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Europe Frightened By US 'Cloud Act', Fearing National Security Risks (straitstimes.com) 182

"A foreign power with possible unbridled access to Europe's data is causing alarm in the region. No, it's not China. It's the U.S.," writes Bloomberg (in an article shared by hackingbear).

"As the U.S. pushes ahead with the 'Cloud Act' it enacted about a year ago, Europe is scrambling to curb its reach." Under the act, all U.S. cloud service providers, from Microsoft and IBM to Amazon -- when ordered -- have to provide American authorities with data stored on their servers, regardless of where it's housed. With those providers controlling much of the cloud market in Europe, the act could potentially give the US the right to access information on large swaths of the region's people and companies.

The U.S. says the act is aimed at aiding investigations. But some people are drawing parallels between the legislation and the National Intelligence Law that China put in place in 2017 requiring all its organisations and citizens to assist authorities with access to information. The Chinese law, which the US says is a tool for espionage, is cited by President Donald Trump's administration as a reason to avoid doing business with companies like Huawei Technologies. "I don't mean to compare US and Chinese laws, because obviously they aren't the same, but what we see is that on both sides, Chinese and American, there is clearly a push to have extraterritorial access to data," said Ms Laure de la Raudiere, a French lawmaker who co-heads a parliamentary cyber-security and sovereignty group. "This must be a wake up call for Europe to accelerate its own, sovereign offer in the data sector."

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Europe Frightened By US 'Cloud Act', Fearing National Security Risks

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  • Well duh (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @06:41PM (#58205734)

    When you put your data elsewhere than on your own iron, expect it to be as good as public. Everybody has known this since the beginning of the internet. Security-conscious IT folks don't do cloud, even if it costs more.

    In my opinion, the Cloud Act is just an official recognition of what's already going on.

    • In a previous life, pretending to be a bog-data person, we could use US-based Google BigTables only because
      - the most sensitive information had to be published in a political-contributors report later, and
      - the personal (personally identifying) information was only kept there for the duration of the election campaign.

      Otherwise, we would have had to store it in Canada on equipment we owned.

    • Security-conscious IT folks don't do cloud, even if it costs more.

      In my opinion, the Cloud Act is just an official recognition of what's already going on.

      Great, so you can choose not to put your organization's data in the cloud. I hope your doctor, banker, and the various other people you do business with feel the same way you do.

      • It's not actually worse than storing your data on a Windows computer, or an Apple, or Android. Basically, Linux and its ilk where the software stack is top to bottom visible to you is the _only_ way you can expect to keep your privacy and even that requires constant vigilance. Or to put it another way, if you have allowed yourself to be anally raped by Microsoft all these years then what is the point of getting upset just because your cloud provider decided to join the party?

        If you have absolute control of

        • Re:Well duh (Score:4, Insightful)

          by dryeo ( 100693 ) on Sunday March 03, 2019 @12:29AM (#58206716)

          While Linux is obviously superiour to Windows etc, most people can't review all the code, including user land. Look at OpenSSL and even bash having vulnerabilities for years.
          It's also really hard to guard against someone sneaking in and putting a key logger in your keyboard.

          • While Linux is obviously superiour to Windows etc, most people can't review all the code, including user land.

            Obviously, you don't have to. But you must be able to. You must also belong to a community that takes such things seriously.

          • A matter of effort. Yes, a government agency could send agents to pick the locks on your door and sneak a bug into your computer while you are out, or target your specific equipment for remote hacking - but that's going to take a lot of time, manpower and expense. Are you worth it?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by Anonymous Coward

            Nor do you know what security by obscurity means and why it's rubbish.

            All your screed there is bullshit. Why do you think cameras are recording in Malls? Stealing still happens, but the POSSIBILITY of getting caught puts people off and the number of attempts to actually stop reduce. Same with open source code: many are put off because if they DO get caught, they not only lose the access, they also get known as a black hat.

            Meanwhile closed source can pretend there isn't a problem, and can even refuse to look

    • by AC-x ( 735297 )

      Who owns your data center? Who owns your internet backbone?

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Then the USA could not offer its cloud services from the USA into EU nations.
      Its a new EU trade barrier to keep out better US services.
      Forcing people in the EU to have to buy EU nation computer services over much better quality US cloud services.
      • by Teun ( 17872 )
        For a measure of 'better'. Over here in Europe we have standards regarding privacy and ownership of data.
      • It is an IMHO inevitable consequence of US law colliding with EU law.
        The US say "when ordered, you have to give us the data of your customers worldwide". The EU says "you may not give that data away against our regulations" (especially to foreign countries).

        I don't think it is meant as a trade barrier, at least not primarily. And if it is, I have very little sympathy for a country that threatens EU companies with sanctions about a project (North Stream 2) where the US is not even directly involved. And thre

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      You entirely fail to take into account information people put up about other people. Take Gmail, whose mail is it the senders or the receivers, by law both and when Google invades that privacy they are engaged in a criminal act if they did not get the permission of the receiver when it is not non-gmail address.

      So the US is trying to write superlative laws, laws that supersede other countries laws and if you disagree, what regime change, military invasion, first strike nuclear strike. Yep, the US has an ent

    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      My guess is these same security conscious IT folks also store a great deal of their wealth in bank accounts.

      Which actually has the same problem (except for deposit insurance, you hope).

    • Security-conscious IT folks don't do cloud, even if it costs more.

      That's not remotely true. The decision to go to cloud needs to be based on the capabilities of your own organisation vs the capabilities of an organisation specialising in security.

      How many times have you heard of the likes of Amazon, Google or Microsoft having their whole treasure trove of data hacked vs say the countless companies who were responsible for their own security?

      Security isn't an on or off thing. It's a sliding scale with many variables.

    • Re:Well duh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday March 03, 2019 @07:57AM (#58207630) Homepage

      Well in this case we're talking about people who come with a court-approved warrant. As long as we're in a single jurisdiction it's only a question whether the police officers will knock on you company's door or the company next door running your servers, unless you work for the mafia or something you're just going to hand it over. And keeping it in-house doesn't actually solve the problem. It doesn't even have to involve client data.

      There's two issues here:
      1) Jurisdiction shopping, that despite operating in one jurisdiction you send your data to another country with more favorable laws and courts.
      2) Jurisdiction leakage, that your data is unwittingly and unwillingly brought under the jurisdiction of other legal systems.

      Now it's not exactly news that countries have different laws, that's one of many reasons you have legal subsidiaries. Say you're McDonald's, if you want to operate a restaurant here in Norway you have to comply with local taxes and regulations and permits and whatnot so you create McDonald's Norway, in the US you create McDonald's US and so on for each country with a simple holding company on top. So far, so good.

      But now imagine if they fear some kind of price fixing investigation and say hey Norway got better privacy laws than us, let's just move the company email servers and all other non-essential data there to be operated by our Norwegian subsidiary. US courts come with a warrant, you shrug and like we have no data try the Norwegian courts. This is bad. But then you try to fix it by saying subsidiaries are puppets to a parent company, if you can instruct them then you must. That solves one problem but creates a new one.

      Let's say that to reduce long term sick leave we have a program to help people get back to work, lots of gory detail on what condition you have, how it limits your working ability, what the company has done to try to accommodate you and we say this isn't just company data we're going to give it special protection and access restrictions. But then the marching orders come from the top, hand over all your data. Do you comply? If US companies can instruct their subsidiaries to comply with US law, well then Chinese companies can instruct their subsidiaries to comply with Chinese law.

      The US, as usual, wants the rules to only apply in one direction. They want US courts to be able to go in and grab data from other jurisdictions, while they'll get very angry if China uses their companies as hired thugs in the same way. And they justify their hypocrisy by saying we're the good guys, it's okay when we do it. It's not okay, start respecting that these businesses operate in other countries and that here our laws take precedence and stop trying to act like world police.

    • how does that work for a french company's US subsidiary receiving a court order for their data? I mean even with your own datacenter if you have business in the US you are have to comply

  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @06:44PM (#58205748)
    "Under the act, all U.S. cloud service providers, from Microsoft and IBM to Amazon -- when ordered"
    Guess if you have already move on board(to the cloud) you have some thinking to do. Your data is in someone elses hands.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
    • by currently_awake ( 1248758 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @08:19PM (#58206074)
      I think EU data protection laws forbid this. Meaning every single American cloud server company just got banned from the entire EU.
      • That would make a whole pile of business sense, never mind the ethical issues.

      • It does put them in an awkward situation, where they may be forced to choose between obeying EU law and obeying US law. Though I imagine they could play enough games with shells and subsiduaries to be able to argue in court that their US and EU cloud divisions are completely separate and confined to their own areas.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What would be the legal consequences? US employees could ask, EU employees could refuse... As long as they set it up so that US employees are locked out it seems like it won't work.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Correct. All your eggs in another persons basket. And if the other persons storage farm is not helpful, all the comms over the transatlantic cable may also be bugged/recorded.

      The EU should levy a 30% non-EU privacy compliant IT TAX on all IT services and facilities yesterday. Not that Boeing would get to read Airbus emails etc - nahhhh.

    • you have some thinking to do.

      Me thinks you ask too much...

    • Your data is in someone elses hands.

      The question is, are your own hands safer?

  • But China! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Every fucking article on China controlling state is written like they are bad guys and we are good guys.

    No, fucking morons. Our leaders are exactly the same.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      false. china's "drain the swamp" policy resulted in heads being rolled of both corrupt local politicians, high ranking party members and more than a few millionaires. they also have an affordable health care system and when they set out to oversee their industries, they nationalized whole companies and factories that dared to routinely violate regulations. additionally when some factory closes down they make damn sure people don't end up without jobs. even if they have to subsidize the whole sector (steel)

    • Particularly when the summary at the top cites China's National Intelligence Law and its intent -- do you think the Chinese government is going to permit, say, Huawei to say "That data's in the server farm at our datacenter in South Carolina; we don't have to give it to you" when they are 'requested' to provide it? The "Cloud Act" is precisely the same thing, only spelled out explicitly to minimize having the lawyers spin out legal machinations over the precise meaning of the grammar of the law for months o
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      In the USA you have the freedom of speech.
      To say Taiwan is the real China.
      To talk about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
      To enjoy a cartoon bear.
      Read and comment on books like 1984, Animal farm.
      To mention term limits.
      To enjoy a movie and review the movie. To make a movie. To comment on a movie. To comment on the politics of a movie.
      Enjoy many different types of publications from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan.
      No getting reported to a Communist gov after speech and for speech.

      Thats what sets the f
    • >Our leaders are exactly the same.

      This is the same bullshit as during the 2015 election: Trump and Hilary are the same.

      Nope. They're not. The Chinese, who torture and murder their citizens and put them in correctional camps are not the same as the leaders here.

      Our leaders might be shiity and corrupt and fail to live up to our expectations, but just a cursory glance at the way the Chinese state treats its citizens shows such claims of equivalence to be grossly ignorant and utterly false.

      • Yet our gulag is noticeably larger than China's. Something doesn't add up here...

      • Yeah your leaders are much nicer simply droning them out of existence without trial. But that's only for citizens. If you're truly unlucky to witness the hospitality of the USA you may find yourself in a Cuban enclave instead.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      But there is a huge difference between China and the USA govts.
      In China, when you disagree with the govt, you and your family disappear, cannot travel, don't get a lawyer and often aren't seen for a yr. If you appeal, you get re-sentenced to death.
      In the USA, you get a lawyer, can usually fight back, appeal any decision.

      A few quick reminders:
      Xi is
      * a dictator for life
      * sends millions of Chinese to "re-education camps"
      * no freedom of speech
      * no freedom of travel
      * China uses tanks against their own people.
      * R

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I have to agree, it sounds a lot/too dang much like China. My data used to be mine.
    As I look at what today says about the future, I'm profoundly grateful to be old now, having enjoyed my youth when it was still fun. I don't believe today's crop of eager, ambitious, hopeful young people have a real idea of what their future holds. The Cold War scared me a lot when I was that age, and now the Cold War looks very tame. The climate we old folks have made for them, the surveillance society that's evolv

    • That's the power of hindsight my friend. We know what is (or may be) in store for the new generations because we've lived more than then.

      But look at the bright side: like you said, the younger generation stay hopeful. They walk blindly into their bleak future, because they don't have a past to compare it to. But at least they don't fret over it like we do.

  • Please restrict us (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @06:54PM (#58205804) Journal
    America has NO RIGHT doing this. It was what Russia did within USSR and CHina does. Now, we are becoming no different than other dictatorial nations.
    • We have issues with sharing data, taxation, laws, patents, etc. This needs to be re-done, and hopefully, without Trump/Pence as American president. We really need leadership, which the west's leadership is currently controlled by Putin.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yeah, I'm sure if Putin was never in the picture, all the Democrat and Republican politicians would just be double super good.
        Damn you Putin!

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I hope Europe tells the USA to shove that law where the Eagle doesn't shine.

      • I agree with you. This is wrong. I'm hoping that they block this. The west is supposed to work together, not fight each other like this. What Trump/GOP are doing is just plain wrong.
      • by Corbets ( 169101 )

        One hopes they will, anyway,

        But the reality is that the rest of the world bent over for the US with extraterritorial laws like FATCA, so I’m uncertain how much resistance they’ll really put up here. Perhaps, since it’s their own citizens this time...

  • by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @06:59PM (#58205824) Journal

    Hardly news, and this has been "news" in the computer world since the beginning.

    This is not a new concern. People have been renting out hardware long before Amazon was invented, computer time has been rented out . Back in the 1960s and 1970s many mid-sized banks were hesitant to avoid computers not because they didn't trust or couldn't afford the machines, but because they didn't trust the companies who owned the machines or the governments where the computers were located. IBM with locations around the globe was the biggest and generally considered most trustworthy, but (looking up history online) you could rent computer access from Honeywell, Sperry Rand, Siemens, EMI, Olivetti, and others. Noting their location, that could mean you were subject to US laws, or UK laws, or Germany or France or Italy or wherever the computing center was located.

    I recall discussions a decade ago asking how much we valued hosting our own data, if we were willing to sacrifice the security of controlling it versus the convenience of letting Google Docs control access to all our documents. There are companies who trust every bit of their digital data to Amazon or Google or other companies. They figure that the cost savings is a benefit, and they don't care about (or don't realize) the security implications.

    There are companies that decide that maintaining control is important. For them, even if it would be cheaper or easier to lease out hardware remotely the value of maintaining control is greater than any cost savings.

    • by Corbets ( 169101 )

      There are companies who trust every bit of their digital data to Amazon or Google or other companies. They figure that the cost savings is a benefit, and they don't care about (or don't realize) the security implications.

      I think it’s an overly-broad brush to paint those companies with to say they don’t care or realize the implications.

      Remember that security, like all of business, is a risk. The risk must be balanced against the benefits, and in some cases security will be (perceived) as being less valuable than the benefits. It’s a fair analysis... as long as they’ve done the analysis.

    • They figure that the cost savings is a benefit, and they don't care about (or don't realize) the security implications.

      Quite the opposite. Security implications are the core part of any decision to go to cloud. The security implications usually weigh up the risk of handing data to a third party vs our own capabilities to keep it secure.

      Azure, AWS, etc host a shitton of confidential information from some of the biggest companies in the world. You'd think with that kind of a target we'd be hearing daily about breaches. Instead we get an endless string of breaches from companies that have failed to secure their own servers, or

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Azure, AWS, etc host a shitton of confidential information from some of the biggest companies in the world. You'd think with that kind of a target we'd be hearing daily about breaches. Instead we get an endless string of breaches from companies that have failed to secure their own servers, or attempted to roll their own cloud infrastructure.

        There are weekly fucking stories about data on AWS being illicitly accessed. It's fucking commonplace.

        The reason you don't hear about cloud services being hacked is because the responsibility and thus blame is always dropped on the end user organisation.

        The cloud is not secure, quite apart from shitty us laws.

        • There are weekly fucking stories about data on AWS being illicitly accessed. It's fucking commonplace.

          There are weakly stories of AWS being access due to companies (who you are saying are the ones who should be in charge of security) setting up their AWS systems insecurely.

          The cloud is as secure as your organisation makes it. There have not been any reports of massive breaches, only individual breaches from insecurely setup systems which are setup by the very people who would also be in charge of security at your organisation.

          There's a common idiot in your security equation. The question is, if you get rid

          • by Cederic ( 9623 )

            The cloud is as secure as your organisation makes it.

            what's more secure, the cloud or your personal system

            Oddly enough, neither. Apply appropriate security controls or you're in trouble either way.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02, 2019 @06:59PM (#58205826)

    ...is that companies, organisations, & individuals outside the US can't do business with US data farm companies if they value their privacy, R&D secrets, & IP. Add this to the revelations outed by Edward Snowden & it's a wonder that anyone in their right mind would want to get entangled in that mess.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      I'm not a lawyer, but I wonder if it's possible for a European company to use an American cloud provider at all without breaking European data privacy laws now?

  • by stevelinton ( 4044 ) <sal@dcs.st-and.ac.uk> on Saturday March 02, 2019 @07:03PM (#58205834) Homepage

    Isn't this in combination with the GDPR just going to make it plain illegal for European data controllers to put their data on US owned servers?

    • The problem is that it isn't just US owned servers. The US authorities also believe that any servers owned by the subsidiaries of US companies are also fair game. Microsoft recently tried to fight having data stored in Ireland, owned by Microsoft Ireland, being included in a search in the US.

      So this act will include servers in Europe owned by European companies that have to follow the GDPR just because they have an American parent company. The companies are going to do some creative working in order to brea

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @08:21PM (#58206078) Journal

      In a word, no. There could be some concerns in some cases, but generally not an issue.

      The Cloud Act relates to what a warrant or subpeona may reach, and doesn't change anything - it just affirms what existing law, stating explicitly what had been implicit.

      It says that the pre-existing power of US courts to order US companies to turn over data material to a case cannot be thwarted by the US company stashing the bits on disks which are physically overseas. That was already a bit of a "duh, no shit" to anyone who has studied law, but Congress saw fit to state it explicitly.

      GDPR doesn't say you can't comply with a subpoena or warrant. It explicitly says you can comply. So no problem, there, no conflict between Cloud Act and GDPR, generally.

      The one wrinkle is that GDPR says when you send data to another country, one of two things needs to be in place

      A mutual legal assistance agreement
      Or
      The other country has approved privacy law

      The US has both. A new data privacy safe harbor agreement with the US was approved by the EU in 2016, after the previous one was found lacking. We also have a Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement (MLAA).

      There could be cases, however, in which a subpoena is issued which doesn't comply with the MLAA. Then one could argue complying with that particular subpeona could violate GDPR. Except we ALSO have the 2016 safe harbor agreement, so the MLAA isn't actually necessary anyway.

      So in rare cases you could argue that there might be a conflict, but you'd probably lose that argument.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ... we need some way of obfuscating data with secrets that are not stored on the cloud provider ... we could call it ENCRYPTION.

  • Say it ain't so!!!

  • by jtara ( 133429 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @07:16PM (#58205870)

    So, just make it impossible for even the vendor to read the (unencrypted) data. The most the vendor could do is hand over encrypted data, leaving authorities to try to decrypt it without the key. Or try to force the owner to give up the key.

    One such new offering is IBM Hyper Protect DBAAS:

    Hyper Protect DBaaS: the evolution of cloud databases [ibm.com]

    Getting started with IBM Cloud Hyper Protect DBaaS [bluemix.net]

    IBM® hosts your databases in a highly available and secure environment:

    The underlying technologies prevent IBM or a third party from being able to access your data.
    The IBM Secure Service Container technology protects the system via a tamper-proof environment. Access to the system is restricted and is only enabled through well-defined RESTful APIs.

    Data is encrypted at rest and in flight.
    The system hardware, the system configuration, and the database setup ensure high availability.

    BTW, this doesn't run on Intel hardware. It runs on IBM Z hardware, on dedicated cores per instance, which should minimize the potential for Spectre-type attacks.

    IBM is rolling this out aggressively. How aggressively?

    For now, they are handing out well-provisioned Postgres (8G memory, 80G data) and MongoDB (8G memory, 40G data) experimental instances for free.
    Only reason I am not taking them up on this is that I know we won't be able to afford the price, once it is not free. I'll stick with out 1G memory Databases for PostgreSql instance for our little educational app.

    Hyper Protect DBaaS (pricing) [bluemix.net]

    Not an IBM shill. Just happy to not be drinking the AWS kool aid.

  • They're not a threat. They're competition.

    • Nope. He does not hate China. He is just using them hoping to take attention away from his treason.
      HOWEVER, he was doing the right thing with CHina. We will see what happens down the road. I suspect that his deal with China will be a joke and a half, and fix nothing.
  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday March 02, 2019 @07:26PM (#58205900)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The EU wanted EU nation data kept in the EU for "privacy" and law enfacement on speech, laws on who can publish.
    No going to a low cost and much better US site to sell back into the EU.
    The USA said that was a new trade barrier put up by the EU to keep out low cost US cloud products and services that should be able to have equal and fair access to EU markets.
    That a US company should be able to bid equally for any EU nation/gov/mil project from the USA as a secure US cloud service.
    That the US cloud produ
  • What's stopping the EU from taking the position that they have similar access to users data stored on American servers? Google/Facebook provide services to Europeans, Europe has the right to access their data to support 'investigations'.

    First of all, I don't see any definitions of the extent of the US law. Does it only apply to the data of US persons in support of a US investigation? Then I don't see a problem with granting the EU the same sorts of access to EU persons for the same reasons. Nowhere is it s

  • That law is a prime example of slippery slope. The USA controls a lot of Internet resources and to make reaching laws gives other countries precedence to do exactly the same and now we just have clouds that don't pass territorial lines. Granted the spying was most likely happening anyway since nobody can trust their own country let alone each others countries anymore. At least though we didn't have a law saying we're going to f'n spy on you no matter where your data is.

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