French, German Leaders: Keep European Email Off US Servers

jfruh writes "In her weekly podcast, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she'd be discussing European email security with French President Francois Hollande. Specifically, in the wake of the NSA spying revelations, the two leaders will try to keep European email off of American servers altogether to avoid snooping. This comes as Merkel's government faces criminal complaints for assisting aspects of the NSA's programs."

Lest anyone forget

[cold fjord]

The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy Too [spiegel.de]
French officials can monitor internet users in real time under new law [theguardian.com]

And some of the reports of "NSA spying" were in fact NSA being given phone data from European agencies.

Let's be realistic.

[Arancaytar]

If you're sending an email from anywhere to anywhere, odds are that at least one or both of you are using an email account with one of the big US-based internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.). Or you don't even bother with email and use Facebook instead.

So your message is very likely to not only cross the Atlantic, but also get stored and backed up redundantly in several datacenters including servers in the US. This has nothing to do with internet architecture, just market forces and poor consumer options.

Internet routing only begins to matter to email security if your email account is hosted privately or by a local organization - and even then, you're better off securing the email by encryption than trying to compartmentalize a network that was designed from the beginning to ignore physical locations and borders.

Nice try Euros, but

[Adult film producer]

you're not gonna stop us from reading or listening to any of your conversations. We're the proud, the strong, and we own all of your communications :)

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