In July Microsoft was the primary of the businesses to warn of the present state of affairs. At the moment, it revealed that america authorities and its intelligence companies might entry knowledge hosted within the cloud of North American corporations working in Europe. The personal knowledge of any person may very well be “consulted” at any time with out the necessity for people to be notified. Properly, after a month, Google is the primary firm to confess that it has been handing over the info of its European customers to the nation’s intelligence companies. The explanation, referred to as the USA Patriot Act.
What we now have earlier than us is a case of a conflict of legal guidelines between these which are ruled within the European Union itself and people of america. The Patriot Act is imposed on all corporations primarily based in america, that are obliged to behave above European legal guidelines even when working within the territory. The legislation imposed in america provides the correct to the companies to request and have entry to any private knowledge of the businesses, that are obliged to assign and never disclose to the customers the supply of this knowledge. It’s a controversial legislation that was established as a software to struggle terrorism, now transferred to the digital map.
After Microsoft’s disclosure of a state of affairs that “might occur”, Google is now the primary North American firm to confess this knowledge supply, a supply with out authorization or discover to European customers, primarily based on the success of the requests made by the US intelligence companies.
And what does the European Union say about all this? Though they haven’t but been manifested, it is vitally probably that there’s a violation of the phrases of the legal guidelines of the continent concerning knowledge safety, so the likelihood that an official investigation shall be opened is excessive. Within the case of corporations primarily based in america and working with their knowledge facilities in Europe (Microsoft, Google, Amazon …) they’re in a tough state of affairs. They’re because of the legal guidelines of their nation, however they work in territory the place their phrases of providers have to be modified.
It’s tough to think about that the European Union doesn’t take motion on the matter for the reason that laws requires corporations to guard the non-public info of Union residents.
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