The final Memorandum...
... All your data are belong to us.
European ministers said on Wednesday they are ready to negotiate a new cybersecurity law with the European Parliament and Commission. The proposed Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive would force operators that provide essential services (such as energy, transport, banking, and healthcare) and key internet enablers …
That would include manufacturers of routers with open access as the default? Perhaps also pre-installed operating systems with known vulnerabilities? My thinking is that Google et al are right in that they shouldn't be included. They are after all, like the rest of us, basically transient users taking advantage of current internet protocols and not actually essential. But I would argue that the real enabler is your operating system, or at least the networking protocol stack part of it. In any case I really hope that the European ministers have some basic understand of what the internet actually is. The fact that they were even looking at Google, Amazon, and Ebay, doesn't give me much hope.
... reminds me of my continual beef about films set in space - why the hell do all the spacesuits have lights in them directed at the wearers eyes?
I know the cinematic reason (we've paid a fortune the the actor involved so we damned well want them to get plenty of face-time) but really? Do they not care about reality in cinema?
Hang on, I think I've just answered my own question. Carry on, nothing to see..