But this is what confuses me. These intelligence systems are so integrated that it doesn’t really matter where the data is. Certain data on US residents is available to intelligence agencies here in the EU (well a few countries at least) and the reverse is true. These shared systems aren’t going anywhere so I’m not sure I understand the sentiments in this article.
Edit - I’ll also add that while the US doesn’t explicitly grant constitutional rights to non citizens the agreements between all these countries does govern how this data is used.
If my data leaks to a US server, the checks and balances you mentioned don't apply, because I'm not American. The US authorities are then free to misuse my data however they please, in ways that would be highly illegal if done to Americans.
> the checks and balances you mentioned don't apply
That is not true - you aren’t guaranteed anything by the US constitution but the agreements in place by these partner countries specifically govern how this data is handled. Again though... they are highly integrated systems addressable by agencies both here in the EU and in the US.
Those agreements do not guarantee anything on their own; they need enforcement by a human once slight is detected. And that leaves a non-zero chance that US is spying the data of foreigners going through their servers.
This is the hilarious part of American complaints over TikTok and China. It implicitly reveals the knowledge of such techniques used in practice (why is US fine with Facebook holding same position wrt. foreigners?)
EU would be wise to restrict American access to our information ecology. European Firewall can't come soon enough.
> EU would be wise to restrict American access to our information ecology.
When it comes to intelligence the opposite is happening - we are becoming more integrated with each other and the US. I personally think that’s probably a good thing. Our combined efforts encourage positive cooperation.
This is not only for "certain data on individuals", this is the case for all data.
The worst part is that US may demand that Amazon expatriate data from EU to US for US intelligence to get at it.
The source of this issue lies with the fact that US intelligence agencies have been caught in the past on industrial espionage and tapping EU government officials' data during negotiations.
And no - these intelligence systems are not integrated. UK intelligence has been half infiltrated by US and Russia(CIA and GRU run free in UK). Others have a very clear dependencies. There are only a few intelligence agencies that are truly independent - US, Russia, China, Israel and France.
There’s a difference in what tech considers integrated and what everyone else considers integrated.
The cooperative information sharing is not “take all of our information and do whatever you like”. It’s a case of “we have this info that is relevant to everyone else”.
But none of this actually matters in this context - as the issues with privacy isn’t an issue of intelligence gathering
But this is what confuses me. These intelligence systems are so integrated that it doesn’t really matter where the data is. Certain data on US residents is available to intelligence agencies here in the EU (well a few countries at least) and the reverse is true. These shared systems aren’t going anywhere so I’m not sure I understand the sentiments in this article.
Edit - I’ll also add that while the US doesn’t explicitly grant constitutional rights to non citizens the agreements between all these countries does govern how this data is used.