This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.
http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html
http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...
You heard a lot of stuff from governments around the world in the last two weeks, but not one statement that consisted of “I regret subjecting my population to these procedures.” The German Chancellor, though triumphantly reelected with not a cloud in her political sky, is in no position to say “I agreed with the Americans to allow 40 million telephone calls a day to be intercepted in Germany; I just want them to stop listening to my phone!” The President of the United States is considering the possibility of not listening to thirty-five mobile phones around the world. The other several hundred million people we listen to are stone out of luck.
You understand what a charade this is, of course. The leaders of global societies do not conduct their classified business over their personal mobile phones. Our listening there is not gaining us important military intelligence. The President of the United States is publicly considering not listening to conversations that leaders of other countries have with their spouses, their siblings and their children. But the conversations nine hundred million other people are having with their spouses, their siblings, and their children remain fair game.
Nobody is talking about that; you’re not supposed to think about it.
Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.
As a side benefit China has fostered a large homegrown internet industry which many other countries lack. Services like Baidu and Sina Weibo are more than acceptable. Europe is more than capable of doing the same and hopefully with less censorship.
You're touching on something here. What you're saying is that Google = American government [1]. With the rise of open fascism in the US, the merging of strategic corporations (mostly the technology, entertainment, and banking monopolies) with government interests is become more and more obvious - and scary for that matter.
As a side non-benefit of being protected from international services, China's homegrown internet industry is unable to innovate and compete outside of China, where their international competition has no such disadvantage. Services like Baidu and Sina Weibo are just acceptable local copies of successful international services. Europe is capable of becoming like China, but would be crazy to go down that route.
When choosing whether you want the American government to have some monitoring power over you or the Chinese government, the answer is beyond obvious [1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labour
Something tells me this is as much (if not more) an attempt to put European users' data within reach of European spy agencies as it is about protecting European users' privacy. I suppose the upside is that it ensures that peoples' data is in the hands of their own governments rather than being in the hands of governments they have no control over.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/edward-snowden-acc...
[2]http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intellige...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_inst...
(Not saying they are used by the NSA.)
That's what we call sovvereignity. And that is the problem with the NSA.
No offense but this is exactly the option I'd be recommending to U.S. policymakers (i.e. having a "Balkanization Button") if it really comes to gutting the NSA.
Yes, the thing that makes the Internet so good for us is the open borders, but it's also the thing that makes it so powerful for countries that don't have to abide by pesky little things like Western cultural morals.
In no other realm does a potential adversary gain access to a military capability and the Western world opts to leave itself defenseless. And make no mistake, cyber is thought to be a military capability for the likes of Russia (just ask Estonia or Georgia), China, and North Korea.
If pacifism is to be the answer in response to this threat, then that simply means that defense will have to come by different means, i.e. by "battening down the hatches" and sealing off foreigners from domestic networks. If we can seek out threats on networks then the second-best option is to try and keep our networks from being used against us.
Similar logic will then apply in the E.U. and other nations.
> The internet was international and neutral from the start, don't bring your territorial thinking here!
It was hardly neutral from the start, the Internet developed from things like NSFNET and MILNET. Don't be silly.
And either way, "we didn't start the fire"... the NSA didn't invent cyber hacking, as they could only have been hacking themselves at first. Go read "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll if you want to see where the first wave of state-sponsored hacking started.
Regarding cyber warfare, maybe the US didn't start this fire, but they definitely participated in bringing war mentality online.
I hope that we as a technological community can fight this on a global scale, not nation per nation. Abusing the internet for espionage and warfare sucks. If we can strengthen security for any arbitrary connection we won't have to divide the whole net into silos. Here, the NSA were really acting against their best interest by weakening existing defenses.
Having several barriers of entry is good practice in security, why not just make sure that there are secured channels with stronger security for sensitive data. We already know that many systems can be improved security-wise, so we'd know where to start! These secured channels most definitely don't have to be by country, and internet could stay as is for everyday communications.
I believe that having an international net greatly helps in preventing wars by building relations between entities in different countries and spreading culture. Let's not forget about the negative effects that would come from shutting this system down by introducing country-nets.
i.e. government support of alternatives to the US owned networked services that enable the data leakages, not low level infrastructure improvements. Whether or not such a thing is likely to work, I'd be dubious, but if they show even the slightest hint of going through with it the US will go crazy. Likely to be a lot of happy devs in Berlin.
Anything else would be like Google opening an office in France and expecting to comply with American labor laws instead of French ones.
I would wager that Germany would intercept the majority of traffic in this "Europe network" and then give the stuff to the US. Nothing would change.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
The NSA doesn't have a limited budget. It already has more data than it can use.
The UK isn't the only country that co-operates with the US authorities on this, sadly.
Merkel and Holland are politicians of a special kind. Politicians & their intelligence thugs caught in bed conspiring with foreign agencies/corporations against the people they represent. France quietly pushing through military legislation authorizing spying on its citizens [1].
We should not allow governments to have any more control over the internet. Look how much damage has already been done. Instead we need to build decentralized systems [2] and mesh networks [3] to route around censorship and government/corporate control.
[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/france-overtakes-nsa-spying-... [2] http://torrentfreak.com/how-the-pirate-bay-plans-to-beat-cen... [3] http://openlibernet.org/
Germany has a project called DE-Mail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Mail
It's a kind of E-Mail service to improve Data-Protection and get legally binding electronic communication. So far so good.
But how is this done, and what are the impacts. At first E-Mail got a price tag. Second, there is no End-To-End-Encryption. Third, you're legally bound if they say this mail arrived, no matter if you even noticed or read. 4th there are public companies involved, able to read high sensitive data sent by DE-Mail, because there is no End-to-End communication. This companies are also able, but not allowed, to send legally binding mails in your name. How could you prove, you didn't sent?
This is the context, when German politicians talk about the internet. They have no clue.
I wonder if even now, those involved, have any idea of the nature of what they've done and what the magnitude of the consequences are shaping up to be.
"However, then–French President Charles de Gaulle saw British membership of the Community as a Trojan horse for US interests, and hence stated he would veto British membership." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Six)
Ha, he was probably right. But you will never get rid of us now!
What would be helpful would be decentralized services that match the user experience of the existing ones. But that kind of innovation isn't what's going to be discussed here, I'm afraid. On the contrary, such eavesdropping-safe technology would be viewed very conspicuously by the non-tech savy politicians in Europe and other places.
That is, in part, because the kinds of privacy invasion those two organisations routinely conduct would probably have been challenged earlier and more aggressively if they had been within European jurisdiction, and particularly within Germany.
This is a feature, not a bug.
I also find it highly amusing that based on her comments she suggests that the UK is considered to be outside Europe.
EG. Hacking Belgacom to to snoop on the EU.
(So also be wary about that when interpreting comments - if they're paraphrased in UK media, this can easily creep in)
Would they force European users to not use GMail? Or force GMail to create a European branch?
I don't think governments prescribing what services to use is a good idea...
