
EU parliament calls for Privacy Shield to be pulled until US complies - Sami_Lehtinen
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/05/eu-parliament-calls-for-privacy-shield-to-be-pulled-until-us-complies/
======
guitarbill
Max Schrems is great, and the hero we need. But I’ll believe it when I see it,
that the EU parliament dares to vote against such massive business interest.
GDPR was one thing, this is a totally different level.

~~~
simonh
Massive US business interests. Why should the EU parliament care about that?

There's an obvious solution for Facebook et al. Host their primary data
centers in the EU and move their US user data there, instead of vice versa.

~~~
beberlei
If privacy shield gets scraped, then I might have to switch my European
business to use only European third party services. At our company we use a
carefully selected number of U.S. services that we believe have the interest
of their customers and data at heart, but without privacy shield we might not
be allowed to use them.

The massive downside for me as EU business:

1\. Lost time and money having to migrate. 2\. Usually european companies
providing the same service are worse, leaving me and my customers worse off.

~~~
simonh
Oh absolutely. In other words, you'll be in exactly the same situation US
businesses are in, that rely on Chinese and other suppliers that are now
subject to tariffs. Politicians, eh? Hope someone wins this trade war soon so
we can get it over with.

~~~
madez
This is _not_ a trade-war issue. This is a long planned review of the Privacy
Shield regulation. Even if all trade conflicts ended, this would continue
because it is not about trade but fundamental rights.

~~~
davidvaughan
It is possible that the resolution gained more votes because of the trade war.

In general, Members of the European Parliament have less understanding of
business and trade than businesspeople and traders, and in my view[0] tend to
follow their emotions more in those areas.

Some also have a streak of anti-Americanism, in varying degrees. As the heat
increases, this sort of resolution may occur more frequently.

I'm sceptical of the notion that MEPs all voted according to their devotion to
fundamental rights.

None of this means that I believe pursuing the resolution into legislation is
a bad or a good idea. I'd have to see (and understand the consequences of) the
proposed measure.

[0]This is an impression; I have no empirical data

~~~
Angostura
> I'm sceptical of the notion that MEPs all voted according to their devotion
> to fundamental rights.

This is what it comes down to, your disbelief that MEPs could have a genuine
interest in their constituents' privacy.

~~~
ferongr
It's the rational belief to hold.

~~~
Certhas
You can't just claim a position is rational just because it is cynical.

~~~
Nasrudith
It seems like a sadly reasonable assumption given past behavior and their own
spying and loopholed cooperation.

~~~
simonh
So you don’t think passing GDPR and the previous data protection legislation
going back decades, and enforcing them counts as evidence? I’m sorry, that is
a bit snarky, but the EU has been pushing strongly in this direction for a
long time and it’s been perfectly apparent it was going to come up hard
against the US on this.

~~~
Silhouette
_So you don’t think passing GDPR and the previous data protection legislation
going back decades, and enforcing them counts as evidence?_

Sure it does, but so do all the loopholes they wrote into those laws so EU
member states could continue their own surveillance programmes and data
seizure powers, and for that matter all the then-illegal spying programmes
that were retrospectively legalised when Snowden et al brought them to light.
Let's not pretend the EU and its members are whiter than white in this area,
nor that the EU is above attacking the US tech sector through non-technical
means.

------
kodablah
> The parliament is also calling for “evidence and legally binding
> commitments” to ensure that data collection under FISA Section 702 is not
> “indiscriminate

Ha...this I doubt will ever be provided. And if it is provided, will it be
seen by the citizenry? They're either going to have to cave on the "no
indiscriminate collection" requirement, accept an invalid definition of
"indiscriminate" or "collection", or flat never re-agree to the agreement.
Because, sadly, indiscriminate collection of data isn't stopping.

------
stickfigure
I don't see how this can possibly end well.

I live in the US; I have many friends in Europe; how exactly is
Facebook/Google/etc going to separate our data geographically while still
displaying it in our feeds/inboxes/etc?

There really seems to be only one realistic endgame: The end of the
multinational corporation. Pick a jurisdiction, keep your servers & employees
inside, and tell the rest of the world to get soaked. If Europe really wants
to control their citizen's data, they're going to have to start firewalling,
China-style.

I'm guessing privacy advocates imagine the world will homogenize on a set of
Euro-compatible policies and everyone will live happily ever after? That seems
far less likely than a set of mutually-incompatible enforcement regimes, like
we already see with China and Russia.

So what does Facebook/Google do? Disallow friending/email/communication across
political boundaries?

~~~
tareqak
There is another endgame that I will concede is considerably less likely to
happen, but I will maintain remains possible: the end of the modern-day
nation-state.

My evidence for this claim? Very few nation-states if any are growing as fast
(in terms of net worth) as the largest multinationals, but the multinationals
are still relatively agile (read as able to mobilize their strength behind a
common agenda). Sure at the moment, the largest multinationals have only as
much net worth as some of the poorest countries. However, look at how cities
and states try to out compete each other in order to have companies like
Amazon and Foxconn set up their headquarters. How soon will it be until
countries start competing with each other for something similar (building your
next regional data center in EMEA? here are the contenders). If the
multinationals really wanted to milk it, then they could totally make a game
show out of it à la Eurovision.

~~~
supercanuck
then who would monopolize violence in that scenario? What stopping us from a
might is right type world?

~~~
tareqak
1) The multinationals of the future. 2) Time, insufficient money in the
present-day, and regulations/political will.

~~~
pmontra
States partition the surface of the world and each person withing their
borders is subject to their law (even foreign people passing by.) They have
exclusive access to people.

Multinationals don't have borders and don't have exclusive access to people
and they don't (currently) wish to because they sell different products and it
would be pointless for them and for people to be able to buy from only one
company.

So that endgame would work only if multinationals take over and rule the world
together. That happened in Continuum
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_\(TV_series\))
a Canadian dystopian sci-fi TV series.

------
mehrdadn
Kind of a tangent (secant?), and this is a rather broad discussion topic, but
is anybody else also worried that the EU is going to lose some of its teeth
with Brexit and such coming up? I'm wondering how all these regulations will
play out in the next few years if members decide the EU isn't serving their
interests. Will serious enforcement take place, or not? Because if not, it
seems likely to me that companies might try to "wait it out" and avoid full
compliance with regulation for a while, to see what happens.

~~~
ealexhudson
No; if anything, they will gain teeth. For many years, the UK has been a
strong influence in a variety of directions (pro-swpat, for example, but often
anti-regulation), many of which were not well-aligned with their continental
cousins.

The EU27 are better aligned without the UK, and will move forwards more
quickly in many areas the UK would have held them back. Ongoing integration is
very much still the plan.

In the meantime, the UK will have to stay very close to EU rules in order to
continue to trade with its largest market. However, it already has little/no
say in future rules, and that will stop altogether in March.

~~~
mehrdadn
Thanks! But note that by teeth I meant the ability to enforce, not the ability
to legislate. I expect the more countries leave or lose interest, the easier
it is to legislate, but the less leverage they have for actual enforcement, so
I'm wondering how that balances out.

~~~
pjc50
There's no sign of anyone else leaving yet.
[https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-support-increases-in-
euro...](https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-support-increases-in-europe-
continent-but-also-exit-referendum-support/)

If any other country was going to do it, it might have been Greece during the
financial crisis, but ultimately the same pressures apply: no country can pull
up the drawbridge. Dependency on trade, investment, and migration of skilled
staff is the backbone of a modern society. And leaving the EU does not make
Europe go away, it just removes that country from the decision-making process.

~~~
vidarh
The only thing, I think, that might change this, would be if the UK against
all odds manages to make Brexit successful. I personally don't think there's
any chance of that, but _if_ that were to happen, anti-EU sentiments elsewhere
in Europe might grow. I think the reverse is more likely: That Brexit will
serve to firm up EU support even more once the full effects become clear... I
live in the UK, so I hope I'm wrong and that things will work out ok...

~~~
jarfil
Ever wondered why the other EU countries didn't make much of a fuss over
Brexit? It's because the UK had many privileges from the times when it was
needed to establish the EU... and then it didn't even join the Euro. The UK
has been an entry point for English speaking businesses into the European
market, but it kept all the benefits from that behind an exchange barrier,
which is not in the interest of the rest of EU countries. Now, many of those
businesses will leave the UK and establish operations in the EU-Eurozone
proper, directly contributing to strengthening the Euro instead of the GBP,
which will become a further incentive for countries to stay in the EU.

As for the UK, there are other ways for it to survive and even thrive, but
whether it will be good or not so much for most of its citizens, remains to be
seen.

~~~
pluma
IOW Ireland is looking increasingly appealing.

------
pluma
Well, this was completely predictable. Privacy Shield seemed extremely flaky
considering how suddenly Safe Harbor was shot down. I hope most European
companies were smart enough to drop hard dependencies on US companies for
privacy relevant data during their GDPR audits.

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wemdyjreichert
This is, yet again, the EU trying to legislate for the whole world.

~~~
foepys
Well, considering the US is invading and bombing counties all over the world
for various reasons, the EU way is a bit less aggressive, don't you think?

I also never understood why Americans think that is bad. The EU is making
their market less attractive, so shouldn't Americans be happy about that?

~~~
pitaj
I'm not happy when the liberty and quality of life of foreigners is damaged.

~~~
plopilop
As a European, I'm quite happy the EU wants to protect my personal data from
being arbitrarily raided over without any warrant by your government for the
simple crime of not being American, but thank you very much for your concern.

~~~
pitaj
I'm not happy with any government surveillance, regardless of origin or
target.

~~~
Filligree
Then I'm glad you agree that this resolution is a good thing.

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zavi
Place your bets: how many years til EU kicks Fb/Google/Amazon out of Europe?

~~~
jarfil
260, give or take some.

The EU has no interest in kicking anyone out, for as long as they pay taxes in
the EU.

