Love how they use sentences like "Germans are particularly sensitive to electronic surveillance" and "(their) hard line on data transfers has drawn the ire of" to make it sound as if the Germans are the unreasonable ones here.
me, too.
I think that we (Germany) are as bad as others (U.S.), however we do so, as we are angels, but we definitely aren't.
I also think that the german government is way more corrupt and broke some surveillance rules as well as the us did
There is also a perceived threat of a threat as well though. This is how I imagine the conversation:
NSA: We need your data feeds in order to protect you
using our super-duper 'big data' intel tools. Install
these black boxes and we'll tell you when you are
under imminent threat.
BND: Um, not sure about this. Not sure it might be
illegal?
NSA: You wouldn't want a terrorist attack like the one in
Madrid, or London on German soil would you?
BND: Sigh, give us the black boxes then.
NSA: Oh oops slight porky... they are already installed. We
just needed your permission.
You imagine NSA would use British slang? ;) (I had to look up what 'porky' meant in this context. Apparently 'very big lie', and perhaps rhyming slang for porky pie => lie.)
Yes, and it's also interesting that the "ire" they've drawn is from the Director General of Digital Europe, a business association made up of dozens of large companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. Might be a conflict of interest there (understatement).
Honestly, the Germans are crazy. Their "data protection" is circumvented by the newly introduces complete data retention for police purposes. Websites are completely unusable due to "are you ok with cookies?"-questions on every f* page you visit. Then they complain they are so behind American tech companies and introduce laws on a European level that make net neutrality non-existant. Who can help them?
They even lost their capability to build clean cars and are overtaken by the USA (Tesla, GM, Apple(?)) in that regard while Daimler sold their shares in Tesla years ago. Hell, that all sounds like a great future!
And while letting every refugee in, it is absolutely impossible for many qualified to ever make it to the country.
> it is absolutely impossible for many qualified to ever make it to the country.
For many qualified persons it is completely easy to work in Germany. Almost every EU citizen (which are more than 500 Million) is allowed to work in Germany. Officially.
> many of them are fleeing because the US destabilized the middle east
Because a lot of countries destabilized the middle east by redrawing national borders at will over a long period of time. Russia, Germany, various colonial powers, Britain - all share a huge amount of responsibility for the total mess there.
Who made Afghanistan what it is today? The USSR? The US? Britain? The people of Afghanistan?
Who wanted to topple Iran? Well that was a British adventure. They sought out US help on getting it done.
Who propped up the various dictators in the middle east? Well that would be the USSR / Russia, the US, and numerous Europe powers including France and Britain.
Who was responsible for toppling the dictators? Well some of them were toppled by the US, some were toppled by the fact of being dictators (Egypt) - dictatorships having a nasty historical tendency to end violently and rapidly.
The Syrian revolution started in 2011. If you can prove the US was responsible for that particular event - which to date nobody else has managed to prove - I'd love to see the evidence. The US has been responsible for trying to take advantage of it however, to topple Bashar.
The US is merely the latest of the western powers to contribute to the rolling disaster of the last century in the middle east - a rolling disaster that has been going on for over a thousand years now, since Islam's golden age collapsed.
The relevant paragraph of the position paper might be:
"Die Datenschutzbehörden werden derzeit keine neuen Genehmigungen für Datenübermittlungen in die USA auf Grundlage von verbindlichen Unternehmensregelungen (BCR) oder Datenexportverträgen erteilen."
which says data protection agencies in Germany will not permit new Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) or new (!) data export contracts ("Datenexportverträgen") anymore.
Sadly (gladly?) they do not use the word "Standardvertragsklauseln" for model EU clauses here, so it's not clear if you could get new approval for model standard clauses. They probably do not mean "Standardvertragsklauseln" as they mention "Standardvertragsklauseln" when agreeing to the end of January deadline.
Also reading the text overall I assume that existing BCR etc. are fine until the end of January as by the EU 29 Working Party paper, just no new ones.
> The court ruled that Europeans’ data was insufficiently protected when transferred to the U.S., where it could be accessed by national intelligence services.
This is the key part and I don't think it's even entirely wrong. There's a bit of a different perspective over here about data and the only people complaining seem to be those who have certain financial interest.
The same complaints or worse could be made about Europe's high import tax. Which encourages large companies to move within EU borders.
Ultimately that's the only thing that will happen as a result of this. The EU's tech infrastructure will grow and almost entirely at the cost of large companies. Side effect being that European data servers will gain a certain level of independence.
This was the result of a judgement by the highest European Court. The executive was actually opposed to striking down safe harbour.
I might be living in a fantasy world, but I believe the courts to be amongst the most independent and trustworthy institutions. Any connection between the (highest!) court and the security apparatus or even political leadership would, if revealed, trigger a constitutional crisis of unheard proportions.
I also don't see what motives these judges would have. Too lazy too look it up for the European courts, but most judges are either appointed for life, appointed for a single term with no possibility of a second term or just incredibly hard to fire. They're also well paid and have usually demonstrated their resistance to the appeal of money by being the best at what they do (at least in Germany, judges are recruited only from the top 5% of law graduates) and not choosing to work at a major law firm with a pay check that's easily 5-10x what a judge earns.
Sure, maybe they're blackmailed or something like that, but (a) the judges I know lead incredibly boring private lives so it'd be hard to find dirt on a majority of the panel, (b) I'd expect at least one them to gladly fall on her sword and reveal any such plot (based on my possibly rose-coloured impression of their character). Also remember that some (legal) sex story, affair or former marijuana use wouldn't really be a scandal in Europe. You'd need some actual criminal activity.
Yes, for once, business, economic and political incentives line up quite well. I don't mind it. I would like to see a more decentralized internet anyway.
At present, I am kind of looking at Germany for best-in-breed data privacy and surveillance protection culture and frankly, I am glad that Germany is standing up for this.
"Germany’s hard line on the transfer of its citizens’ personal data to the U.S. has come in for criticism from an influential European association of global digital businesses, which argues that severely limiting such transfers would cause market volatility."
I assume he means market volatility in the US, of course, as in the EU it's likely to increase business to EU companies. I hope it does cause market volatility and businesses in the US to go out of business as that is what they deserve, mostly through no fault of their own (mostly because some of the big tech companies actively support the legislation that led to this). Maybe at that point our government will finally start to listen to its people, or more accurately, the only thing they ever listen to: money. In fact, the more businesses that close and the more businesses that lose opportunities because of our anti-privacy, anti-security laws, the better.
What other kind of response could you possibly have towards a country that has unlimited, unfettered access to ALL its businesses' data without needing any legal resource or process to get it?
EU tech companies certainly need all the help they can get and that angle makes more sense than pretending that the NSA won't get the data, hell EU governments will hand it to them as they work so closely on intel.
21 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 70.3 ms ] thread> Their "data protection" is circumvented by the newly introduces complete data retention for police purposes.
This has never been introduced.
> Websites are completely unusable due to "are you ok with cookies?"-questions on every f* page you visit
There are not unusable.
> Apple
Builds clean cars? I've not seen them yet.
> in that regard while Daimler sold their shares in Tesla years ago.
Daimler helped Tesla to survive. http://www.autoblog.com/2012/09/05/elon-musk-the-credit-for-...
Toyota also has sold their Tesla shares.
> And while letting every refugee in
Germany helps refugees ... many of them are fleeing because the US destabilized the middle east
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10481991589095700
> it is absolutely impossible for many qualified to ever make it to the country.
For many qualified persons it is completely easy to work in Germany. Almost every EU citizen (which are more than 500 Million) is allowed to work in Germany. Officially.
Because a lot of countries destabilized the middle east by redrawing national borders at will over a long period of time. Russia, Germany, various colonial powers, Britain - all share a huge amount of responsibility for the total mess there.
Who made Afghanistan what it is today? The USSR? The US? Britain? The people of Afghanistan?
Who wanted to topple Iran? Well that was a British adventure. They sought out US help on getting it done.
Who propped up the various dictators in the middle east? Well that would be the USSR / Russia, the US, and numerous Europe powers including France and Britain.
Who was responsible for toppling the dictators? Well some of them were toppled by the US, some were toppled by the fact of being dictators (Egypt) - dictatorships having a nasty historical tendency to end violently and rapidly.
The Syrian revolution started in 2011. If you can prove the US was responsible for that particular event - which to date nobody else has managed to prove - I'd love to see the evidence. The US has been responsible for trying to take advantage of it however, to topple Bashar.
The US is merely the latest of the western powers to contribute to the rolling disaster of the last century in the middle east - a rolling disaster that has been going on for over a thousand years now, since Islam's golden age collapsed.
The relevant paragraph of the position paper might be:
"Die Datenschutzbehörden werden derzeit keine neuen Genehmigungen für Datenübermittlungen in die USA auf Grundlage von verbindlichen Unternehmensregelungen (BCR) oder Datenexportverträgen erteilen."
( http://www.datenschutz-berlin.de/attachments/1150/Positionsp... )
which says data protection agencies in Germany will not permit new Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) or new (!) data export contracts ("Datenexportverträgen") anymore.
Sadly (gladly?) they do not use the word "Standardvertragsklauseln" for model EU clauses here, so it's not clear if you could get new approval for model standard clauses. They probably do not mean "Standardvertragsklauseln" as they mention "Standardvertragsklauseln" when agreeing to the end of January deadline.
Also reading the text overall I assume that existing BCR etc. are fine until the end of January as by the EU 29 Working Party paper, just no new ones.
This is the key part and I don't think it's even entirely wrong. There's a bit of a different perspective over here about data and the only people complaining seem to be those who have certain financial interest.
The same complaints or worse could be made about Europe's high import tax. Which encourages large companies to move within EU borders.
Ultimately that's the only thing that will happen as a result of this. The EU's tech infrastructure will grow and almost entirely at the cost of large companies. Side effect being that European data servers will gain a certain level of independence.
I might be living in a fantasy world, but I believe the courts to be amongst the most independent and trustworthy institutions. Any connection between the (highest!) court and the security apparatus or even political leadership would, if revealed, trigger a constitutional crisis of unheard proportions.
I also don't see what motives these judges would have. Too lazy too look it up for the European courts, but most judges are either appointed for life, appointed for a single term with no possibility of a second term or just incredibly hard to fire. They're also well paid and have usually demonstrated their resistance to the appeal of money by being the best at what they do (at least in Germany, judges are recruited only from the top 5% of law graduates) and not choosing to work at a major law firm with a pay check that's easily 5-10x what a judge earns.
Sure, maybe they're blackmailed or something like that, but (a) the judges I know lead incredibly boring private lives so it'd be hard to find dirt on a majority of the panel, (b) I'd expect at least one them to gladly fall on her sword and reveal any such plot (based on my possibly rose-coloured impression of their character). Also remember that some (legal) sex story, affair or former marijuana use wouldn't really be a scandal in Europe. You'd need some actual criminal activity.
tl/dr nah, this is no conspiracy.
I assume he means market volatility in the US, of course, as in the EU it's likely to increase business to EU companies. I hope it does cause market volatility and businesses in the US to go out of business as that is what they deserve, mostly through no fault of their own (mostly because some of the big tech companies actively support the legislation that led to this). Maybe at that point our government will finally start to listen to its people, or more accurately, the only thing they ever listen to: money. In fact, the more businesses that close and the more businesses that lose opportunities because of our anti-privacy, anti-security laws, the better.
What other kind of response could you possibly have towards a country that has unlimited, unfettered access to ALL its businesses' data without needing any legal resource or process to get it?