Because of the NSA snooping, US companies could lose a lot of money

Apr 6, 2014 00:36 GMT  ·  By

This week, the United States officials had the gall to criticize the European Union over the fact that it wants to build its own communication system that would be designed to prevent emails and phone calls from being intercepted by the National Security Agency.

In fact, the office of the United States Trade Representative is calling the system “draconian” and claims that American tech companies would take a huge financial hit if the EU leaders approve this measure.

“Recent proposals from countries within the European Union to create a Europe-only electronic network (dubbed a 'Schengen cloud' by advocates) or to create national-only electronic networks could potentially lead to effective exclusion or discrimination against foreign service suppliers that are directly offering network services, or dependent on them,” the USTR said in its annual report.

Truth be told, the American companies could take a pretty hard hit if the idea materializes into an actual project, but that’s entirely the NSA’s and the American government’s fault. Had it not been for their complete disregard for the privacy of billions of people around the world, no country would have thought to separate itself from the global Internet network in such a way.

Of course, many will point the finger at Edward Snowden, who had the courage to share what he thought was a shameless violation of privacy and human rights. Those are most likely the same people who believe that just because they do nothing wrong, the NSA should simply be allowed to snoop in on their lives. Even if the agency’s analysts never even get to take a look at the collected data, people should still care about the fact that their lives are being intruded on.

Alas, that’s not always the case, and there are many people who believe the US government should just be allowed to do whatever it wants for the greater good, because the purpose excuses the means.

The USTR further said that if the European Union takes such a drastic move, this would be in violation of the trade obligation with respect to Internet-enabled services signed with the United States.

The Safe Harbor agreement currently allows companies from the United Stated to access European data. The European Union, however, continues to have some of the strictest rules when it comes to privacy.

So, ultimately, it would be advisable for the European Union to take the side of its citizens, rather than protect the economic interests of the United States and the companies coming from here.

Given the strategy adopted thus far by the European Union, this actually seems to be the probable direction that will be taken.

The egoist stance taken by the USTR isn’t exactly surprising, of course. As a matter of fact, it also criticized the Canadian federal government for deciding to have a unified email system, which prevented US companies from bidding. The fact that a government could choose to protect its own conversations from potential snooping from the United States seems to be a preposterous notion to these people.

Ultimately, any government in the world, including those member of the European Union have the right to decide what type of security decisions are best for themselves and their citizens. Following the NSA scandal, it was only natural to hear a lot about various efforts about countries setting some distance between themselves and the US, solely because no one likes to be spied on.

Perhaps the US should have thought of this before allowing the NSA to snoop on the entire world.