

U.S. knocks plans for European communication network - nubbee
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/04/us-usa-trade-telecomunications-idUSBREA331W820140404

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sentenza
If that is against a trade law, then the trade law has to go.

Having the ability to easily spy on us is not a free market principle.

Also, you shouldn't try to gain goodwill by bullying tactics and strawmen. How
is this measure a tactic against American companies when it also explicitly
bypasses the United Kingdom?

They are speaking of keeping all traffic from continental Europe to
continental Europe within continental Europe, away from the NSA _and_ GCHQ.

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sschueller
"The United States on Friday criticized proposals to build a European
communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the
United States, warning that such rules could breach international trade laws."

I believe cooperate espionage is also against international trade laws. You
can't claim it's against the law if you have shown to completely ignore it
yourself.

~~~
AaronIG
Quite the opposite.

Many countries have national laws prohibiting cooperate espionage, but it's
not necessarily prohibited by international law absent a declaration of war.

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doesnt_know
I think building out national/region specific networks and services is a good
thing. I'd probably be more willing to use SaaS products if I could absolutely
guarantee that my traffic, personal details and my data never left my country.

Why? Because I actually have some chance of making the business accountable.
We have things like the _Privacy Act_ and _Consumer Guarantees Act_. Not only
that, but there is a massively smaller barrier to entry to do things like take
them to small claims court.

If a US based company sells my data or just hands it over to the NSA, I have
no course of action. It's just "fuck you, read the TOS". Even if those Terms
of Service literally go against established local laws.

Note that I'm not talking about content filtering or blocking international
traffic. Just removing the huge reliance on international services and
infrastructure, that doesn't have to mean cutting the cord.

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kwhitefoot
Unfortunately the Internet isn't a net in the sense envisioned by the
originators. It is mostly star connected hubs with a few backbone connections.
Building an actual network would be good for the end users but unfortunately
it seems that this sort of freedom is not what is being proposed. What we
should really have is end to end encryption under user control. Then it would
not matter what the route was but of course none of our political masters,
Merkel included, are willing to promote our freedom at the expense of the
freedom of the state to spy on us.

