Cloud Computing: Europe wants tougher data-privacy rules to deter American snooping

Grazed from The Economist.  Author: Editorial Staff.

WHEN senior European Union officials recently went to America to seek answers about Edward Snowden’s claims of wholesale snooping, including on EU institutions, they were told to mind their own business. Didn’t the visitors know how much spying was done by their own members? Britain, too, warned the European Commission that security matters were outside its remit. The Eurocrats’ only consolation is that the world’s spooks still think them important enough to be spied on.

Yet at least one person cheered the disclosure of PRISM, which helps American spooks collect information held by big internet firms such as Google and Facebook. “Thank you, America, for PRISM, which has helped us to make a very strong data protection law in Europe,” declared Viviane Reding, the justice commissioner, whose campaign for new EU-wide rules on data privacy has unexpectedly revived. Ms Reding is a loose cannon…

But this week she won a powerful ally: Angela Merkel. Two months before Germany’s election, the chancellor is accused of prevaricating, amid allegations of German collusion with American spies. Now she, too, wants “very strict” data-privacy rules…

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