Europe Aims To Regulate The Cloud

In a recent speech, Cameron F. Kerry, the general counsel of the United States Commerce Department, said: “It would be a sad outcome of the surveillance disclosures if they led to an approach to Internet policy-making and governance in which countries became a series of walled gardens with governments holding the keys to locked gates.”

“But that is where we will end up if all data has to stay on servers located in the nation in which a citizen lives or where a device is,” he said. In his view, the regulation might restrict the flow of information among citizens, as is the case in China with barriers that are called the Great Firewall. “The digital world does not need another Great Firewall — in Europe or anywhere else.”

Anna-Verena Naether, policy manager for DigitalEurope, a trade group of international technology companies, including American and European giants like Apple, Microsoft and SAP, said, “We have to make sure it doesn’t lead to a Fortress Europe approach.”