Germany, for instance, looks rather pro privacy at the moment. But I am pretty sure they'd be some of the first to follow the UK/US.
In the US we actually have a chance to push back on our rights and enshrine them constitutionally. For the US this must be the end goal of the discussion on the privacy and encryption discussion. Protecting and clarifying existing rights, 1st, 4th, 5th all apply here and the courts should uphold them in the face of the executive branch and commercial interests pushing invasion into normalcy.
If we fail to protect those rights and clarify their meaning in the 21st century the answer to the question "But where will you go" will be "there is no place to go".
Iceland, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico, Argentina, Israel, India?
The result of these kinds of policies is brain drain. The people you are trying to ban the actions of are both some of the most driven and outspoken in the world, and also some of the most economically desirable in the world. If you prevent them from investigating their pet projects in their homeland, they will simply go and do it in another country, because it's not an obstacle for them. There's a tonne of countries out there that would gladly roll out the red carpet for a tech exodus from the former commonwealth states.
Hungary is a borderline dictatorship. Ukraine is a war-torn mess, and then some. Mexico is one of the most corrupt countries, with little to no history of respecting individual rights. Argentina just nearly became a failed state on par with Venezuela (the verdict is not yet in on whether they've avoided that outcome).
Half of that list is terrible and entirely unrealistic. Silicon Valley developers are not going to Hungary and Mexico.
They pretty much blackmailed RIM into handing over encryption keys.
Have a look at what the Stasi were up to in East Germany until 1989 to understand why Germans feel privacy is important.
I don't know a single (German) person outside of tech who thinks anything they (ordinarily) do online or on their smartphone could be used against them in one way or another. Some may complain about the government but they didn't change their habits when it comes to using their smartphone or laptop. They don't realize that, for instance, every picture they add to facebook will train algorithms that could be used for all kind of purposes.
President Gauck doesn't think it is valid to compare the Stasi and the NSA
> Gauck wehrt sich gegen Vergleich der NSA mit der Stasi
Das erklärt auch, warum er in dem Interview jeden Vergleich zwischen den Methoden der Stasi und den Aktivitäten der NSA weit zurückweist. Die Stasi habe wie jeder Geheimdienst in einer Diktatur "Krieg gegen das eigene Volk geführt". Sie habe die Bürger bespitzelt, um diese Bespitzelungen gegen die Bürger zu richten. Davon könne aktuell nicht die Rede sein. "Hier sprechen wir von einer Gefahr für die Demokratie innerhalb der Demokratie."
http://www.nzz.ch/international/nsa-forschte-merkel-umfassen...
And Chanchelor Merkel declared data the "raw material of the 21th century" and urged Germans to rethink their position on privacy
> Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel hat Daten als "Rohstoffe des 21. Jahrhunderts" bezeichnet. "Hier müssen wir jetzt aufpassen, dass der Datenschutz nicht die Oberhand über die wirtschaftliche Verarbeitung gewinnt", sagte die CDU-Politikern am Montag in Berlin beim Verlegerkongress Publishers' Summit.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Merkel-Daten-sind-Roh...
Both, Merkel and Gauck, grew up in the GDR!
Thanks for elaborating. I feel somewhat foolish trying to tell a German about the Stasi. On the internet we assume everyone is an American - well unless you're the NSA watching in which case it's definitely not domestic surveillance ;-)
On the internet we assume everyone is an American
As a European of 30+ years, I am actually pretty optimistic in that there is, in all areas of politics, a certain point at which EU governments will refuse to follow the US down the rabbit hole.
Germany feels pretty strongly about privacy (albeit not absolute privacy), and I doubt that they will start passing laws just "because the US did it".
UK, I'll give you that. Then again, the UK is culturally closer to the US than to mainland Europe in many ways, this being one of them.
Regardless of what you think of the Cock.li service or its owner, the seizure of all the company's emails suggests that demands from police authorities or politicians take precedence over data privacy concerns - even in privacy-conscious Germany.
[1] http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/01/cock-li-server-...
"Made in Estonia with European-grade security"
"EuroSec(tm) certified to respect your privacy"
As for UK, from what I understand they have an open channel with US in terms of information exchange for anti-terrorism. Perhaps due to that it's expected from them to follow suit with US in legislation if they want to stay in the same terms. That would probably extend to a few other countries who are in such a privileged relationship.