German Chancellor Proposes European Communications Network 197
An anonymous reader sends word that German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to build a European communication network to keep data transmission away from the United States. She plans to discuss the issue with French President Francois Hollande.
"Merkel said in her weekly podcast that she disapproved of companies such as Google and Facebook basing their operations in countries with low levels of data protection while being active in countries such as Germany with high data protection. 'We'll talk with France about how we can maintain a high level of data protection,' Merkel said. 'Above all, we'll talk about European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn't have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic. Rather, one could build up a communication network inside Europe.' Hollande's office confirmed that the governments had been discussing the matter and said Paris agreed with Berlin's proposals."
The actual quote (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, she'd better keep it out of Sweden. Apart from the Swedish opinion on hookers and blackjack, the Swedish FRA loves giving all data passing through the country to the NSA. The UK is as bad, although they don't quite share the Swedish hatred of hookers and blackjack.
Of course, whether any other European security agencies care about their citizens privacy is debatable.
Re:The actual quote (Score:4, Informative)
Well, she'd better keep it out of Sweden. Apart from the Swedish opinion on hookers and blackjack, the Swedish FRA loves giving all data passing through the country to the NSA.
That's also why Finland wants an alternative pipe [slashdot.org] to mid-Europe and not be routed through Sweden.
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They also have to avoid the Amsterdam Internet Exchange. Good luck with that.
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That's also why Finland wants an alternative pipe [slashdot.org] to mid-Europe and not be routed through Sweden.
Finland too has a secret intelligence service that taps the internet, wants to expand their powers, and model it after Sweden.
Supo wants expanded net surveillance powers [yle.fi]
Re:The actual quote (Score:5, Funny)
Angela Merkel: "Screw Obama. I'm going to build my own internet, with blackjack and hookers. And privacy."
And no Beta!
Re: (Score:3)
Angela Merkel: "Screw Obama. I'm going to build my own internet, with blackjack and hookers. And privacy."
Actual plausible quote: "Damn it, the Americans are good at this snooping business. We need to close the snooping gap ASAP! Communicator, spin this so that it sounds like we care about the privacy of the common guy."
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Knowing Mrs Merkel's reputation, I'd say the blackjack and hookers quote is more plausible :)
bunch of tax wasting bullshit. (Score:2)
bunch of tax wasting bullshit.
BND & NSA are working together to some extend.
how is this plan keeping our privacy safe?
Re: (Score:3)
It is not so much an issue specifically related to privacy, but globally the "Internet" is the "infrastructure" of everything we do... without a powerfull network "in the countries or meta-countries (EU)" over time "everything" migrates to a "cloud" that ends up being where the "biggest, cheapest" infrastructure is i.e. progressivelly the US, and therefore "everything" comes under the reach of the US laws, wich means in effect that for instance "I" end up delegating to US citizens my right to vote, and fran
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Huh? Not at all, why do you think that's the goal?
The goal is that the BND can more easily and the NSA less easily spy on you. Well, actually, that the NSA has to ask the BND for your data so they have something to bargain with.
So... (Score:2)
Won't this European network just be subject to the same censorship and spying paid for by American and Asian entities, as the current internet is anyway? Are there even any non-American and non-Asian entities capable of implementing and maintaining such a large scale network on their own, including using their own custom built non-American, non-Asian hardware, manufactured in a non-American, non-Asian factory?
This is a seriously complex undertaking they're suggesting.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there even any ...
I think you've missed the whole point of this. The basic problem is that any packets that touch american soil become subject to american surveillance and american law. Even if the data / email / web pages are only transiting, fron one "free" country to another.
This is clearly unacceptable and since the americans don't have any motivation to fix the problem, the rest of the world (or at least: countries in Europe, at this stage) will just find a way to bypass it.
As the old saying goes: The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
Re: (Score:2)
>The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
In this particular case, it's more of an opposite, since American law enforcement is known for baiting people into committing crimes.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much studip idea to solve the problem. Encryption is the way to go rather than trying to build a parallel infrastructure which will anyway be subject to laws of the countries where the infrastructure is installed. It doesn't solve anything. It is not like other countries are not spying anyone else.
In fact, the proposed solution may just create the problem as well. What she propose is what China is building, a network owned by the State, managed by the State and purposedly for the best interest of the State.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course encryption would solve things. However, encryption would make it more difficult for her OWN intelligence service to spy on the citizens. That would be... double plus ungood.
Re: So... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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the rest of the world (or at least: countries in Europe, at this stage) will just find a way to bypass it.
Not when ordinary Europeans want to use Google & Facebook.
The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
While in theory true, that hasn't actually been true in 20 years, if ever.
Re: (Score:2)
This is clearly unacceptable and since the americans don't have any motivation to fix the problem, the rest of the world (or at least: countries in Europe, at this stage) will just find a way to bypass it.
And what makes this so funny is that Europe collectively engages in censorship, regulation, and intelligence gathering as well.
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Won't this European network just be subject to the same censorship and spying paid for by American and Asian entities, as the current internet is anyway?
Think of this as an investment: at least they'll have to pay EU for it; the way it stands now, it's free.
Are there even any non-American and non-Asian entities capable of implementing and maintaining such a large scale network on their own, including using their own custom built non-American, non-Asian hardware, manufactured in a non-American, non-Asian factory?
Wake up from your exceptionalist dream, buddy. Last I checked, Alcatel is a French company [wikipedia.org] and it's eating Cisco's market [cnn.com] fast.
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Wake up from your exceptionalist dream, buddy. Last I checked, Alcatel is a French company and it's eating Cisco's market fast.
Check again: Alcatel-Lucent (there is no longer an Alcatel) is metanational.
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Wake up from your exceptionalist dream, buddy. Last I checked, Alcatel is a French company and it's eating Cisco's market fast.
Check again: Alcatel-Lucent (there is no longer an Alcatel) is metanational.
You reckon, being metanational, is more american or asian than it is french/european?
Or... let me put it this way... a metanational able to buy Bell Labs and with the top officers named Michel Combes, Philippe Camus, Ben Verwaayen and HQ in Paris won't be able to deal with an european network paid by Germany/France?
Context - the point I advancenced was in reply to:
Are there even any non-American and non-Asian entities capable of implementing and maintaining such a large scale network
Merkel's virgin soil (Score:4, Informative)
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That's just the opinion of a bitter kraut.
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True, but she's still the chancellor, so her opinion sadly matters.
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Where have you been for the past couple of years. Haven't you heard of ARM? (Hell, even Intel are using ARM chips in their technology demos)
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Remember, she's the one who called the Internet 'virgin soil' last year.
USA's health.gov launch was very mature then?
As public agencies go, it is a virgin soil. EU wants to transition all of the bureaucracy to electronic form to make it accessible EU-wide. That is something nobody done yet. So yeah, it is virgin soil.
Every other week some European politician speaks up, demanding billions of tax payer's money to create an independent European IT industry.
Independent of USA - yes, why not. The investments into R&D around IT industry here in EU wouldn't harm. You see problem from the perspective of newswire headlines. Living in Germany, I see the problem from inside: education system is inadequate and there are
Re:Merkel's virgin soil (Score:5, Interesting)
At the same time, these guys complain that they can't run their offices with Linux: "It's too complicated for our staff. Give us back our Windows XP, our MS Office, our Internet Explorer."
May I remind you of projects like LiMux, which involved bringing the entire Infrastructure of the city of Munich over from Microsoft products to open source products based on and around Linux?
Projects that instead of failing, succeeded quite well. Where the users -- after an initial grumbling -- not only accepted it, but gave it quite better usability marks than the MS products. Users that are governmental offices, who are not exactly known for quickly embracing new ideas. In a federal state that's Germany's equivalent of Texas in terms of conservativeness.
So given that this project quite nicely showed that going away from the US Software companies, over to truly international Open Source software is very much feasible, even when you're just using the money you'd have spent on licensing costs anyway year-over-year, what's exactly the holdup?
Also, before you raise the flag of "lowered productivity", the entire switch-over happened progressively, without impacting users beyond them having to learn a few new clicks and buttons.
Now, avoiding US-based internet services is also not that hard.
This list goes on and one; at least for Europe. Therefore, ignoring US services is only a matter of overcoming complacency, not one of sheer impossibility.
Re: (Score:2)
At the same time, these guys complain that they can't run their offices with Linux: "It's too complicated for our staff. Give us back our Windows XP, our MS Office, our Internet Explorer."
May I remind you of projects like LiMux, which involved bringing the entire Infrastructure of the city of Munich over from Microsoft products to open source products based on and around Linux?
Given the failure of similar projects in other cities it would seem a concerted effort to develop a city solution would greatly help future success. Of course, that means getting bureaucrats across Europe to agree on a standard when it would probably take a year just to agree on a name.
Projects that instead of failing, succeeded quite well. Where the users -- after an initial grumbling -- not only accepted it, but gave it quite better usability marks than the MS products. Users that are governmental offices, who are not exactly known for quickly embracing new ideas. In a federal state that's Germany's equivalent of Texas in terms of conservativeness.
In fairness to Bavarians, they also have a bit of the Texan's contrarian and independent streak as well. Heck, they even issue Bavarian passports. So it doesn't surprise me that a state where "die uhern laufen ein bissen and
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It's not so much about the reality of "intrusion" but the "legality"...
Most European citizens do not really care if the NSA knows or not what they do, they DO care if some judge in South Texas can close down their operation because it happens to be "in the US" and thus stops them from serving their European customers.
The US separated the CIA from the FBI (or at least tried) so that the "extraordinary" powers of the CIA to help the US Governement "outside" of the US do not give too much police powers "inside
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But all the US actors and Pop stars use American social media now. So good luck getting rid of the huge swaths of followers using US services.
Europe is the second most profitable market of such media worldwide; often accounting for between 25-40% of the gross. Do you really think that those people, for whom money always comes first, would ignore that market just because it means opening up a second account you need to flood with sock-puppeted postings?
The additional cost wouldn't even show up in their budget (apart from witholding money from those poor souls who went for a share in the profit- instead of gross-margin).
Worse yet, this whole thing is not about routing moronic teenager BS emails through US services, its about keeping the NSA out of everyone else's data....and that won't happen.
Do not let the perfect be th
Wrong Emphasis (Score:5, Informative)
The emphasis should be on encryption, not physical infrastructure. You can't audit, control and secure physical infrastructure for an internet, because it is by necessity, spread out across a large physical volume. You definitely can make it uneconomic to analyse the traffic.
Of course, this is probably an intentional oversight - all that infrastructure work is a great economic stimulus (or "pork barrel project" if you like). Why cloud the picture with reality when you can both spend billions of Euros on a jingoistic boondoggle AND still be able to collect SIGINT from your own people without difficulty?
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So while it might appear like a solution (today), in the long term it is a failure. All you have to do is store the encrypted data and defer the spying - either on individuals or corporations until such a time as the technology to crack the encryption has progressed, While encryption allows protection up until that time, nobody is in a position to say how long it will be until any particular scheme is compromised. For all we know, ALL current
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All you have to do is store the encrypted data and defer the spying - either on individuals or corporations until such a time as the technology to crack the encryption has progressed
Is that all? Just wait until the information goes stale? petes_PoV, SOOPER GENIUS
Why not (Score:2)
Living in Germany, Snowden leaks didn't bother me much (and as I've heard from "Piraten Partei" member, most voters don't care either). I'm of no interests to secret services whatsoever and if checking my emails helps them fight some !@@#ers, I don't mind.
Intent DOES matter to me and I do not think that any government in western democracies would dare misuse this power for oppressing people.
From US perspective, I can understand you guys are worried about some of the surveillance being unconstitutional, but
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Consider that most governments are either directly (through campaign contributions) or indirectly (by holding jobs hostage) dependent on corporations.
Now take a wild guess again whose interests they will protect first and foremost, and whether they coincide with yours.
Re:Why not (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm of no interests to secret services whatsoever
Yeah, that's not up to you to decide. Someone else will decide that and if your phone was at the wrong place at the wrong time and someone misread or misinterpreted some data you're going to be the guy on the floor with assault rifles pointed at your back and your family screaming around you. Better hope your realize the masked men are the cops so you don't struggle and get shot.
It's not like those doing the monitoring are certain to be competent or even guaranteed to be sane, and with signal-to-noise ratios being what they are and the extreme rarity of actual terrorists you can be sure that most hits will be false positives. Other people 'of no interest'.
Intent DOES matter to me and I do not think that any government in western democracies would dare misuse this power for oppressing people.
Oh, right, because we're not voting any representatives of ideologies that have shown no such restraint into power in Europe. Oh, wait...
So if you want to keep from being 'of no interest' in the future, better keep from saying anything that could possibly piss off communists, neonazis, religious fundamentalists or anyone else who might possibly wield power in the future during the rest of your life. The archives are going to remain but the intent of today has no binding power over future rulers.
Re:Why not (Score:4, Interesting)
Spying on this level isn't needed for when secret services "take an interest in somebody". There already are mechanisms for the authorities to wiretap you if they're concerned with you directly. There's no need to wiretap the entire net for that.
No, the purpose of such things is to assemble large databases of things like who talks to who, and for those purposes, you are of interest to secret services, as is everybody else. Let's say a friend of yours participates in some sort of environmental activism. Well, you both communicate, and that automatically makes you a person of interest.
Translation for those of you who dont speak politc (Score:2)
We can do a much better job of spying and industrial espionage on our citizens than the NSA can if we build our own network.
Re: (Score:2)
All hail the new EU central committee that will govern our lives.
First German net, now this ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some time ago, there were suggestions by German Telekom of building a German infrastructure to ensure mails sent between German users would not be routed via the USA. Apart from ensuring German authorities would have it easier looking into traffic, I will hazard a guess that Telekom is lobbying to push this through, possibly forcing German providers to connect themselves to some newly designed infrastructure, which would most likely benefit German Telekom (either if they were operating those IXes, or by the lines put in to connect the providers). I do not have numbers as to the percentage, but most large to medium (and many smaller) German providers already are interconnected through DECIX, allowing for a short, cost-effective path between them. Oh, most, except for one - German Telekom (actually, they are connected, but do not have an open peering policy). Coincidence?
Why is it that so many governments seem so clueless with technology?
Re: (Score:2)
What do you expect when you staff governments essentially with 50+ years old lawyers?
How about... (Score:2)
The gouvernment which screwed end-to-end encryption by mandating a centralized "de-mail" concept to communicate with the administration shuts up.
Make a decentralized key signing (e.g. in the city hall) initiative, for a reasonable fee, and show your citizens hot to import these certificates in theirs browsers and mail programs.
Make sure the key generators use a decent random number generation, and for really important messages use one-time pads, or something which comes close.
All of my phones have enough st
Re: (Score:2)
I can picture this already. Sort of like how it would be happening in a Stainless Steel Rat novel :)
"Here is your mandatory super-secret one time pad, citizen! If you use this pad, all your mail is encrypted and impossible to break!"
"Oh, why thank you!"
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. I knew the post was somewhat too long to read and digest it, so here is the short version:
-One time-pad: connection safety to your mail provider. What the requirements of the mail provider and you may be for getting the key (send by post, courier, or only hand over personnally) may be is up to the security vs price considerations of you and your provider.
-End to end with officially *signed* (not generated) keys:
protection against being sniffed at the provider.
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Sounds reasonable, just couldn't resist the Orwellian interpretation :)
Why do I keep reading things in such statements? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever Merkel makes a comment, I instantly wonder what her real intentions are. And this time it didn't take long, she wants control over what information is coming into her area of reign.
If she was honest about wanting the US spying to end she'd first of all ferret out and shut down the various spying locations still scattered across Germany. It's not like the US never had bases there or shut them all down...
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Whenever Merkel makes a comment, I instantly wonder what her real intentions are. And this time it didn't take long, she wants control over what information is coming into her area of reign.
Correctamundo. There is only one answer for increasing communications freedom and it has nothing to do with an EU network.
If she was honest about wanting the US spying to end she'd first of all ferret out and shut down the various spying locations still scattered across Germany.
Bah, now you're straying well off-topic. Let's try this: The way to make communications free for the people (as in speech, not beer -- though that too) is to promote mesh networking and end-to-end, opportunistic encryption. She wants a more centralized network, which will have the opposite effect to promoting freedom. What we need is complete decentralization, with routing based not on a
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[Merkel] wants control over what information is coming into her area of reign
She can already pretty much control whatever is coming in, thanks to the routers that do the I/O with Germany. I think what she wants is to control what's going out...
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How do you control VPNs and Onion routing without heavy filtering that can hardly be hidden?
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"Whenever Merkel makes a comment, I instantly wonder what her real intentions are. "
Secrecy is not one of them, since she illegally used a private, unencrypted Party-cellphone to do state-business on.
A 12 year old could have listened in, no NSA or spy-sites needed.
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Could someone please tell Merkel?
Extension to TCP/IP needed (Score:3)
An extension to TCP/IP is needed, where each packet contains a flag stating that it should not enter US-governed networks.
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Or how about my packets don't go to Germany? Trust is a 2-way street ya know, and i don't trust the German government with my data.
Plugging up the tubes (Score:2)
Even Merkel's cell phone was reportedly monitored by American spies.
Merkel said in her weekly podcast that she disapproved of companies such as Google and Facebook basing their operations in countries with low levels of data protection while being active in countries such as Germany with high data protection.
Those two statements don't go together.
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I don't know about you, but if I communicate things in private I rarely use twitter. Or facebook.
NSA salivates at the very notion... (Score:2)
...of a network to exploit which is not subject to US regulation and controls currently being put into place with respect to their operations on domestic networks.
So...another Greek subsidy plan? (Score:2)
...because a "pan European" anything isn't really going to be secure at all. All the NSA will have to do is pay someone in a financially desperate state to let them plug-in to their "secure" pan-European connection.
Doomed from the start (Score:2)
Internet routing doesn't respect geographical location. If you can't trust your internet connection even without knowing the route it takes, then you can't trust it at all. Everything must be encrypted.
Of course, our politicians don't actually want to protect our privacy; they just want to be the only ones listening.
As an inhabitant of EU it is simple (Score:2)
So : "go europe ! Build that network and root server !". and "go fuck yourself US & ICANN".
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or revolt against
With what, sticks? They already took away your ability to revolt.
Hypocrites (Score:2)
They all spy. All this is for is to give government more control over their people, under the guise of 'privacy'.
If your 'local internet' is isolated, its pretty hard to see what the rest of the world is doing, or let the rest of the world see how badly you are treating your people.
"Digital Curtain"
Maginot 2.0 (Score:2)
Better not let the UK participate then (Score:2)
As much as it pains me to observe this, but due to the 'special relationship' having the UK on board will mean that everything is tapped by the US anyhow.
as they say (Score:3, Insightful)
"He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard"
I'd much prefer the data to be captured by European organizations than the NSA.
Re: (Score:3)
Why?
Personally, whether I get beat up by foreigners or by domestic bullies, I can't really feel that much of a difference...
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Foreign bullies I can't do anything about. Domestic bullies I can drag to court, try to vote out of the government, smear in the domestic media, etc.
I prefer to fight my bullies in my own back yard, thank you.
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Thats a rather bleak, defeatist attitude, you know.
I'd rather go down fighting than just accept the status quo, and if the "bullies" move to my preferred battleground, so that I can actually fight them, instead of staying out of reach, I'll see that as a small step forward.
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I've fought long and hard on various "fronts". I'm tired. Riding against windmills just ain't fun anymore.
Maybe if I find a possible angle some day again, I might consider taking up the "fight" again. But looking around myself, I don't really see who I should be fighting for.
Re:as they say (Score:5, Interesting)
Because... why? The US government can do very little to a European citizen.
If you're European, it's the European organizations that can wreck your life.
Re:as they say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:as they say (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. can do very much to an European citizen. Putting him on a no-fly list. Outbidding his company by tipping his bids to their own company. Stealing trade secrets and contract details to competitors. Damaging his reputation by disclosing secrets he has to keep to interesting parties. Letting some accidental data breach happen.
Yes, I'm sure those things will have an impact on 99% of all EU citizens... Since we all regularly fly to the US doing business versus US competitors. Not.
Your own government doing this is much more dangerous than any other government: google "schleppnetzfahndung" and "berufsverbot" for nice examples of Germany in the 70's versus the trade unions, dissidents, journalists... they ruined the reputation of hundreds of thousands of people who just didn't toe the line. And it didn't just happen in Germany, lots of examples of EU governments doing stuff like that. Hell, the Greek government only recently removed the requirement that your religion has to be on the passport.
I'm not a fan of what the NSA has been doing, but let's be clear here: it was with full knowledge and cooperation of most EU intelligence services.
Socialists say: "the enemy is at home". I find that to be more prophetic every time I read the news, lately.
Re:as they say (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not a pissin contest.
Let me deal with my own govt, you deal with yours.
Europeans are much too reliant on products storing data on US servers which can easily be seized.
We just "hand" our privates over, which is why the proposal actually makes sense.
Re: (Score:3)
It was actually the Dutch intelligence service that handed over the telephone data of 1.8 million phone calls to the NSA. The responsible minister barely survived in parliament last week. As it turns out, none of the leaders in the EU advocate spying on their own citizens... but handing over all the data to another service and getting back the interesting tidbits, now that's different. While they decry the NSA in public, in private most intelligence services have similar programs running.
There are a lot of
Re: (Score:2)
As far as the US is concerned, you are on a no-fly list until you disclose enough information so that you have proven that you're harmless. In fact, for non-citizens, we call that "getting a visa" or "getting a visa waiver".
And that's no different from the way Europeans treat foreigners, or from the way European governments treat their own citizens. European governments have extensive records on their citizens; why should the US
Re: (Score:2)
Re: as they say (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:as they say (Score:5, Insightful)
When you are threatened by a great evil that wants all data you have, your choices are to firewall yourself off or surrender.
This is true on both micro or macro scale, and we have discussions on how to protect our data on micro scale here on slashdot all the time. It's quite sad that when people view it as "well it's our evil guy" suddenly massive theft of data becomes completely justified and counter measures undesirable.
3rd Choice = Digital haystacks (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a third choice. Data pollution. What I really want is a program that doesn't require me to do it manually - entering in false "tags", random "birthdates", and randomly searching for consumer items I don't necessarily have interest in. Antiphorm was evidently a program developed to do something like this, but it disappeared.
Cookie camouflage, digital haystacks, bitshit, there must be a lot of names for it. Nature almost never evolves invisibility, but evolves camouflage. I haven't been able to interest any programmers in developing this, but think it could just be as simple as a browser hunting forms online and populating them with garbage.
"We all have a civil obligation to generate false data." - Spartacus, 71 BC
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There is a third choice. Data pollution. What I really want is a program that doesn't require me to do it manually - entering in false "tags", random "birthdates", and randomly searching for consumer items I don't necessarily have interest in. Antiphorm was evidently a program developed to do something like this, but it disappeared.
Cookie camouflage, digital haystacks, bitshit, there must be a lot of names for it. Nature almost never evolves invisibility, but evolves camouflage. I haven't been able to interest any programmers in developing this, but think it could just be as simple as a browser hunting forms online and populating them with garbage.
"We all have a civil obligation to generate false data." - Spartacus, 71 BC
One problem with digital haystacks... What if your app randomly hits upon the proverbial needle that is being monitored and is a high priority target? Do you really want to chance your life being turned upside down for 5 to 10 years while you are investigated? or worse, sent to one of the black sites?
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False. It's well known by now that NSA also taps intercontinental cables. Whatever area you are trying to protect, you'll have to do it from inside, not attempt to surround the source from outside.
For Europe, the biggest problem is that US has an inside mole known as UK.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you foaming at the mouth for? I never said anything of what you just tried to shove into my mouth.
I stated that US intentions toward EU are clearly evil, and in spite of many attempts to get US to stop, it clearly indicated that it will continue with these efforts. Therefore the only options left to EU are to firewall or to surrender.
Fact is, I like most people accept that my state will spy on me. I do not accept another state spying on me, and I fully support aggressive measures towards a state th
Re:Just a Band-aid (Score:4, Insightful)
Then at least there is an option to protest against the local "legally bad guy", the US is destroying democracy because in practice voting anywhere outside of the US is useless.
Either you live in a dictatorship (Like for instance Equatorial Guinéa wich is protected by the US petrol industry and whose "president" gets elected with 95+ % whenever he feels bored) and then voting is just a "show", or you live in a democracy, and then it does not matter who you are voting for because the US economy is basically bullying whom ever was elected into working in the way most profitable for the US, and the only choice is to be hurt "right now" by sanctions (and loose the next election) or being hurt by bad policies in a couple of year (and hopefully it will be the oposition's mess to handle)...
So unless the European Union starts to fess up and do exactly the kind of things Angela Merkel is proposing the world would be split between a disfunctional democracy (the US) and non democratic countries, where the most powerful is the one run by the Chinese "communist" party, not the most desirable outcome... ...)
Including not very desirable for 99% of the US citizens, since it would end up with a small "elite" protected by an overreaching army and the rest of the citizens not really "needed" by the elite (with the exception of a minority of plumber, waitresses, hookers and other "personal service providers"
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The US is destroying democracy because in practice voting anywhere outside of the US is useless.
Voting inside the US is useless too. Do you seriously think the US is still a functioning democracy at the federal level?
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Not really, although some argue that a 2 party systems "converge" toward an optimum (there is an MIT paper on the subject from one of the well known MIT-AI hackers but I can't find it right now), personally I believe it just make rigging the
race easier...
But it is the US citizen's problem to fix...
Angela Merkel is addressing the EU citizens issues...
Re:Just a Band-aid (Score:4, Interesting)
to the problem of what the NSA is doing. And if an organization does it within Europe, what then?
There's also the problem that hard outer shells tend to have a very tepid time protecting networks of nontrivial size if the stuff inside is still all soft and squishy.
You aren't going to run a network the size of Europe, or even part of it, without almost anybody who cares having a few listening stations set up, and if you plan on extending your EuroNet to anybody except specific state functionaries sending secure email to one another, you'll still have loads of users chattering with servers outside your shiny new network.
Is it probably a good idea not to use US cloud services corporations if you don't want the Americans watching you? Sure. Are the subsequent steps markedly more difficult? Oh definitely.
(Plus, the UK is a longstanding double-plus Freedom Buddy, and Germany has long been quite cooperative, so we'll see if they can find enough countries not collaborating with the US to even fill out a network...)
Interesting ... but rather meaningless in the end (Score:2)
The interesting thing is that (as far as I know) this won't stop the flow of metadata and intercepts towards the NSA. Why not? Well, I believe that each and every EU country has bilateral deals with the US to share raw data in bulk. The British, the French, the Du
Re: (Score:2)
Well last time "France" "trusted" "Gernany" (without being invaded first) was at the time of Emperor Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse, Karolus Magnus, ...) ...)
that didn't work so bad (untill he died and handed over to his incapable sons who splitted the whole shebang
Re: (Score:3)
Well, actually, the last time France trusted Germany was the formation of the EU.
Re: (Score:2)
The last time France (Alsace) and Germany (Saarland) trusted each other, what followed was the creation of EU.
The problem here is very simple. For the e-reforms EU wants to rely on Internet. They are simply forced to act, because they can't allow potentially sensitive data like tax information to flow via unreliable country like USA. The work in that direction was happening for some time now and I'm not really sure what current initiative entails. The only contentious point was the ICANN. One can see that
Re: (Score:2)
What difference does it make whether the US gets European tax information? What do you think they are going to do with it?
And what country do you think is "more reliable"? France, Sweden, Germany, etc.? Don't make me laugh. Their surveillance and espionage against their own citizens and each other has been known for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice try ...
So because the European governments are just as bad as the NSA we should not change anything and let the NSA go on spying on us ...
So how about we get the right to elect your representatives, senators and presidents after all at the en of the day this activity is costing us money (for instance whenever the US $ gets overprinted and becomes cheaper in practice it has the same effect as a tax on out exportations...
And what did those people say ? no taxation without representation ...
Now pleaqe ge
Re: (Score:2)
You basically already do. Citizens United made sure you can since money is speech and "political donations" can be hidden.
Re: (Score:2)
Well in the "best" of cases it would be a "Censitary" Suffrage where only people with enough money would be able to
vote and foreing "voters" need to pay more once to "buy" the vote and another time to "clean it up" and make it look
National....
And this kind of "democracies" do not end up very well...
Re: (Score:3)
Of course it will be "interconnected" the issue is "where will it be possible to host at a reasonable price services to european citizens" and therefore "what law does apply" ...
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it's interconnected. There is no plan to change that.
It's more encouraging servers to be placed in Europe and making sure there aren't any 'funny' routes where data moving between points in Europe takes a detour through Langely.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather be concerned with "you're not allowed to see this out-of-EU webpage because we don't want you to. signed, your government" messages.