A European Internet?

[Second Summer]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has lent her support to the idea of building out new European data networks to help keep Europeans' email and other data out of the hands of US spies.

About a planned meeting this week with the French president, Hollande, she said:

"We'll talk, above all, about which European suppliers we have that provide security for the citizens," Merkel said, speaking in German, "that they need not cross the Atlantic with their emails and other things, but we can also build communications networks within Europe."

Read more: Angela Merkel: Let US spies keep their internet. The EU will build its own (The Register, 17th February 2014)

Edit: I guess they will have to exclude the Brits from this "Internet", since the "special relationship" with the US is obviously very much a reality when it comes to sharing intel data.

 

[beancounter]

Such a think is possible with email, but not with websites, unless they restrict usage of only those sites with servers based, and completely controlled in Europe.

Unlikely to happen...

 

[Dedalus]

Spies = hackers. You put up a firewall - they will figure out how to break in.

 

[Yokel]

About a planned meeting this week with the French president, Hollande, she said:

Read more: Angela Merkel: Let US spies keep their internet. The EU will build its own (The Register, 17th February 2014)

Edit: I guess they will have to exclude the Brits from this "Internet", since the "special relationship" with the US is obviously very much a reality when it comes to sharing intel data.

Anything run by the EU wouldn't even have the checks and balances that the US constitution guarantees. The EU 'constitution' is nothing of the sort and the EU itself is fundamentally undemocratic and unaccountable. The Germans would run it but have to convince the French that the latter are really in charge; that is how the European Project has always worked.

 

[Second Summer]

Anything run by the EU wouldn't even have the checks and balances that the US constitution guarantees. The EU 'constitution' is nothing of the sort and the EU itself is fundamentally undemocratic and unaccountable. The Germans would run it but have to convince the French that the latter are really in charge; that is how the European Project has always worked.

Well, the US constitution only cares about its own citizens, so it doesn't take a lot to outdo that, and it only makes sense that European leaders want to minimize the amount of their data that goes through networks and services controlled by foreign intelligence agencies. Frankly, it seems a bit late and naive for them to discover this only now, in 2014. Also, I don't think what they envision is really a separate "European Internet" that they would run/manage, but rather European alternatives (run by private companies) to popular US-based services such as Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, Facebook. Just like Russia has a popular Facebook alternative known as VK.

BTW, I agree that the EU has fundamental issues - I voted against membership back in '94 when there was last a referendum in Norway.

 

[ledboots]

Fine with this American. I have a feeling the Internet is going to be more tightly censored and controlled by governments in many European countries anyway, and I'd as soon distance ourselves from that.

While we're at it, feel free to move the UN to another country and close our military bases overseas. We could use the money.

 

[Yokel]

It is not so much the 'governments' of European countries as those 'governments' are nowadays largely powerless, with the honourable exceptions of Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, the last remaining bastions of democracy in Europe. It is the EU which already controls the political agenda of the BBC and other state broadcasting corporations, restricting 'debate' so that certain issues such as the existence of the EU itself cannot be openly discussed. An EU-controlled internet would have the same level of censorship, more subtle perhaps than that in China, over search engines and websites to ensure that dissent would not be tolerated.