[Bert Hubert]

A European point of view:

"We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer entire governments and most of our own businesses to their clouds.

Not only is it scary to have all your data available to US spying, it is also a huge risk for your business/government continuity. From now on, all our business processes can be brought to a halt with the push of a button in the US. And not only will everything then stop, will we ever get our data back? Or are we being held hostage? This is not a theoretical scenario, something like this has already happened."

I can understand the risks. What's interesting is that many US companies also feel that way about European cloud services, in an effort to avoid having to adhere to the GDPR. Should every business adhere to strong privacy standards? Absolutely. I'm not defending it or suggesting it's equally justifiable. Regardless, the impulse exists.

These trends ultimately culminate in stratified national internets: technically connected internationally but in effect separated through different legal requirements and jurisdictions. (Some national internets are also separated by firewall or content filters - think China, for example.)

It would be nice to reverse this trend: one of the real benefits of the internet is that everyone is connected to everyone else. But I can also fully understand why Europeans (and particularly European governments) are worried about US policies and want to remain independent from them. There is a security and business continuity issue here, and they're right to de-risk their operations.

#Technology

[Link]