exist today) are based in legislation. Legislation is fundamentally political. Politics is glorified tribalism. While the people who formulate and enforce our rights are put there by geographic tribes, you won't see rights that stretch far beyond your borders. It's only when a community that is no longer geographic in nature forms tribes that we see the geographic tribes pay attention to the rights of "foreigners", and not because they're foreign, but because they're important to their own voters.
wtbob 12y ago
> I find the situation where we grant rights to our citizens without granting them to foreigners (particularly citizens of our close allies, but also foreigners in general) bizarre and backwards. I find the idea that subjects of a foreign state have any rights not arranged by agreement between our state and theirs fundamentally bizarre. That's what states are for, in a post-Westphalian world.
mkempe 12y ago
We've gone from the assertion that absolute rights are inherent in human nature and inalienable, to the post-modern world where nations supposedly grant "rights" to the populace -- and subject them to massive surveillance. The two visions are incompatible. If you believe rights are granted by government, then you don't believe in the universality of individual rights -- which take precedence over governments and nation-states.

abaco 12y ago

Problem is quite a few european countries right now don't trust american companies anymore so they are working on their own mail service, cloud, network and hardware components, ... (you know if american companies agreed with american government to spy on us they kinda deserve a nice fk off). So who is damaged by this european behaviour? American companies. And now Google is suddenly concerned about our privacy. Middle finger?

thisjepisje 12y ago
Middelvinger. But seriously, got some more info on these European services? I don't watch these matters very closely lately, would be interested in looking into it.
- abaco 12y ago
  I am italian, would be surprise if a member of our government is even able to switch on a computer. But I know that in Germany (for example) this problem is a big thing http://www.zdnet.com/worried-about-your-email-security-in-germany-safe-messaging-is-on-the-rise-7000029018/ http://www.zdnet.com/worried-about-your-email-security-in-ge... http://www.bohnen-kallmorgen.com/root/index.php?page_id=123 http://www.bohnen-kallmorgen.com/root/index.php?page_id=123
  - BillFranklin 12y ago
    In Germany the privacy laws are incredibly strict but fair to consumers rather than corporations.
- voxic11 12y ago
  https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonmail https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonmail is an example
- jdimov 12y ago
  There's the EU-funded FI-WARE cloud platform. Completely free to use for European start-ups and comes with 80 million euros in EU grants for start-ups using it. http://www.fi-ware.org/ http://www.fi-ware.org/

higherpurpose 12y ago

Meanwhile in US Congress: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/new-spying-laws-cybersecurity-nsa-fbi http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/new-spy...

Aoyagi 12y ago

Yeah, well this wouldn't be as much of a problem if Google didn't harvest all the data just because they can, would it?

Oletros 12y ago
Yap, they harvest email data because they can /s

mcmillion 12y ago

Wait, we have a Privacy Act? I'm assuming it doesn't work, then.

higherpurpose 12y ago
And you're probably right. Is this the same 30 (?) year old Privacy Act that allows law enforcement to get our emails after 180 days without any warrant, because they are considered "abandoned"? In the meantime, Google is trying to push everyone to archive rather than delete emails with its new Inbox client, making it once again very convenient for law enforcement to get this sort of data from us without too many obstacles. And what's happening with that E2E plugin for Gmail? Is it still coming? What's the progress on that? Will it even work with Inbox? Because they seem to have pretty opposite goals. Maybe I wouldn't mind it too much, if I didn't know Google wants to eventually kill Gmail.com and replace it with Inbox.
mpyne 12y ago
It's actually very difficult to comply with, but that's a topic for a different conversation. That spreadsheet you keep of customer orders that you've mailed goods to from your personal eBay business? Definitely not Privacy Act-compliant. Either way though as written it works well enough, the government was never going to raise privacy above the level of gaining military intelligence needed to win in World War 3, or to completely stop law enforcement investigations. Accordingly the Privacy Act would contain exemptions allowing for warrants to still work, if nothing else. But this doesn't mean that the data, once captured by a warrant, need not be protected by privacy controls in accordance with the Privacy Act, and I think this is the argument Google is making, that the government should apply at least the same standards of data protection to data captured on foreign individuals (however it's captured) as it does to data captured on citizens. Additionally, if the government treats foreigners as if they were protected by Privacy Act it might also reduce the number of ways in which the government could compel production of evidence on those foreigners, especially data held by U.S. companies. Privacy Act was never meant to prevent the collection of evidence for investigations, or to prevent legally-obtained evidence from being used in legal or administrative proceedings, but those are not the only protections Privacy Act gives, so applying it to aliens could well be a net gain. IANAL though, hopefully someone else can explain what exactly Google is going after here.

adventured 12y ago

It's often claimed that politics in the US is run by / dominated by corporations. I find the contradiction in that claim at times like this to be especially dramatic. The biggest corporations in America - Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc - are actively being harmed by the US Government. US telecoms are having the doors shut to business in Europe and Asia, because of this stuff. Countless billions in profit are at stake. Another headline from today: corporations are holding $2 trillion overseas, because of the wonky corporate tax policies of the US. If corporations actually ran anything, that wouldn't be a problem.

Tombone5 12y ago
The wonky thing being that they would have to pay tax on that money if they take it to the US, but they've already made all that effort not to pay tax on the income in the country of origin! (sad face)
- adventured 12y ago
  It's part of the absurdity that is the US tax code. I think it was Bill Clinton (among countless others) that elaborated how the obvious thing to do, is to compress the corporate tax rate down to close to 20%, and eliminate most of the tax gaming (simplification). We could continue to tax corporations at a reasonably competitive rate (vs the rest of the world), simplify the tax code drastically, and keep tax revenue approximately the same. That we can't seem to do something so obvious, which has lots of support from both parties, draws a pretty big sad face from me.
shitehawk 12y ago
If Apple is actively being harmed by the US Government it sure doesn't seem it as they are making more than they ever have.
- adventured 12y ago
  The calculations on business lost to the Snowden revelations, is tallied in at least the tens of billions, and it's likely to get more dramatic over time by encouraging new European and Asian competition (to build matching scale replacement services) where there previously was not as much.

Achshar 12y ago

Why just EU? The EU delegates can pressure US to cover anyone under the act not just EU residents. If US bends to EU's demands about privacy but doesn't treat rest of the world similarly then it says something about US.

jdimov 12y ago
EU "delegates" don't have what it takes to pressure the US on anything. It's usually the other way around. EU regularly bends to US demands, not vice-versa. E.g. providing the NSA with personal data for all airline passengers flying in or out of Europe...
- shitehawk 12y ago
  The US and EU are sharing data both ways. That is not a popular fact because then you can't demonize one side.

flexie 12y ago

In general, whenever it comes to human rights - or civil rights as Americans like to call it - it's appalling that they distinguish between citizens and foreigners (or aliens as they label us). Imagine European countries denying human rights to non citizens: Okay to torture a Somali? No problem throwing Americans in prison without trial? Sure, let's wiretap cell phones of all Turks in Europe? I don't think so.

rmc 12y ago
Imagine European countries denying human rights to non citizens: cough European countries have a history of doing just that. Hence why they don't tend to do it anymore.
- thirsteh 12y ago
  So the same as the U.S., then?
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Yep the world used to be horrible and barbaric pretty much everywhere but we're talking about modern day.
  - rmc 12y ago
    It was less than 100 years ago. Which in Europe, isn't that long ago.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      Not that long ago? It's longer than I've been alive. Any my parents. And my grandparents. You'd have to get to my great-grandparents before they could say they've been alive for 100 years or are able to remember anything about World War II. In relationship to the age of the planet or the age of the species, no its not a long time. In relationship to the age of the people, it's been long enough.
      - 12y ago

NiftyFifty 12y ago

Any observation by Google of the EU Safe Harbor Act in this post? http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/eu/eg_main_018365.asp http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/eu/eg_main_018365.asp

M2Ys4U 12y ago
The Safe Harbo(u)r agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on. In fact I'd bet that it will struck down in court for breaching human rights.

IBM 12y ago

Looks like Google is really worried about the antitrust movement getting steam in the EU. That's probably why MG Siegler is in the EU now.

chappi42 12y ago

Google: You'd better listen to us than opposite. Other than in UK I'm more than happy with European privacy legislation compared to US. It's imageable that we could grant Snowden asylum, but you would put him in jail for 20 years at least. There are also - afaik and except UK - no laws which enforce corporations to spy on behalf of the government without being able to stand behind these actions. Right to forget. Would such a thing come from the US?

sschueller 12y ago
We in Switzerland also have our own privacy laws and we don't care much for the US ones. There was a scandal recently with a political staff member being involved in pornos. US papers plastered her face all over while censoring any naughty parts. In the Swiss press her face was covered to protect her privacy while the rest was not covered. Also if you are accused of a crime and are a public figure you won't have your name and face printed all over the papers because you might actually be innocent.
- eyeareque 12y ago
  The US says we are innocent until proven guilty. But as soon as you are arrested that information is public. They shouldn't be able to destroy you publicly if you haven't been convicted. We really need to fix this.

tete 12y ago

Given the secrecy on this topic, the anti-democracy that was revealed by Snowden and how the US government (and other institutions) deals with this makes that sound very naive. As sad as this might make me I do not see ordinary democratic ways working anymore in the US. However I'd love to see someone proving me wrong.

shitehawk 12y ago
>However I'd love to see someone proving me wrong. Legalization of marijuana. The government is absolutely against it but helpless to stop it.
- tete 12y ago
  I have been thinking about this, but it actually seems kinda weird. So we see a country where there is capital punishment, but it's fine to smoke weed. It feels a bit like government are more in favor of drugs than they want to pretend, not only for the good of drugs being legal, but because someone who is under influence of drugs - any kind of - is less likely to be politically active or reject orders. This has been used in military and in many authoritarian governments. It could be even worse. It's a topic, like many others that are mostly artificial. It's not a complex topic at all. It's a good distraction from other things. When it comes to people dying, be it the death penalty or wars then the US looks like a one-party system. Republicans tend to be for death penalty, but even Obama is according to Wikipedia. When it comes to war politics it remains the same. Most anti war movements are killed off in many ways: controlled media, violence and arrests at demonstrations, infiltration of social networks (as outlined by Edward Snowden releases), the suicide letter to MLK, that just was on the front page, COINTELPRO, overthrowing (democratic and non-democratic) governments, ... There has been no change in more than 50 years on these. There doesn't seem to be strong opposition to marijuna, just it gives you a bad image to start out with.
  - shitehawk 12y ago
    Occam's razor. People wanted to make it legal and voted that way. The mental contortions needed to support your theories are too great.

4684499 12y ago

EU is a part of the US, surprise.

exabrial 12y ago

I would say: Canada, Britain, and Australia yes. They're consistent and steady allies. To the rest of the EU, who is hellbent on giving America the finger whenever possible... sorry about it. Clean up your act, kick the spies, human trafficking, blatant corruption, sympathy for murderous regimes out of your countries, and we'll think about this. We're not perfect either, but we're trying. Show the same effort and we can move forward.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
> We're not perfect either, but we're trying No, we're really not. We still completely in bed with the ones that are advantageous to us.
rofl1234 12y ago
USA supported murderous regimes in Dominican republic, Chile, Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, South Africa, Indonesia, Iraq, and many others.
rotinomlled 12y ago
Hah! And I thought HN was for the most part troll-free.

hoozters 12y ago

If only Obama was in some sort of position with power to do something....................................

malandrew 12y ago

I think it's time the reverse is also true, since governments are only half of the problem. Companies are the other half. EU privacy rules need to be applied to US citizens as well. Between apply the US Privacy Act to EU Citizens and applying EU privacy rules to US citizens, both US and EU citizens will enjoy less surveillance from governments and corporations.

BjoernKW 12y ago

That or the NSA could simply stop indiscriminate spying of the general public. Why not solve the actual problem instead of making small amendments that at best serve as a sales arguments for Google in Europe?

alimoeeny 12y ago

While you are at it, why not include all humans? Why just EU?

tete 12y ago
Thousands of employees of all the agencies would become jobless. You don't really want that, do you? ;) Contracts with private organizations would also be affected. The whole economy would break down! [sarcasm]

Spearchucker 12y ago

There is a lot I like about the US. Trust the US however, I cannot. Whether this passes or doesn't. There's been to much of the bad stuff for too long.

sigzero 12y ago

Get your own Privacy Act! And get off my lawn!

drderidder 12y ago

EU privacy laws are already stronger than in the US. All Google needs to do is to actually abide by them, but being based in the US, evidently they can't. The fact that they have to try to change US government policy in order to extend privacy to their international users is a pretty sad state of affairs and a warning to potential international clients.

bubblemachine3k 12y ago

Careful, we really don't want to set any precedent for pushing American law onto other countries - PATRIOT ACT anyone?