For instance, any service that handles health data absolutely cannot have the data be accessible in a way, shape or form by american-owned entities, for any reason.
It's not hard to imagine that, as time goes on, these same limitations will be expanded to other types of decreasingly sensitive data.
And honestly, that's perfectly reasonable. The US government gives itself the right to systematically spy on everything going through US cloud companies. Precedent has shown it can and will use that data against the interests of its supposed allies, even for industrial espionage.
If the US says "every US company must give over european data to the government", then at some point europeans have to say "US companies can't have european data".
Taking this to the logical conclusion: This is the fault of US Intelligence Services for overreaching to the point where it impacts general trust in US companies, and should be solidly blamed on them for being legitimately untrustworthy and exploitive.
Indeed, a French website which keeps private information about its users must not - ethically, morally - use US services which are accessible to US intelligence agencies.
That is irrespective of any legislation or court rulings, it's just common sense.
Definitely USA. My government doesn't drone strike people based on communication patterns or disappear them to black sites without ever being put in front of a judge.
I'm sorry, but are we both talking about france here? The "coup d'etat and murder anyone in Africa that goes against my wannabe reboot of a colonial empire," or is it the "bomb Greenpeace ships in foreign countries" France? If we are being honest, the intelligence services of France have proved to be much less accountable and much, much less constrained by pretty much anyone. It's also completely willing to do the bidding of any corporation the French government's "dirigisme" deems worthy enough to assassinate a few Africans for.
The big difference between France and the USA is that the French people usually either passively or actively support them and do not see any problem with what they are doing and would much rather look at the evil Americans. It's not even a political issue, it's almost seen as a divine right.
That's literally one of the main reason macron has been popular: his wannabe bonapartist "great France" mindset (and even those who dislike him don't usually criticize him on that front) that involves crushing the ennemies of France, and a whole lot of illusions of grandeur.
It's also a country where the literal neonazi FN still gets 40% of the votes, but people still laugh about dumb Americans because they voted for trump. Keep in mind, the only reason we don't see more french droning in Africa is because they lack the ability to do so.
And I'm not American or French, but I've had a lot of first hand experience with the damage France is causing in Africa and I'm very familiar with French culture. Yet I'm almost always amazed by the extent of French grandstanding online.
I'm not worried about most people, I'm worried about the people that the USA does go after, because the USA usually goes after good people who rightfully criticized what they're doing.
Google's CEO has pretty much ZERO powers over me. The USA government is (largely) democratic and (mostly) obeys laws. But my government... is not the one I voted for and I trust it 0%.
Because I do not live in the West but in one of the great majority of countries with a corrupt, abusive government. The democratic governments of the West are the exception, not the rule.
Well, if I may nitpick, it's a federal republic rather than a democracy...
More to the point though, there was this study at Princeton U about the correlation between US government policy and popular opinion on a variety of subjects which found that public opinion correlates very poorly with government policy / legislation passed, but opinions among the very-rich correlate well. Can't remember the exact reference right now.
> and (mostly) obeys laws.
Oh, definitely not. It can well be argued that there is constant mass violation of the constitution. And regardless of this, the US is such a notorious outlaw on the international level that not only does it refuse to accept jurisdiction of the international criminal court, but has in fact threatened action against court staff if the court hears any case against it:
The effect you mentioned (democratic deficit) is also inversely correlated with unionization (which positively correlates with public engagement with government).
So it could be that the reduction in population median household income due to reduction in unionization (and increase in top earner profit / larger inequalities) causes an exacerbation of the effect, with the observation you mentioned.
> it's a federal republic rather than a democracy...
Germany is both a federal republic and a democracy and I would argue the the USA are too. Both countries ultimatively derive their legislation from the general populace and are representative democracies.
I've seen the claim you made several times, but every time I try to look it up I fail to understand it.
What is your reason to think a federal republic would exclude democracy?
Still waiting for those "pure tyrannies". Meanwhile every damn thing I am using in my daily life, from my car, computer to the furnace heating my house - was made by a corporation.
And I did live under communism, with absolutely zero corporations. Then I knew tyranny every day. And shortages.
Did Noam Chomsky live under communism by any chance?
The french service should expose user information to the French government either. If the government has a public warrant for that information, then opinions might differ about whether or not it is legitimate for the website operators to oblige.
As a US analog, I'm more concerned with my own government collecting data on me than I am about the Chinese. One of those has an entire ocean to cross to cause me IRL problems.
The issue would be, that the website developers / their management contributes to the issue, by enabling partier to do that spying. If no data was send to another party, then spying on that data is much harder and probably unattractive for most use-cases. GA data becomes valuable through collecting from many many senders.
While the people doing the spying are already doing something ethically very questionable, the person deciding what data is collected on a webservice can still make the decision to contribute to the problem, or be vigilant about data protection.
So you are saying the US intelligence agencies have some unfettered access to all of GA data? Or that it is sent unencrypted and intercepted in transit?
It's not the DNS calls or phone companies that are more to worry about?
If US intelligence wants to have access, they will, via their law, as far as I understand. They will require Alphabet to give the data, Alphabet will get it from Google, and that is it. No need to listen or intercept anything.
Best thing you can do is not to make use of GA in the first place, so that no such data of visitors of your websites exists in Google infrastructure.
I think your understanding of US intelligence and forcing companies into compliance needs updating.
First, it is exaggerated, which is not surprising in today's media and outrage climate. Second, things have changed since Snowden and the congressional oversight had been rolled out. Third, GA is not that valuable compared to other sources.
Your chief complaining would be better spent about how Google uses the data rather than intelligence agencies.
Also note that Google fights against overly broad intelligence / police requests and publishes data on how many they get and comply with.
For instance, any service that handles health data absolutely cannot have the data be accessible in a way, shape or form by american-owned entities, for any reason.
It's not hard to imagine that, as time goes on, these same limitations will be expanded to other types of decreasingly sensitive data.
And honestly, that's perfectly reasonable. The US government gives itself the right to systematically spy on everything going through US cloud companies. Precedent has shown it can and will use that data against the interests of its supposed allies, even for industrial espionage.
If the US says "every US company must give over european data to the government", then at some point europeans have to say "US companies can't have european data".