NSA-proof Euro cloud gang: Cool idea, bro... until it turns into MARKET-EATING beast The creation of a European "IT Airbus" could raise competition concerns within the EU, an expert has warned. Some German politicians and lobbyists have been pushing for some of Europe's technology companies to group together and create separate IT infrastructure from US-based or US-controlled systems. These calls have come in …
In the political sphere Snowden's 'revelations' are 'allegations' - and when asked politely on TFTP & Safe Harbor & the secret trade treaty the US said “Trust US…..”
In the crypto-scientific-academic sphere Snowden's ‘revelations’ shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is darkness & clouds & mirrors - so IETF is revising many things, post Vancouver conference.
Question for the commentards at GCHQ/NSA: should the trust framework for commerce on the interweb be purely politically led or purely crypto-academic-scientifically led?
Personally I think, FCUK competition issues - give us CLIENT SIDE HARD TRUSTABLE CRYPT0 that isn't obviously biased/warped/work-factor-reduced - or strike an appropriate balance?
They don't need to work on it... GCHQ is British, and we're in Europe.
GCHQ has been as active in undermining the basic design of security systems as the NSA has, expanding that to include any new European only system(s) is already in remit.
Existing intelligence sharing agreements already cover GCHQ feeding it all to the NSA.
When are the politicians going to ask someone who knows something about technology just how badly the actions of their intelligence agencies have completely fucked all technology security/privacy possibilities?
I don't see the problem if a European Airbus-like consortium would emerge.
It doesn't mean that European internet is "closed off", interconnection will still exist. Most or all US firms would still do business in Europe, European companies could still do business in the US, traffic could still flow between the US and Europe.
All it would do is provide an additional option for companies and individuals who like their data and local traffic to remain in Europe, within European legislation, controlled by European parliaments and with European oversight. For an increasing amount of organisations it was already becoming a legal problem to store their data on American servers, the NSA whistleblowing revelations have only intensified this.
It also wouldn't stifle competition. It is very hard to build a competing wide body aircraft manufacturer, it is not hard to build a competing webmail solution. If anything it would increase competition and choice by not making US companies the only viable solution providers.
For the same reason I see no issue with the German idea to route all traffic that has a German starting point and endpoint to remain within Germany. It won't mean Germans can't connect to servers outside Germany, it won't mean that people outside Germany can't connect to German servers. It is not closed off, just locally routed. Similar with the Brazilian desire to not route all their traffic through the US any more but create direct connections with other continents. It doesn't close anything off, if anything it increases connectivity and resilience.
"It also wouldn't stifle competition. It is very hard to build a competing wide body aircraft manufacturer, it is not hard to build a competing webmail solution."
Surely that is the point. It shouldn't be hard to build a competing platform, so why do a consortium of big European firms need to club together to do it? Surely they should all build their own and compete in a proper market.
Unless, of course, it is as hard as building wide-body aircraft and the market would never support anything but a single monopoly player. Or, actually the market is small because most potential customers don't care?
You've nailed the real motivation here, and it isn't concerns about privacy. Without a very organized effort by a group of European companies there simply isn't enough weight to change the US-centric nature of the IT industry, and it does need to change.
Europe is an secondary market for the majority of big IT companies. If you can make it work in the States you can bolt Europe on later and you've already established the direction of travel. It is much more difficult to start in Europe then go to the US. A big part of the Europe to US challenge is that there simply isn't a industry support/infrastructure in Europe. Individual countries have varying levels of success with that infrastructure, but EU wide, everything is too fragmented.
A unified group like this would eliminate some competition, but it would also add significant weight to Europes influence on the entire industry. Without a group like this the Googles and Microsofts can continue steamrolling over Europe as there's not enough power to stop them. In the long run such a group would be beneficial commercially.
Privacy might be somewhat improved as well, but not the State surveillance stuff, that'll likely continue as long as Europe has a deep relationship with the US.
Simple example - the Yanks spend a fortune on German cars because they have convinced themselves they are better designed, better engineered, and better built than Yank cars. If you buy a BMW in the States it's because you can afford a "better" car. Anyone in Europe buying an American car usually has to explain why they think it is better than existing European alternatives. But in software (and web-based SaaS), with few exceptions, European code is viewed by the Yanks not as Mercedes or BMW, but cheap Renault tat. Now, if the Europeans could actually write market-leading code to rival that of the US (such as SAP did with their CRM apps) then they could enforce their own ideas of security and privacy on the Yanks. But too much European code is "me-too" copies of existing US products.
The other problem is the European politicians have this reflex of insisting the only way to deal with US competition is to kludge lots of European companies together into unwieldy and unmanageable masses. This has been tried and has failed many times (the French plane industry in the Thirties, the British car and plane industries in the Sixties), yet they still cling to the belief that it can create a market force through sheer mass. The only success through this approach has been Airbus, largely because the sheer cost of developing aircraft had limited US competition. The European politicians need to understand that what is needed is BETTER coding, not protectionism, and then they can force the market to adopt the security and privacy measures they want.
> How is Europe going to build a "more" secure system when they don't build the chips or write the software?
Er, I think that's rather the point. What's stopping companies in the EU from building chips and writing software? If EU IT security is really an issue, I would think that any EU companies that can claim to be "US influence free" would have a marketable edge.
Anyone who thinks SAP CRM is an example of market leadership, well, I just feel sorry for them. Not as sorry as I feel for SAP CRM users though. In ERP, there SAP does well, but as a former SAP "power-user" (read: sufferer), I just say stay away!!
"The consequences would be less competition, a slowdown of the pace of innovation, and ultimately less progress and lower economic growth."
Ummm, how does setting up a competing company stifle competition and innovation? If anything multiple companies vying against each other increases all that. It also lowers prices over time and gives people a choice; never a bad thing.
"We need the exact opposite: a dynamic, open market environment, international talent, more young entrepreneurs and more ideas."
You got em. They live in Europe. Just like European car makers, the numbers may not compare to Detroit, but the quality surpasses anything the US can do. Proceed with this at full speed.
Historically, when several companies get together they tend to use their combined resources as much for stopping non-club members from participating in their markets as they do in pushing for innovation. Big groups also have a way of 'stabilizing prices' for maximum return. Think petrol. The market is artificial, but a few key players hold all the cards and small operators can't compete or even enter the market.
Will those things happen here? Don't know, but it is something to be wary of.
Not that I'm a fan of everything MS does, but the ability to dictate is an effect of competitive markets. Everyone cheers 'free and competitive markets' without looking at the inevitable outcome.
Sooner or later each industry will have participants that far outpace others in that industry and they will manipulate the market to better suit itself and make things harder for other participants. It would be crazy not to as it is your right to manipulate the market if you're on top of it.
It's also a good sign that things are working as designed. Capitalism can't actually support an unlimited field of winning participants, some have to lose or the system doesn't work. Roadblocks have to be constructed so innovation can flourish in getting around them. Entire industries have sprung up trying to work around MS. Firefox wouldn't exist if it weren't for MS keeping IE to itself.
I don't especially like the fact that the winner gets to dictate the future rules, but I'm also not sure what to do about it. Deciding who wins and how much they can win is the path to madness but letting everything run wild is no better of a solution. Finding that middle ground is what we're all struggling with right now.
"Airbus is a European-based airplane manufacturer formed by a group of European aviation companies in 2001"
The present corporate structure was formed in 2001, but Airbus is much, much older. The concept came together in the 60s, and Airbus Industrie was operating from the 70s, The A320 dates from the 1980s.
The EU already has tighter privacy laws than the US, which sometimes affect/influence US companies (like Google or Apple) that operate in the EU. Why not pass some regulations that NSA-tainted US cloud providers probably will be unable to qualify under, that take effect in say 2020 or so? The demand for EU privacy regulation compatible cloud services from companies wishing to do business in the EU would cause EU companies to spring up organically.
Doing this for airplanes makes some sense, because of the huge economic barriers to entry in that market, as well as economies of scale. Neither of which affect cloud computing.
".....Why not pass some regulations that NSA-tainted US cloud providers probably will be unable to qualify under, that take effect in say 2020 or so?...." Apart from such protectionism being against international trade laws, it would also not stop US companies simply creating European sub-companies as cloud arms, and since their corporate HQs would be in the US the European subsidiaries would still be effectively beholden to NSA requests.
But it also ignores the massive hypocrisy of such a stance - the EU governments are happy to use the intelligence derived from the NSA's (and GCHQ's) activities but want to pretend they are whiter-than-white, even whilst increasing their own national eavesdropping capabilities.
is probably part of the NSA ring.
European IT dictated by the USA-NSA is a lot better than EU IT dictated by EU because ... ???
Don't we have ARM & Linux in Urop' ... can't we set up foundries and get all the grey matter that went on working for the yanks back ?
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