Courtesy of Mish.
US corporations like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft benefit from “safe harbor” treaties with the US that allow those companies exemption from European privacy rules.
Then the NSA and FBI came along and forced those companies to put in “back doors” so that nothing is private.
In the latest 100% believable accusation, EU accuses US of improperly trawling citizens’ online data. In response, Europe is threatening to end the safe harbor laws.
Brussels is to warn Washington that US tech companies risk losing their exemption from privacy rules unless the US changes the way it treats EU citizens’ online data.
A European Commission review of the “safe harbour” pact that allows US technology groups such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft to operate in Europe without EU oversight will conclude that Washington has improperly forced US companies to hand over European customers’ data. It also says that breaches of the data deal have given US tech companies a competitive advantage over European rivals.
Although the review, which will be unveiled on Wednesday, stops short of calling for the safe harbour agreement to be scrapped, its wording signals that the EU will move in that direction unless the US changes the way that it uses data held by companies on EU citizens.
A scrapping of the safe harbour deal is one of the most formidable weapons the EU has in its arsenal to punish the Obama administration after claims of snooping on Europeans by the National Security Agency.
Such a move would wreak havoc for any US tech company doing business in Europe – especially Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which rely on the agreement to transfer customers’ data seamlessly between countries.
Ending safe harbour and subjecting US companies to European privacy laws would put them in a legal bind over NSA requests for information about European citizens. Under US law they would still be forced to hand over the information, provided the request was backed by an order from the secret foreign intelligence surveillance court but doing so would breach their extra responsibilities in Europe.
Internet companies say the conflict would force them to ringfence EU operations and hold data about the bloc’s citizens in new legal entities there, creating separate islands of data that would lessen the efficiency of their operations and risk balkanizing the internet into separate regional networks.
You’ve Got “Unsecure” Mail
In an attempt to circumvent NSA spying, a fast growing Russian internet company, Mail.Ru seeks US expansion.
Russia’s largest internet company is expanding into the US, trying to lure customers by keeping the data from its services offshore.
Mail.ru, which has more monthly users than any other Russian website, is targeting the US with a suite of mail and messaging apps under the My.com brand as it tries to crack what its chief executive Dmitry Grishin calls “the most competitive and most difficult market that has ever existed”. …
