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> European Commission admits Safe Harbour framework cannot ensure privacy of EU citizens’ data when sent to the US by American internet firms Press 1 if you wo

> European Commission admits Safe Harbour framework cannot ensure privacy of EU citizens’ data when sent to the US by American internet firms Press 1 if you would like to send your data to the US to be processed by the NSA. Press 2 if you would prefer your EU country's intelligence services to take care of it instead.

fweespeech 12y ago
Tbh, I'm less worried about the damage the EU intelligence agencies do than the NSA. Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. The majority of the US political class thinks its a good thing and says so publicly.
- borgia 12y ago
  >Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. And in a glaring act of hypocrisy, David Cameron came out yesterday to extoll how upset he was over the ruling that the lobbying letters Prince Charles sent government members had to be published. What a breach of privacy it was. Can nobody communicate privately anymore?!
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    Correct situation if you are on the civil liberties and accountable representation side: Government has no privacy by default. Government is required to defend any need to keep secrets from individual citizens (and other parties such as the media or businesses). Individuals have privacy by default. Government (and other parties) are required by law to justify any invasion of that privacy. Practical situation today: Government keeps secrets by default. Individual citizens (or other parties such as the media) may need to make considerable efforts to force disclosure, which may be denied repeatedly even where there is no basis in law for doing so. Individuals have little privacy by default. Government (and other parties) routinely collect and process whatever data they feel like with little consequence, with the notable exception of some explicitly enumerated sensitive areas such as religious beliefs or health information.
- mercurial 12y ago
  > Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. Yeah, right before grounding any plane that might contain Snowden. In the meantime, France is busy retroactively legalizing the snooping powers of its intelligence service, Denmark is going the same way, and the UK would like to flat out abolish encryption.
Silhouette 12y ago
There is a principle of sovereignty here. You may not like the actions of your own country's intelligence agencies, but at least they are in principle subject to your own legal system and your own government can therefore hold them to account. Of course we could debate the practical reality vs. the theory here, but exporting data to somewhere without the same culture and formal legal safeguards of privacy that Europe has offers no protection or accountability even in theory.
- mercurial 12y ago
  > There is a principle of sovereignty here. You may not like the actions of your own country's intelligence agencies, but at least they are in principle subject to your own legal system and your own government can therefore hold them to account. That's the theory. The government of my country just passed a bill legalizing the snooping practices - apparently practiced in complete illegality for years - of the intelligence services. How is that for accountable? > Of course we could debate the practical reality vs. the theory here, but exporting data to somewhere without the same culture and formal legal safeguards of privacy that Europe has no protection or accountability even in theory. I think it's tremendously important to take reality into account. The same Angela Merkel complaining about her phones being hacked is perfectly happy to collaborate with the NSA, and is so concerned about the privacy of EU citizens that she would ship Snowden to the US without thinking twice.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    I totally agree that the practical reality matters. However, even if our supposedly democratic and representative governments in the West are far from perfect, that isn't a good argument for unnecessarily supporting other measures that are even further from perfect as well. It took too long to bring down the last Labour government in the UK after its succession of abuses and war-mongering, with their third term in particular a freak result of our awful electoral system, but we did kick them out eventually. And while the current coalition can now fairly be judged on its track record as we come up to our general election and its record has also been far from perfect, the influence of the minority partner (the Liberal Democrats, who had not been in government here for generations prior to 2010) is probably more clearly evident in their efforts to defend civil liberties than anywhere else. That same Lib Dem party has been almost unbelievably naive politically since entering the government and has been so comprehensively outplayed by its coalition partner that the Lib Dems are likely to be all but wiped out at the coming election. However, the fact that the party most likely to replace them as the protest vote of choice is heavily against foreign interference in UK business and seems to have become very popular almost immediately despite most people knowing little or nothing about either the party leadership beyond one key figurehead or the party's other policies might tell us something about popular sentiment and the desire of the UK electorate not to be taken for granted by the two big (and both heavily authoritarian) parties.
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teamhappy 12y ago
Wow. Such hypocrisy. By that logic you should never use SSL. Imperfect security is a hell of a lot better than no security.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Hypocrisy does not mean what you think it means. An example of hypocrisy is EU governments talking about protecting privacy while tapping transatlantic cables. What you could accuse me of is cynicism, if the collaboration between the main EU intelligence services and the NSA was not so well documented.
  - teamhappy 12y ago
    According to Google: > hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral > standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior > does not conform; > cynicism: an inclination to believe that people > are motivated purely by self-interest; You comment (kind of) implies that there's no point in doing anything because we've lost anyway. That's hypocrisy, not cynicism (because we're all doing something to protect our privacy). Anyway, I figure your original comment wasn't entirely serious which is why I'm not actually accusing you of anything. It's just that I've heard these kind of comments way too often.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      > You comment (kind of) implies that there's no point in doing anything because we've lost anyway. That's hypocrisy, not cynicism (because we're all doing something to protect our privacy). You're over-generalizing. What helps against, say, East European gangs (SSL) is not necessarily useful against state-level actors influencing crypto standards. And a rule supposed to protect our privacy against a specific state-level actor (the US government) is obviously pointless if the same data is handed to the US under the table.
      - teamhappy 12y ago
        Whether it's "obviously pointless" or not depends on what you care about. The result is the same but the way you got there changed. Feel free to disagree with me though; I'd rather not turn this into a philosophical debate.

fweespeech 12y ago

Tbh, I'm less worried about the damage the EU intelligence agencies do than the NSA. Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. The majority of the US political class thinks its a good thing and says so publicly.

borgia 12y ago
>Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. And in a glaring act of hypocrisy, David Cameron came out yesterday to extoll how upset he was over the ruling that the lobbying letters Prince Charles sent government members had to be published. What a breach of privacy it was. Can nobody communicate privately anymore?!
- Silhouette 12y ago
  Correct situation if you are on the civil liberties and accountable representation side: Government has no privacy by default. Government is required to defend any need to keep secrets from individual citizens (and other parties such as the media or businesses). Individuals have privacy by default. Government (and other parties) are required by law to justify any invasion of that privacy. Practical situation today: Government keeps secrets by default. Individual citizens (or other parties such as the media) may need to make considerable efforts to force disclosure, which may be denied repeatedly even where there is no basis in law for doing so. Individuals have little privacy by default. Government (and other parties) routinely collect and process whatever data they feel like with little consequence, with the notable exception of some explicitly enumerated sensitive areas such as religious beliefs or health information.
mercurial 12y ago
> Outside of the UK, the EU at least pretends to be outraged. Yeah, right before grounding any plane that might contain Snowden. In the meantime, France is busy retroactively legalizing the snooping powers of its intelligence service, Denmark is going the same way, and the UK would like to flat out abolish encryption.

Silhouette 12y ago

There is a principle of sovereignty here. You may not like the actions of your own country's intelligence agencies, but at least they are in principle subject to your own legal system and your own government can therefore hold them to account. Of course we could debate the practical reality vs. the theory here, but exporting data to somewhere without the same culture and formal legal safeguards of privacy that Europe has offers no protection or accountability even in theory.

mercurial 12y ago
> There is a principle of sovereignty here. You may not like the actions of your own country's intelligence agencies, but at least they are in principle subject to your own legal system and your own government can therefore hold them to account. That's the theory. The government of my country just passed a bill legalizing the snooping practices - apparently practiced in complete illegality for years - of the intelligence services. How is that for accountable? > Of course we could debate the practical reality vs. the theory here, but exporting data to somewhere without the same culture and formal legal safeguards of privacy that Europe has no protection or accountability even in theory. I think it's tremendously important to take reality into account. The same Angela Merkel complaining about her phones being hacked is perfectly happy to collaborate with the NSA, and is so concerned about the privacy of EU citizens that she would ship Snowden to the US without thinking twice.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  I totally agree that the practical reality matters. However, even if our supposedly democratic and representative governments in the West are far from perfect, that isn't a good argument for unnecessarily supporting other measures that are even further from perfect as well. It took too long to bring down the last Labour government in the UK after its succession of abuses and war-mongering, with their third term in particular a freak result of our awful electoral system, but we did kick them out eventually. And while the current coalition can now fairly be judged on its track record as we come up to our general election and its record has also been far from perfect, the influence of the minority partner (the Liberal Democrats, who had not been in government here for generations prior to 2010) is probably more clearly evident in their efforts to defend civil liberties than anywhere else. That same Lib Dem party has been almost unbelievably naive politically since entering the government and has been so comprehensively outplayed by its coalition partner that the Lib Dems are likely to be all but wiped out at the coming election. However, the fact that the party most likely to replace them as the protest vote of choice is heavily against foreign interference in UK business and seems to have become very popular almost immediately despite most people knowing little or nothing about either the party leadership beyond one key figurehead or the party's other policies might tell us something about popular sentiment and the desire of the UK electorate not to be taken for granted by the two big (and both heavily authoritarian) parties.

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teamhappy 12y ago

Wow. Such hypocrisy. By that logic you should never use SSL. Imperfect security is a hell of a lot better than no security.

mercurial 12y ago
Hypocrisy does not mean what you think it means. An example of hypocrisy is EU governments talking about protecting privacy while tapping transatlantic cables. What you could accuse me of is cynicism, if the collaboration between the main EU intelligence services and the NSA was not so well documented.
- teamhappy 12y ago
  According to Google: > hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral > standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior > does not conform; > cynicism: an inclination to believe that people > are motivated purely by self-interest; You comment (kind of) implies that there's no point in doing anything because we've lost anyway. That's hypocrisy, not cynicism (because we're all doing something to protect our privacy). Anyway, I figure your original comment wasn't entirely serious which is why I'm not actually accusing you of anything. It's just that I've heard these kind of comments way too often.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    > You comment (kind of) implies that there's no point in doing anything because we've lost anyway. That's hypocrisy, not cynicism (because we're all doing something to protect our privacy). You're over-generalizing. What helps against, say, East European gangs (SSL) is not necessarily useful against state-level actors influencing crypto standards. And a rule supposed to protect our privacy against a specific state-level actor (the US government) is obviously pointless if the same data is handed to the US under the table.
    - teamhappy 12y ago
      Whether it's "obviously pointless" or not depends on what you care about. The result is the same but the way you got there changed. Feel free to disagree with me though; I'd rather not turn this into a philosophical debate.