Europe To US: Pass New Laws If You Want a Data-Transfer Deal (politico.eu) 42
The United States must pass new legislation to limit how its national security agencies access Europeans' data if Washington and Brussels are to hammer out a new deal on transferring people's digital information across the Atlantic, according to European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova. From a report: Speaking at POLITICO's AI summit on Monday, the Czech politician said the U.S. needed to create legally binding laws to provide European Union citizens' the ability to challenge bulk data collection by federal authorities in U.S. courts. The goal, she said, would be "to have legally binding rules, or rule, on the U.S. side guaranteeing this. It's of course the best and the strongest way to do that," said Jourova when asked if the Commission would accept a presidential executive order or would require new U.S. legislation to provide EU citizens with the power to sue over how U.S. national security agencies collected and used their data.
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it removes the ability to say I don't agree with you and I'm staying out of it so you can fail on your own and learn the hard way.
How do you figure it removes that ability? What you just said is literally what happens: if one doesn't agree, they stay out of the agreement and let the other side fail on their own. Countries walk away from trade negotiations all the time over things they disagree with.
I think there's a valid case to be made that countries use trade agreements to bully other countries into importing their policies, but I also have to acknowledge that what's good for the goose is good for the gander: it may be the EU tryin
Re:Selling out our sovereignty. (Score:5, Insightful)
it may be the EU trying to bully the US into adopting policies that favor them here
my understanding is the opposite of this actually: until now the US has been bullying EU citizens into being spied on by the NSA, and the EU is trying to break free from that.
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my understanding is the opposite of this actually: until now the US has been bullying EU citizens into being spied on by the NSA, and the EU is trying to break free from that.
So you are saying that a foreign intelligence agency shouldn't spy on people outside of its borders? I'm not sure that you quite understand what a foreign intelligence agency's function is. And bullying is a weird choice of words. The US intelligence agencies just did it. No bullying; no choice. When you spy on someone, you don't tell them that you are doing it. That's how a spy agency works; they spy on targets and try their best to not let the target know (this is both the hard and the important par
Re:Selling out our sovereignty. (Score:4, Interesting)
When you spy on someone, you don't tell them that you are doing it. That's how a spy agency works; they spy on targets and try their best to not let the target know (this is both the hard and the important part).
Actually, you are quite wrong. We have agreements with foreign nations for when we are spying on them. Germany, Dutch, etc all knew that we were doing it. In addition, we were giving 100% of the data to their local intelligence agencies.
Where we keep it quiet is when we spy on enemies from any soil. For example, did we catch Trump/his admin talking to Russia. Oh yeah, we did. We were NOT spying on Trump. We were spying on the Russians. The fact that Trump/admin are traitors and were caught by NSA is why a lot of that information can not come forward.
For the far right fascist here that will fight this, note the fact that FISA courts basically approved of what happened. Yes, they later on spoke that NSA should not be spying on Americans, but they did NOT attack NSA for finding information on Trump.
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EU nations willing allow America to do so because we regularly catch terrorists. In addition, we also share the information, INCLUDING ANY OF THE SPYING ON THEIR GOVERNMENTS, with their local spy groups. There was no bullying needed for that.
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It's not the NSA that this is concerned with, it's far worse: private companies.
The EU wants companies in the US to respect GDPR rights as a condition of allowing data to be transferred there in the first place.
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Re:Selling out our sovereignty. (Score:5, Interesting)
it may be the EU trying to bully the US into adopting policies that favor them here, but as often as not it's the US bullying its trade partners into accepting terms that are favorable to Hollywood, Big Tech, or other industries where the US has its strengths.
Actually, EU does its fair share of bullying and pushing for laws/regulations/trade deals that favor them.
Personally, I have to say that while EU/European nations will regularly do this in their favors, there are lots of times that I like certain aspects of the deals. For example, EU uses trade deals to get other nations to clean up and improve their own minimum wages, etc. That is important so that it not only levels the playing fields, but also helps EVERYBODY. For example, NAFTA and now trump's deals were PURE BS and designed to move every bit of manufacturing to Mexico. Why? Cheap labor, low environmental regulations, etc. NAFTA should have been used to improve the life of ALL of North America.
Re:Selling out our sovereignty. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every trade deal sacrifices some degree of sovereignty. The question with any deal is whether or not the benefits out-weigh the costs. Membership of the EU comes with many benefits that countries like Germany appreciate, whilst others like the UK have decided come at too high a price.
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whilst others like the UK have decided come at too high a price
Interestingly the UK actually spent more than it ever paid on to the EU before it had even left.
Now we have just done a trade deal with Australia that is great for them, but basically destroys our own farming. It's so bad the government is paying farmers to retire and sell their land. We had little choice though, as a weak little nation floundering by ourselves we need trade deals.
The Australia deal is worth 0.01% of GDP, well worth sacrificing our ability to grow food for, I'm sure you will agree.
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Seriously though, farming in the UK and Europe is a horribly inefficient joke. One side of my family were Dutch dairy farmers, and I've experienced the big dairy farms on Australia. Herringbone dairies are still the norm in UK/Europe. One person can milk a couple of dozen cows that way. In Australia with a rotary dairy, two guys can milk 250 cows before breakfast. You should be encouraging your farmers to become more efficient, or Australia will eat your lunch. Also, Russia has been hiring Australian
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Standards are extremely high in the EU, and for now in the UK. The standards in Australia are a lot lower, so even with shipping from the other side of the planet they can undercut our farmers.
The government promised no drop in standards, so the only option left is just don't do any farming anymore.
Re:Selling out our sovereignty. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate how all these trade agreements essentially remove control of from the people over their own country. it removes the ability to say I don't agree with you and I'm staying out of it so you can fail on your own and learn the hard way.
Firstly, this is not about a trade agreement it's about a data sharing agreement between the EU and the US. Secondly the EU are making a data sharing agreement conditional on the US to passing laws to guarantee that the data of EU citizens will be treated in the US like that of any US citizen is in the EU. That's basically just sticking up for your own, no more no less. So why don't you start thinking about what US government is doing with your personal data and that of other US citizens which European governments are not allowed to do in the EU under European law?
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the data of EU citizens will be treated in the US like that of any US citizen is in the EU
Not according to the article:
Many in Washington, though, grumble that European national security agencies are still able to access U.S. citizens' data via bulk data collection, while Europe now wants U.S. federal authorities to limit similar practices. While the Commission is negotiating a new transatlantic data pact, Brussels does not have jurisdiction over Europe's data collection practices as national security remains a national competence.
The EU wants protections for it citizens. But it isn't even in a position to offer the same in return. Why would any country agree to terms like that? The US should tell those idiots in Brussels to go pound sand until they're ready to get serious.
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the data of EU citizens will be treated in the US like that of any US citizen is in the EU
Not according to the article:
Many in Washington, though, grumble that European national security agencies are still able to access U.S. citizens' data via bulk data collection, while Europe now wants U.S. federal authorities to limit similar practices. While the Commission is negotiating a new transatlantic data pact, Brussels does not have jurisdiction over Europe's data collection practices as national security remains a national competence.
The EU wants protections for it citizens. But it isn't even in a position to offer the same in return. Why would any country agree to terms like that? The US should tell those idiots in Brussels to go pound sand until they're ready to get serious.
Note that the topic is whether or not European data is allowed to be transferred to the US, or not. Basically, the European data protection regulation (GDPR) gives a data subject certain rights. A data controller is not allowed to transfer the data somewhere else to avoid following the regulation and the data is equivalently protected. The EU court determined that a previous agreement, the EU-US privacy shield [bbc.com], was not sufficient. So this is not a discussion on Intelligence data exchange, but whether o
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Re: Selling out our sovereignty. (Score:2)
You don't need to trade with any other countries if you don't want to. Look at North Korea, they're almost totally cut off and they're doing great.
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Even the Chinese might disagree...
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Just put it in the treaty (Score:1)
Even if there was such legislation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
do you really expect USA national security agencies to abide by it ? Heck: they don't even abide by legislation that limits the data that it can collect about citizens of the USA!
Re:Even if there was such legislation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
do you really expect USA national security agencies to abide by it ? Heck: they don't even abide by legislation that limits the data that it can collect about citizens of the USA!
How about you start wondering why you and your fellow American keep freely electing representatives into office that do this kind of crap to the data that the US government collects about you citizens of the USA when supposedly 'unelected EU bureaucrats' are insisting on higher standards of what government can and cannot do with people's personal data than the politicians you and your fellow Americans voted for? At least you aren't doubling down on the dystopian surveillance society to stick it to the 'Euro scum' like this moron is doing: https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] so you already have a several lightyears long head start on this brainless bellend who ever he is. All you have to do is pressure your elected representative to make different voting choices in congress and failing that vote for somebody else.
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Re: Even if there was such legislation ... (Score:1)
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I thought bellend was some subtle reference to the far end of a bell curve of intelligence. Then I looked it up... boy was I wrong!
Oh, that's British Humour. There is a pub in London called the 'Three Bellends': https://www.joe.co.uk/news/mer... [joe.co.uk] For a nation that likes to voice its grievances by writing strongly worded letters the British can, on occasion, be uncharacteristically blunt.
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keep freely electing representatives into office
Ah. There are some credible doubts regarding that.
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Consequently they are beholden to these companies, not their electorate.
I don't say EU elections are always free from such unwanted interference but especially those in the EU parliament are more often representing the people, not large companies.
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do you really expect USA national security agencies to abide by it ? Heck: they don't even abide by legislation that limits the data that it can collect about citizens of the USA!
They actually do abide by the law... but they have exploited a loophole that Congress left in the law. Specifically, Congress didn't define "collect", so the TLAs decided to define it in a way that means, more or less, what most people mean by "examine". This frees them to collect (in the normal usage of the word) and store all the data they like, as long as they're careful to jump through the appropriate legal hoops before they examine ("collect", per their definition) the stored information.
Essentiall
Constitutional Amendment (Score:2)
Looks it's basically this. (Score:3)
So the way things stand at the moment, unless the US gives the EU commission some form of confidence that the data will not be captured by the intelligence agencies then the use of the standard contracts will have to continue which is difficult and costly because there will be no new privacy shield.
Unrealistic (Score:3)
The only way to secure the information of Europeans is to mandate the storage of the data locally, within the E.U. We've been trying to prevent this for over 20 years but in the end it's inevitable.
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