Current Events > The U.S. CLOUD Act and the EU: A Privacy Protection Race to the Bottom

(+) Yeah! (+)

EU proposalscoupled with the U.S. CLOUD Actsignal a potentially dangerous and uncoordinated race to the bottom. The principle of territoriality has provided an important mechanism for maintaining privacy standards in a world where data is increasingly available from multiple sources operating in multiple locations around the globe. Although territorial protections for privacy were being litigated before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case United States v. Microsoft, before the CLOUD Act, U.S. officials could not ignore local privacy safeguards when seeking access to data hosted in a foreign state. (Just last week, the U.S. Department of Justice submitted a motion to the court to declare the case moot, according to a recent report by The Irish Times.)

Similarly, EU law must currently respect U.S. privacy safeguards when seeking to access content stored by companies in the United States. Both initiatives are willing to jettison the principle of territoriality and the foreign privacy safeguards that accompany it: the U.S. CLOUD Act allows U.S. law enforcement to ignore EU privacy protections, while the EU proposals, if passed, ignore U.S. privacy protections regarding access to content stored in the United States.

In addition, U.S. law enforcement agencies (from local police to federal agents) can now compel U.S. and foreign technology[1] companies to disclose communications data of U.S. and foreign users that is stored overseas, regardless of the datas physical location, potentially bypassing the countries privacy and data protection laws. Permitting the U.S. access to data which can be located anywhere sets a dangerous precedent for other countries, who are likely to demand similar access to data held in the United States. Such expansion of U.S. law enforcement power breaks the principle of territoriality, the core component of international law, and will produce a domino effect of information requests that overstep responding countries privacy safeguards.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/us-cloud-act-and-eu-privacy-protection-race-bottom

The US & EU already have rules that allow data sharing for serious crimes. This legislation should remove any need for a formal warrant (to overly simplify it) when data is stored in either an EU member nation or the US as a formality. Couple this with data sharing agreements and both governments obtain a method to bypass privacy laws on the book for their own citizens entirely- giving them unfettered access spy on their own citizens.

You shouldn't expect anything that you put in the cloud at this point to be private, it will soon be property of the state (and arguably is already). Unfortunately all modern mobile and desktop operating systems are integrated heavily with cloud infrastructure. Very few companies actually run cloud services without retaining encryption keys and as a result most modern cloud infrastructure is completely vulnerable to incursions on privacy.
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Kombucha posted...

You shouldn't expect anything that you put in the cloud at this point to be private, it will soon be property of the state (and arguably is already)

It 100% already is tbh, this just lets them "legally" claim it I guess, because... that makes a difference somehow.
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Funkydog posted...

Kombucha posted...

You shouldn't expect anything that you put in the cloud at this point to be private, it will soon be property of the state (and arguably is already)

It 100% already is tbh, this just lets them "legally" claim it I guess, because... that makes a difference somehow.

Yeah I completely agree..

I have trouble wrapping my head around why self described "libertarian leaning" republicans would rather make such a huge priority out of removing any semblance of a social safety net over protecting the privacy rights of their constituents. 99% of the time these politicians express privacy concern over government interference in private life by providing public services but turn a blind eye when the government is quite literally dismantling private life.

Edit: This is not to say both sides are not responsible.
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