I'm as much for generating friction as anyone else. But I wouldn't pretend that keeping data in any country in NATO isn't akin to giving it to five eyes.
Basically the EU is creating a PR stunt that in theory could force them to enact some minimum veneer of standards and that PR stunt is going to have higher short term costs for the small private sector players than the large ones.
It is entirely possible the stunt will instead pay off for the other EU governments and against the privacy of their population by getting them invited further into the club.
>But I wouldn't pretend that keeping data in any country in NATO isn't akin to giving it to five eyes.
Collecting data which is routed internationally is a well documented method that NSA et al have used to skirt domestic law and grab/share the data. If you already live in country "C", and by statute your data must never leave country "C", then your data are more protected than if it had been sent outside the legal jurisdiction of country "C"'s courts.
I'm saying that no material facts have changed or were unknown by the governments before the safe haven and that I am skeptical that the case would have been heard at all without public revelation and interest.
I am also very skeptical that private data in Germany was or is any safer from the problems with the safe haven as far as data intentionally illegally shared with institutions in the US, not due purely to issues on the ground when defending the data in good faith.
Basically the EU is creating a PR stunt that in theory could force them to enact some minimum veneer of standards and that PR stunt is going to have higher short term costs for the small private sector players than the large ones.
It is entirely possible the stunt will instead pay off for the other EU governments and against the privacy of their population by getting them invited further into the club.