Dark Clouds - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 153

was questioned, however, especially by privacy advocates, when later that
day the EU reported that it would loosen its data security requirements,
thereby easing the ability of American companies that make heavy use
of the cloud to expand into European markets (Fontanella-Kahn and
McCarthy 2013). For privacy proponents this was a major step backward
because establishing a uniied privacy policy for the twenty-seven-nation
body that included heavy ines for failing to secure explicit consent from
users before processing and using their data, as well as incorporating a
“right to be forgotten” for online users who want to be erased from the
web, would signiicantly strengthen privacy protection in the EU and
worldwide. Eager for opportunities to expand economic growth, leading
EU nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, appeared to
toss in the towel on strong privacy protections in order to advance a free
trade agreement with the United States. But further turmoil broke out
when Edward Snowden's revelations about massive global surveillance
by the NSA, including across the EU, led to renewed calls to strengthen
data privacy in the EU cloud (Bryant 2013).
One reason why the European Commission has sought its own data
privacy regime is that U.S. legislation could violate the privacy of EU citi-
zens. The USA PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Amendment Act (FISA) give the U.S. government enormous leeway to
collect information on people without requiring a warrant based on prob-
able cause. The pursuit of global markets by American companies using
cloud computing, including, for example, Google's cloud mail service
Gmail, draws foreign citizens into their orbit. Consider a concrete example
from Canada. Gmail earns revenue by selling advertising to companies
that target ads to users based in part on the content of their emails. That
in itself troubles privacy supporters. In order to expand into new markets,
Google has been offering deals to organizations as well as to individu-
als. Scrap your current internal email system, goes the company's pitch,
eliminate the labor costs incurred by your IT department to manage
an internal system, join us in the cloud, and slash your IT budget. That
pitch has been made to countless organizations, including Toronto's York
University, which was fully prepared to accept Gmail in the cloud, along
with its advertisements, in return for help meeting the iscal crisis that,
like most other public institutions, the university faces. The ly in the
ointment was a presentation by the Canadian Association of University