

Victory for tech giants on EU data laws - grej
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5ad18e46-3d8c-11e3-9928-00144feab7de.html

======
grej
TL:DR if you don't want to signup:

Google, Facebook and other US tech giants have won an important victory
against EU efforts to restrict the sharing of customer data after UK Prime
Minister David Cameron persuaded the bloc to postpone the introduction of
tougher privacy rules by at least a year.

The climbdown is a blow to advocates of stricter data protection standards,
especially as it comes amid an international scandal that has seen the US
accused of snooping on EU leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel
and millions of European citizens.

The delay will give US companies – as well as the Obama administration, which
has been frantically lobbying for the reforms to be watered down – the
opportunity to make their case more forcefully once the attention shifts away
from the US spy scandal, said some EU officials and privacy advocates.

“It looks like we won,” said an executive at a large US tech company. “When we
saw the story about Merkel’s phone being tapped and that 35 leaders’ phones
were also compromised, we thought we were going to lose . . . Britain’s common
sense prevailed.”

