European Commission Outlines Steps To Restore Trust In EU-US Data Flows 75
hypnosec writes "The European Commission has outlined steps it believes will pave the way for restoring faith in EU-U.S. data flows following revelations about NSA spying activities under its PRISM program. The EC notes that spying on its citizens, companies, and leaders is unacceptable; and that citizens of U.S. and EU need to be reassured about protection of their data, while companies need to be reassured that the existing agreements between the two regions are respected and enforced. The Commission outlined a total of six areas that it believes require action including swift adoption of the EU's data protection reforms; making Safe Harbor safer; strengthening data protection safeguards in the law enforcement area; commitment from the U.S. for making use of a legal framework; addressing European concerns in the on-going U.S. reform process; and promoting privacy standards internationally."
They'll just continue spying anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
When we have flaps like this that occur, you know, something will change, and I expect we'll get some sort of announcement that will - that the Europeans can point to as a curtailment and as a change. But as time goes by, flaps blow over, and the permanent interests of ourselves and our allies reassert themselves.
Paul Pillar, 28-year veteran of the CIA [wbur.org]
Re:We have a reform process in the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
What, you mean the latest news about a four game suspension from the Seahawks isn't news, or Dancing With the Stars new season?
No wonder why most of the clued Americans end up reading Al Jazeera these days when 5-10 years ago, AJ was joked about as the "terrorist news network". Thanks to an earlier reference, dw.de is another decent source (although all the above have their bias, and one can easily see it in the way their stuff is phrased.)
On a realistic note, the Europeans have a valid issue about this.
There are diplomatic solutions (trust, but verify), but there are also technological solutions. One of those could be passthrough encryption in one country before data is stored in another, where if company "A" wants to store data in their home country, the data from country "B" would have to be encrypted in that country by a key only held there. Of course, there is a lot of room to compromise keys (key management is in itself a major undertaking), but done right, it isn't impossible.