As a someone from Europe (Germany), I can say that this whole affair is definitely a public relations disaster for the US over here. In the beginning, I was really unsure if regular people who are not members of the tech community would become aware of this or if it was perceived as to much of a niche topic.
Well, I guess that question has been answered: Yesterday tagesschau[1], the biggest and most trusted evening television news show carried a short segment about it. Today I read that Merkel herself wants to bring this up at her next meeting with Obama.
I'm a New Zealander living in Spain. My circle of acquaintances here seem to be disappointed, frustrated, but not surprised about the recent Prism revelations.
I find myself yearning for a non-USA based alternative to Gmail, Facebook, et al, yet am resigned that the alternatives are currently so inferior that I'll stick with the compromised options.
It will be interesting to see the real effects though. How long will people remember about this? How much will it affect their actual choices? The US "brand" overcame so many scandals, I'm not sure this one will be different.
You bring up an interesting point. I would describe the effect of revelations of this kind on people in Germany as a noticeable jump in one direction on a sentiment continuum, if that makes any sense.
The generation of currently 25 to 40 year olds here have grown up in an extremely US-influenced cultural environment. Imagine that there is this magically interesting and quite progressive place on earth and they broadcast from there on all TV channels all the time. That's what it was like to grow up in the 90s in Germany.
Having grown up with a generally positive view of the US, the Iraq war was a decisive turning point for many people of that (i.e., my) generation. By the time Colin Powell presented his case before the UN, many Germans started to feel betrayed, because it seemed so obvious that an invasion was not the right thing to do (the GOOD GUY became a mere mortal). Older people that were familiar with the political games of the cold war might not have been surprised, but the young people definitely were. Since then for many Germans, the attitude towards the US is quite ambivalent. It is possible that this in some situations leads to unfair highlighting of wrongdoing on part of the US, but I'd say that by and large the effect is primarily that there is now interest in good news and bad news about the US.
Add to that, that many Germans feel extremely uneasy about intelligence gathering in general (think STASI), and you have a reason to assume that, at least in Germany, this thing will linger in the hearts and minds for a while.
It has to be noted, however, that this also means that the reaction in Germany cannot be generalized to the rest of Europe.
Agreed that this aspect will be interesting to watch. What I find interesting are that people understand "treason" when someone in the intelligence agency turns over state secrets to foreign powers, but since this guy turned over the secrets to "the people" (I know the Guardian isn't an organ of the citizens of the US but sharing this with US citizens was Snowden's stated intent) it does play more like "whistle blower."
Its kind of too bad it came out in an off year for elections though. Next year would have been better in terms of keeping it fresh in peoples minds just before they went to the polls. That said it will be question #1 I'll be asking congressional candidates next year, "What do you intend to do about the overreaching of the Executive Branch and the Intelligence agencies?"
It might be forgotten but I'm sure it will add to the increasingly negative view the rest of the world has of America. It seemed less negative once the Bush administration ended but things like this could restart the negative opinion.
Here in Belgium it's brushed up as an Obama blunder and an american-only problem that only affects social networks (aka facebook). Online press gigles about pictures of Obama looking at computer screens.
Actually Bjorn Soenens, the "America watcher" for the largest Flemish television station VRT, went out of his way to say that this is not the political responsibility of Obama.
I'm sure this seems strange for Americans reading this, but that's how Belgian state television goes. Bjorn Soenens is somewhere to the left of MSNBC.
Dutch press reported very well... on Merkel's reaction.
Our own prime minister however pretends nothing is wrong, despite subsequent leaking from his own intelligence service.
And with a wonderful sense of irony he showed up few hours ago next door to our offices at a Google event focused on, wait for it: convincing the government to make better use of the internet...
But seriously, it is mainstream news here. Looking at the biggest prime time news show as I type this, major item.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to those global (US-based) cloud providers whose business strategy of poor profit margins in exchange for reduced costs of sale fair after this PR catastrophe. When it comes to the economics of this, the US is going to lose a huge amount of business due to this and potentially could in theory cause several businesses to go bankrupt. Since, government's are naturally fiscally motivated, I suspect the real way for Americans to complain is "with their wallets". In other words there is definitely an argument to be had for "We can't compete in the world's technology game because they don't trust our security. We can no longer innovate because of the government's haphazardness. Fix this US government." At least then when another terrorist attack happens in the US, the government can say "Well, you wanted your economics, so we gave it to you, but now you lack security. Pick one or the other."
This is going to be great for EU-based providers. They've been struggling for awhile to compete with Amazon, Rackspace, etc. I'd bet my money today on private, country-based cloud providers in EU. It will be nearly impossible for the US to dig itself out of this one.
I used to work for AWS and currently work for another large cloud computing company, and the words NSA and PRISM haven't been mentioned once in any of our companywide meetings this week.
I think the HN echo chamber is hyping this up more than the rest of the real corporate world. Large companies who want to move to the cloud already know the risks/rewards of hosting their data via offsite 3rd party companies. They aren't worried about some threat that the NSA is sucking up all their data, they are concerned about people breaking into their instances and stealing their customer data.
I work in information security for a large international corporation, and I can add another anecdote to back up yours. We've discussed the news informally as a curiosity, but there's no business drive to really do anything about it. We're not trying to hide our business operations from the government, we're trying to hide them from our competitors. You're absolutely correct that businesses care about security from civilians more than security from governments.
With that, the push won't happen unless our customers start demanding our cloud-based solutions are free from government snooping. In my employer's industry, I doubt that would happen. However, we have gained compliance with many industry standards that we don't necessarily need to be complaint with just because our customers demanded it. It's not the big businesses that will be demanding a change, it's the customers of those businesses. If enough customers care, things will change. If the customers don't care, then nothing will be done.
Well, if you were a large enough non-US company, and you had large US competitors - especially defense contractors - you would think differently. You would think about Echelon and industrial espionage. But I expect those kinds of companies not using foreign IT services already.
..it already is.
E.g. german companies with a data protection comissioners/officers usually don't store data outside EU coutries, since the data protection level is considered to be to low.
§4b Abs.2 S.2 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz prohibits conveyance of personal data outside EU borders if the interest of persons concerned outweighs it (mostly it does).
This PRISM-surveillance substantiates those concerns.
There are MLA, mutual legal assistance, which needs certain proof, and aim usually for foreign companies with data of interest to the US.
Servers from companies with a US-based headquarter belong to our new overlord, the US gov. and can be owned with a FISA-warrant (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – FISA 1978/2008) garnished with a National Security Letter (NSL).
If Amazon does their accounting the same way as Google/Facebook, then Amazon Ireland is likely their international HQ, and technically a different company than Amazon US. (For tax reasons; Ireland has a much lower corporate tax rate than the US)
And so I would really expect them to follow Irish, not US, law.
In school I've been taught that companies (and government entities?) are not allowed to keep your private information stored unless they have a valid reason for keeping it, and if they do, then you're allowed to know what they're storing and have the right to ask them to delete the data.
I remember reading an article that was posted here on HN about someone demanding Facebook to reveal the personal information they were storing of him, because IIRC, one of Facebook's servers is located in Europe, so they had to abide by EU's privacy laws. He eventually got a CD containing his personal info. It contained very limited data and not as much as I believe that they would have collected, but it shows that companies in Europe have to follow these laws.
I guess I suppose that by privacy laws you meant something different than simply the ability to be given the information collected about you. I was also coming at it from a governmental aspect versus private as well.
Ultimately the only language the US government understands is the massive fines and restrictions about to be levied against its corporations. Should Apple be operating in Europe for example? Would it be possible to levy a fine for each iPhone sold? Perhaps the tax authorities could take a different view on their profits...
In theory if someone knew they were subject to data being collected about them they could bring a law-suit against the companies involved for breaching data protection and privacy legislation.
The immunity that companies get from co-operating with the US government only covers them in the US, not in other countries.
But in practice the only time people know this information is being collected on them is when a company (i.e Twitter) refuses to comply with such an order.
If not providing the right browsers with a OS is a reason to enforce huge fines, then large scale espionage is a reason for much higher fines. Probably enough to fix the Euro crisis...
AS somebody living in the EU I'm more shocked the EU Par-lament(sic) are thinking this is new and ignoreing previous indications becasue not enough people went rabble rabble. WIth that the Press has jumped on this, forcing the consumer to be more up in arms as and fueling this to the extent that the EU mob have to play knee jerk reaction and supprise.
Seriously wonder if we should sack the politicians in the EU and just replace them with jornalists, as they seem to be more on the pulse of whats going on and have more control of the people.
But as no EU contry can control it's TAX then who or what gets at leaked data is no supprise.
Been enough details and facts leak out about this being in place before this PRISIM leak, still will only hurst USA based cloud providers and that is the only crux of it.
With the news out that UK and Dutch law enforcement have been fed data from PRISM, I really don't think anyone should take this feigned outrage seriously.
Members of the European parliament are elected directly by the people, and their mandate is only for work in the European parliament. Most of them have no insider knowledge of what happens in the ministries of individual countries.
To give some numbers: according to Wikipedia[1], about a third of MEPs have previously held positions in country parliaments, and about 10% in country ministries.
Well, I guess that question has been answered: Yesterday tagesschau[1], the biggest and most trusted evening television news show carried a short segment about it. Today I read that Merkel herself wants to bring this up at her next meeting with Obama.
[1] http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/sendung/ts42578.html at about 7:30