Selling the Cloud Sublime - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 116

Lobbying helps organizations representing companies promote the
common industry interest. But this is sometimes a mixed blessing. Buoyed
by the success of their lobbying in the United States and with a bigger
stake in the global economy, tech irms, including cloud providers, began
lobbying the European Union (EU) for favorable treatment, including
more business-friendly privacy policies. Brussels (the EU's de facto capital)
is not as sold on cloud computing as is Washington, D.C., in part due to
threats the cloud poses to privacy and security, and its proposed policies,
especially on data protection, take a stronger position than those advanced
by the U.S. government. Brussels was also not happy about hearing from
the lobbyists of major U.S. tech firms and made its views clear. Specifi-
cally, the head of an industry coalition that is working to develop EU-wide
data-protection rules criticized U.S. tech giants, especially Google and
Facebook, for hiring lobbyists to pressure the EU to weaken its privacy
laws. Setting aside diplomatic niceties, Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the
Dutch Data Protection Authority, declared that European oficials were
“fed up” with U.S. businesses putting their corporate interests ahead of
what Europeans see as their fundamental rights to data security. Calling
out the U.S. government as well as its big tech irms, he maintained that
Congress would not be as tolerant if the tables were turned: “If such a lobby
from the European side were organized towards Congress, we would be
kicked out of there.” Americans, he insisted, simply do not understand that
for the United States privacy is a consumer protection, whereas in Europe
it is considered a fundamental human right. A German politician summa-
rized the extent of the lobbying pressure: “Throughout the last year there
has been a massive campaign from the side of AmCham [the American
Chamber of Commerce], which organised events throughout Europe and
met with many MEPs [members of the European Parliament] in Brussels
and Strasbourg. But now, since January when my report was published,
lobbyists, especially from Silicon Valley, have stepped up their campaign to
water down the EU privacy regulation” (Dembosky and Fontanella-Khan
2013). While the Obama administration, the American Chamber of Com-
merce, and lobbyists for the IT industry may succeed in forcing Europe to
synchronize its data-protection laws by paring them back to where those of
the United States stand, this is one case where lobbying can easily backire.
For some observers, major IT and cloud providers face an even more
signiicant challenge than opposition from the EU. Lobbying, they