back to article Trump's lips sealed on surveillance, complains EU privacy chief

The US administration has been keeping schtum regarding President Trump's plans to adhere to promises made by Obama's government on how EU citizens' data would be protected from the NSA's mass-surveillance activities. Giovanni Buttarelli, the EU's data protection supervisor, has complained that his office is "waiting for a …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    "they have extremely professional people still in the administration"...

    Too bad they're slowly being replaced by Trump's cronies...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "they have extremely professional people still in the administration"...

      That usage of the word 'still'...

      Very subtle - I like it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "they have extremely professional people still in the administration"...

      Concern as to whether new administration will abide by Obama's promises...

      That's funny - expecting the incoming President to keep the "promises" of the outgoing President...

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    It's very simple. If the commitment hasn't been made it hasn't been made and the figleaf, such as it was, has ceased to exist.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Exactly. Struck down Privacy Shield and soon Washington will be full of companies execs trying to find someone with a working phone to call EU....

  3. John G Imrie
    Joke

    He hasn't called

    Well I'm not calling him, the bastard.

  4. Bryan Hall

    Obama's promises were worthless anyway. If they believed them, they were fools.

  5. heyrick Silver badge

    Concern as to whether new administration will abide by Obama's promises

    Oh come on. Trump doesn't even abide by his own promises, be just makes it up as he's going along...

  6. anothercynic Silver badge

    Simply assume that he won't

    That's the most prudent action at this point, in spite of him still having competent people in his administration. Until he is clear that he *will*, assume that he *won't*.

  7. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "the data transfers between Europe and the United States are so incredibly important we simply cannot abide by not allowing these data transfers to occur."

    FTFY

    It's time to require sovereignty. The US is never going to be trustworthy on this issue.

  8. kmac499

    Just get someone to whisper in his ear "Sign this and all Hilarys' e-mails will be yours"

    Back in the real world didn't he just sign an EO putting US citizens browser history up for sale.

    Plus with his America First policy ( excl Trump brand clothing knick-knacks and wives,), there is no way he will agree to EU (aka foreign) privacy principles.

    All Hail El Douché

  9. ratfox
    Megaphone

    I think EU's bluff has been called

    "No, we're not going to respect the privacy of your citizens. So? What are you going to do about it?"

    Really, the only thing that the EU can do is to declare it illegal to store EU user data out of the EU. I'm not sure it would be very useful, and I'm not sure the users themselves care a lot; but it's completely silly to pretend that the US are going to respect the privacy of EU citizens, when they basically don't even respect that of US citizens.

    That, or they drop the charade, and they admit that they are unable to guarantee the privacy of their citizens.

    1. Shane McCarrick

      Re: I think EU's bluff has been called

      Grand- build more data centres in Portugal, Ireland and Belgium- and have the lot of them route their traffic through Europe. We already warehouse most of our international stuff in Europe anyway- all we have to do by and large- is formally do so.

      As an aside- whatever happened to Microsoft and the case the US government brought against them- for e-mails stored on a server in Ireland? Is that still trundling through the US court system?

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: I think EU's bluff has been called

        "build more data centres in Portugal, Ireland and Belgium"

        It needs a bit more than this. They need to be run at arm's length to stop the sort of prying that was attempted against MS. And I think that is indeed still running through the US courts.

      2. veti Silver badge

        Re: I think EU's bluff has been called

        As an aside- whatever happened to Microsoft and the case the US government brought against them- for e-mails stored on a server in Ireland?

        Microsoft won. Eventually.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: I think EU's bluff has been called

      "Really, the only thing that the EU can do is to declare it illegal to store EU user data out of the EU."

      That's pretty well it. Insist on data sovereignty.

    3. lorisarvendu

      Re: I think EU's bluff has been called

      "Really, the only thing that the EU can do is to declare it illegal to store EU user data out of the EU. I'm not sure it would be very useful, and I'm not sure the users themselves care a lot; but it's completely silly to pretend that the US are going to respect the privacy of EU citizens, when they basically don't even respect that of US citizens."

      I wonder what the Trump administration would do or say if the EU refused to respect the privacy of US citizens? I'm sure the irony of it would be completely beyond them.

      [Blackadder] Baldrick, have you no idea what "irony" is?

      [Baldrick] Yes, it's like "goldy" and "bronzy" only it's made out of iron.

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "We've given them time"

    In the mean time, without any assurances and all, I hope that the data transfers have stopped, right ?

    Oh, silly me, I forgot. The US has everyone's balls in jars in the Ready Room on level -4 of the White House - if you do something they don't like, they squeeze until you get the message.

    The fact that EU citizens have singed up en masse to Facebook et al without a moment's thought to the privacy they have heard for years they are giving up does not bode well for EU governments having any nous to try and actually protect our data.

    At this point, Hell and handbaskets come to mind.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "We've given them time"

      I think there's two different levels here. Data given freely to US companies by people, eg signing up to Facebook, and data sent off-shore for processing without specific consent, eg IIRC was it Lockheed Martin who were given the entire UK census data to process?

      Neither are safe within UK law, but I'd be more concerned about large datasets being sent to the US without the data subjects consent.

      I still upvoted you though because it's the gradual "nudging" away from an expectation of privacy that has got us here in the first place.

  11. Tom Paine

    State Dept

    As they've fired most of the State Dept and replaced them with a scale model of Jared Kushner, I wouldn't advise him to hold his breath waiting for a response.

  12. Midnight

    It's just temporary

    It's just that nobody in the White House understands how the phones work. Once they figure that out, they'll be in touch.

    Now... It's pick up the receiver, then select a line... No wait, select a line, then press the speaker button, then dial '9' for an outside line? Or is it '6' for international calls, then '011'? No, use '9', but drop the '0' and dial --

    Hello? Is someone there?

    1. HausWolf

      Re: It's just temporary

      It's because the phones aren't in Russian.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's just temporary

      They could still try with a tweet...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who cares - we'll be out of this crackpot EU thing soon anyway.

    1. Hollerithevo

      Yes, those crazy Europeans!

      Wanting data privacy and all.

  14. John Smith 19 Gold badge

    A mad idea.

    Why don't the Europeans, y'know, call the US?

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: A mad idea.

      Because they said they'd call us! We don't want to look desperate here.

      Trump trumpets (pun intended) his l337 skillz as a Master Negotiator. If you go to him cap in hand, you should expect to be spanked until your buttocks fall off.

      The only language he might even pretend to respect is hardball. Declare Safe Harbor finished, give all EU companies six months from today to show that they've repatriated all their data and, so far as possible, destroyed all copies within reach of US authorities. Start the clock ticking. That's the next move.

      1. dm_dv
        Joke

        Re: A mad idea.

        Declare Safe Harbor finished, give all EU companies six months from today to show that they've repatriated all their data and, so far as possible, destroyed all copies within reach of US authorities. Start the clock ticking. That's the next move.

        It was already declared finished and the CIA was under a direct order from the last president not to hoard vulnerabilities and disclose them, so it's probably very enlightening for "Trump" and his cronies, that no matter what he or the former president instructs his special agents or spies to do, they do exactly the opposite.

        They're all in huge trouble, you see when you build up armies of Cyber warriors and cyber hackers and let them all run rampant and rough-shod over the law as it stands and declare that what they're doing is entirely legal, when it's far from it, then they build up an explosive situation as already expressed by other more distinguished hackers, whereby in the end the only people you find you've actually managed to hack into is yourself!

        This is not the first time all this kind of crap has happened you'd be foolish to believe thats the case, in fact back in the 90's they did something similar with Microsoft as a monopoly and loads of people went to Jail, so count onwards - only a few years an a load more of these arse-holes abusing computer science research are just as destined to go to Jail just like the last lot.

  15. dm_dv
    Thumb Up

    Operation Silver Fern ("oh look ma, bees!")

    Just typing in Vault 7 presents thousands of Internet denizens with news about how the contents of Vault 7 where redacted by Wikileaks to prevent proliferation of the CIA's cyber-weapons, yet a quick search on GitHub reveals those same tools are on-line to download in full and un-redacted version for any programmer to glare at, in other CIA news a plane touched down yesterday where the Secretive five eye's alliance are holding a meeting of Spies in new Zealand, with the new Zealanders apparently oblivious as to who is going to there meeting... Well you heard it here first, that a five second search reveals that person to be none other than "Scott Brown" from MA whom "President Trump" or the "Troll" according to "Richard Stallman" has nominated as his new ambassador to New Zealand, apparently he's a keen golfer, so when he's finished wasting tax payer's money and waffling about the benefits of insider trading by bypassing encryption on peoples phones via a glaring back-door that every single programmer can see and letting all the so called intelligence agencies glare at those same end users like a bunch of Pedophiles over there own camera - eating caviar, presumably he'll have time for a few rounds of Golf.

  16. dm_dv
    Joke

    9

    Nine times nine lives hath lived the Cat,

    And ninety nights are nine by ten,

    Nine back-doors in nine servers fat,

    Nine times hath pecked the Legal pen,

    So nine times nine I call to thee,

    Ninth of those nine, come thou to me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZOh-lxYadc

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