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GCHQ monitoring described as a 'catastrophe' by German politicians / PRISM affects health care media
GCHQ monitoring described as a 'catastrophe' by German politicians
Federal ministers demand clarification from UK government on extent of spying conducted on German citizens
Conal Urquhart and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 June 2013 18.03 BST
The German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said the accusations 'sound like a Hollywood nightmare'. Photograph: Ole Spata/Corbis
Britain's European partners have described reports of Britain's surveillance of international electronic communications as a catastrophe and will seek urgent clarification from London.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister said the report in the Guardian read like the plot of a film.
"If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement to Reuters. "The accusations against Great Britain sound like a Hollywood nightmare. The European institutions should seek straight away to clarify the situation."
...
"The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain," said Thomas Oppermann, floor leader of the opposition Social Democrats.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/22/gchq-spying-catastrophe-german-politicans
Federal ministers demand clarification from UK government on extent of spying conducted on German citizens
Conal Urquhart and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 June 2013 18.03 BST
The German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said the accusations 'sound like a Hollywood nightmare'. Photograph: Ole Spata/Corbis
Britain's European partners have described reports of Britain's surveillance of international electronic communications as a catastrophe and will seek urgent clarification from London.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister said the report in the Guardian read like the plot of a film.
"If these accusations are correct, this would be a catastrophe," Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement to Reuters. "The accusations against Great Britain sound like a Hollywood nightmare. The European institutions should seek straight away to clarify the situation."
...
"The accusations make it sound as if George Orwell's surveillance society has become reality in Great Britain," said Thomas Oppermann, floor leader of the opposition Social Democrats.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/22/gchq-spying-catastrophe-german-politicans
In a similar, but non-governmental, vein
How Edward Snowden and PRISM affect health care social media
T.J. Derham | Social media | June 19, 2013
So now the penny drops, and we all know why GCHQ has long refused to allow government departments to store information classified at "Restricted" or above in US cloud computing services. But what about the private sector? Well, Edward Snowden's revelations are now causing something of a crisis in the IT industry as its international customers start thinking through the implications. In the past week I've heard of big firms reconsidering plans to spend hundreds of millions on services that would have been hosted in the US, as they start to realise that US agencies might snoop on their data and use it to tip off their competitors. US service firms now fear this will harm their growth, and it's not just Microsoft and Google; many other companies such as Amazon, Salesforce and Rackspace could lose out.
But how will the Prism affair affect ordinary middle-class people in Britain, like doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers? Surely we're of no interest to the analysts at the NSA?
Yet some of our patients and clients surely will be. As well as being an academic, I also do occasional expert-witness work, mostly in computer forensics. A few years ago I had a defendant in a terrorism trial as a client. I cannot use a US webmail service if it will leak attorney-client conversations straight to the prosecution. Perhaps for such cases I'd better get on a train to London for a conference at the defence barrister's chambers, as we all did years ago. But as the Legal Services Commission is reluctant to pay for that any more, perhaps I'll have to have a separate email service for sensitive cases.
But you can't always tell in advance which cases might be sensitive. A client I recently helped to get acquitted of a rather dubious fraud charge turned out to be a refugee from a South Asian country whose secret police work closely with the Americans. This emerged only after I'd accepted instructions. So I'd better have a non-US service for all client work. But how can I tell which service to use? For years, BTinternet was outsourced to Yahoo. Where can I find a service that will guarantee to keep my confidential data in the UK? The information commissioner can't help: data-protection law has "safe harbour" loopholes designed to allow US service companies to pretend that they follow European law, even when their own government won't let them.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/20/nsa-surveillance-doctors-lawyers-clients-snooped?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
T.J. Derham | Social media | June 19, 2013
So now the penny drops, and we all know why GCHQ has long refused to allow government departments to store information classified at "Restricted" or above in US cloud computing services. But what about the private sector? Well, Edward Snowden's revelations are now causing something of a crisis in the IT industry as its international customers start thinking through the implications. In the past week I've heard of big firms reconsidering plans to spend hundreds of millions on services that would have been hosted in the US, as they start to realise that US agencies might snoop on their data and use it to tip off their competitors. US service firms now fear this will harm their growth, and it's not just Microsoft and Google; many other companies such as Amazon, Salesforce and Rackspace could lose out.
But how will the Prism affair affect ordinary middle-class people in Britain, like doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers? Surely we're of no interest to the analysts at the NSA?
Yet some of our patients and clients surely will be. As well as being an academic, I also do occasional expert-witness work, mostly in computer forensics. A few years ago I had a defendant in a terrorism trial as a client. I cannot use a US webmail service if it will leak attorney-client conversations straight to the prosecution. Perhaps for such cases I'd better get on a train to London for a conference at the defence barrister's chambers, as we all did years ago. But as the Legal Services Commission is reluctant to pay for that any more, perhaps I'll have to have a separate email service for sensitive cases.
But you can't always tell in advance which cases might be sensitive. A client I recently helped to get acquitted of a rather dubious fraud charge turned out to be a refugee from a South Asian country whose secret police work closely with the Americans. This emerged only after I'd accepted instructions. So I'd better have a non-US service for all client work. But how can I tell which service to use? For years, BTinternet was outsourced to Yahoo. Where can I find a service that will guarantee to keep my confidential data in the UK? The information commissioner can't help: data-protection law has "safe harbour" loopholes designed to allow US service companies to pretend that they follow European law, even when their own government won't let them.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/20/nsa-surveillance-doctors-lawyers-clients-snooped?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
