The #TikTok ban story is somehow magical.
In the past, we suspected China to spy upon its users.
Trump's insistence about getting US investors onboard, thus able to enforce the CLOUD Act, gives us *certainty* the U.S. plan to spy upon them.
This reveals a bigger issue… 1/11
The CLOUD Act allows for U.S. agencies to access any *thing* on any server run by a U.S. backed company anywhere in the world. There are rules but @snowden showed us that they're quite lax. The NSA can do about whatever it wants. 2/11
For instance, PRISM was then NSA's program to automate the retrieval of data from social networks and large mail providers. One of the latter, GMail, is already known to *read* the content of every mail for "advertisement" purposes, so they have the content too. 3/11
So, to summarize, the U.S. as full access to every mailbox or virtual machine hosted at Google's, Amazon's or Microsoft's. And Trump just demonstrated he's willing to risk a trade war to get even more access, so they are most likely using it. 4/11
In the past they already used aggressive strategies to take control over European companies and technologies, or impose sanctions whenever they like. Let's not fool ourselves thinking Trump has the dignity and respect not to use their digital tools for economical gain 5/11
In the meantime, many European corporations and public bodies have moved to US clouds and services. Large structure ain't usually efficient at migrating their infrastructures. This poses another challenge : we might be stuck vulnerable. 6/11
See, we know how far Trump is able to go. Let him threaten the EU to stay in line or they'll immediately disable every US service used on this side of the pond, we'll probably back down because it's too risky. Even seriously trying to build alternatives could trigger that. 7/11
They also have another leverage. I don't know about other countries' governments, but in France, many officials use Whatsapp. One former minister has even sent a dick pic. Not only do they know what they talk about all day, but they could have compromising material. 8/11
On a more personal note, today I have to sign a NDA with another EU company. They use Outlook as their e-mail provider. They don't use encryption. There's a high liability amount. If I sign it, and the US want to make me lose thousands € for any reason… 9/11
…They just have to arrange for an attributable leak of some documents exchanged through Microsoft's and I'm done. So I cant do this deal, and they are actively interfering with business occurring within the EU because we're dumb enough to rely on their digital services. 10/11
I've said it for years, but to any IT manager, please think twice. To public servants, please stop giving away my children's details and our health data to the US. To anyone, please find or create alternatives to the US services you rely upon. Thanks. 11/11
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