Digital Journal: “For the U.S., Free Trade means the freedom to snoop.”

The U.S. is mad at Canada for storing data locally, away from prying NSA eyes. Does that seem fair to you? Article by Ken Hanly for Digital Journal Recent U.S. criticism will increase the conflict between the U.S. and Europe over NSA spying. The office of the U.S.Trade Representative(USTR) claims that creating an EU-centric system to avoid NSA spying would violate international trade laws. Both Germany and France are said to support a move by Deutsche Telekom to create a European system that would leave NSA unable to spy on phone and email conversations since they would not go through any U.S.-based system that NSA can access. The U.S. claims that this would put U.S. technology companies at a disadvantage, particularly any company that is known to allow NSA to spy on its system. The USTR claims that American tech companies would take a huge financial hit if the system goes ahead. In its annual report the USTR complained:

"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,"

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