Privacy:EU and US agree on transatlantic data flows

[viking60]

Since the former Safe Harbour-deal was ruled illegal by the EU court there have been negotiations between the EU and the US to get a new deal to secure the transatlantic data flow.
Without this deal cloud services like Office 365 and Facebook - and many more - would be useless.

The new deal is called the EU-US Privacy Shield clearly indicating that the somewhat privacy offending tradition of the Safe Harbour deal should not continue.

The point is to make clear to companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Apple that deal with personal private data; what is expected of them and how they must treat them.
It is no secret that the US companies treating european personal data will have to meet stricter requirements than before.
So this is new:

The U.S. has ruled out indiscriminate mass surveillance on the personal data transferred to the US under the new arrangement.

It will be controlled:

The European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce will conduct the review and invite national intelligence experts from the U.S. and European Data Protection Authorities to it.

The US FTC will be authorized to control and follow up the US end of of the deal. Of course targeted surveillance operations are still allowed but they must be specific and targeted - that is new too.
It appears that there will be exceptions to this rule - given the nature of the threat - so it remains to be seen how widely these exceptions will be implemented.

And it is not as clear as it looks:
The US commitments not to indulge in mass surveillance need to be clarified, since in the NSA's dictionary it's not surveillance if they collect masses of information online and store it, but only if an analyst actually looks at it.

It is yet unclear how the US corporations will implement this on a daily level.

The Internal US "We only spy on foreigners" defence seems somewhat weakened (at least for foreigners living in the EU).

President Obama has failed to provide any comfort to the 96 per cent of the world who are not American citizens and do not get Fourth Amendment protections against NSA’s vast reach

EU press release here and US publication here

[R_Head]

I hate all these pussyfooting around the bush. All it does is making matters worse with tons of rules and regulations that nobody can follow.

[viking60]

The problem is that the technology moves faster than what the negotiators can handle.
When the Safe Harbour deal was made; nobody could imagine the excessive spying and there might be ways around this one too. In the end we need to elect people that can be trusted on all ends..and that is a real challenge.

There is a culture among many politicians of this world that is very much apart from the people electing them. Government efforts to control the population are plenty. Initiatives to enhance control over Governments (democracy) are not that obvious.

In most people's mind our governments have abused our trust (none mentioned and none forgotten) that is really a problem for both governments and people.

Having a new and stricter set of rules is a step in the right direction and the US has to be on the receiving end this time since they have been caught in the act of spying on their closest allies.

Microsoft, Apple and Facebook would not have a satisfactory business climate in Europe without this deal. In the interest of a free and open internet it was important to secure the Transatlantic dataflow.

The acceptance of no mass surveillance - at least in words - is a step forward and represents a new attitude.

If the Agencies start tap-dancing around it then our trust in our governments will be further damaged.

But so far the lack of rules have been the problem - not to many rules. Rules obligating companies like Microsoft and Apple who have plenty of resources to make sure they follow them.

[R_Head]

I can say all rules are writen by lawyers for lawyers.

I want an anarchistic web and is a personal and corporation duty to save guard their own data. If some one wants to use Facebag and the server is in Mars so be it; but "Caveat Emptor".

If I tell you is poison you have 2 choices, drink it or leave it; no rules shall be written to prevent that.

[viking60]

I think rules preventing Big Brother from taking over and controlling the net are a necessity. There were no rules; and still the freedom of expression was greatly reduced due to government activities.
If there are no rules governments feel free to do whatever they like to the internet.

Turkey has closed down Twitter. Iran has blocked all non acceptable content. Facebook and Apple are censoring statues of Michelangelo because they have a penis.

China, North-Korea...and it goes on.

There will be different views and cultures and the Internet should reflect all of them and not be adapted to reflect the "correct culture".

Example: there is a best selling book in Denmark called "Hippie" reflecting the culture in the 60ies. To reflect the time there is a lot of nakedness in the book and every Dane with and Apple phone got those parts censored - from Apple.

That is an arrogant way of imposing US culture on others. Thankfully Apple has international competition from Samsung and their likes, but the Americans are close to a monopoly situation here and that increases the responsibilities.
Apples moral standards are American and that is fine. Imposing them on others is not.

I sure am a long way from the American standard and so are the French. French Presidents do even have sex and mistresses.....American Presidents reproduce by Osmosis or something else

In any case dictating the content is not the way to go. Monitoring the internet users every move and interests is certainly a violation of human rights. So some tolerance is needed.

The relatively rule free internet we had is/was becoming the main tool of Big Brother.

But you have a point: It will not help much if Big Brother is providing the rules......

[R_Head]

It works like this...

Create the problem and become the solution.
Create a boogieman and bring the solution.
Create cahos and bring peace.

That is how it works.