Europe, the Online Colony

The United States has turned the Internet into a weapon, and its finger is on the trigger. Europe looked on as U.S technologies, the companies that own them and the National Security Agency captured the Internet. Profit and information are both crossing the Atlantic on a one-way path to America.

Now President Obama is going to rein in his Internet spies — too little, too late. It is no longer about the fight against terrorism. All European Union institutions and larger countries’ government departments have been spied on; emails and SMS messages have been read and computer memories, copied. When the EU discusses the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement in Washington, its U.S. counterpart already knows about it. Stuttgart and the surrounding area have been closely monitored: This has little to do with terrorist cells and everything to do with the German car industry. Banking confidentiality or not, the American intelligence agency knows more about some customers than the taxman does.

Europe has passively looked on as the U.S. has taken control of the Internet. Now, some people, in the European Parliament at least, are waking up.

It is a good idea that cryptologists are ensuring greater levels of security in computer programs. One thing must be made clear though. European programs are much sought-after. Placing trust in U.S. technologies would only be a continuation of the current situation.

Europe has no Google, no Microsoft, no Facebook. It is no longer possible to make up for this deficit, but there should at least be regulations to make sure that the data they collect is stored on European servers.

The U.S. has taken things so far with the Internet that it could become the victim of its own success. When trust has been abused in this way, what is the point of globalization and free global trade? If it is clearly not irrelevant where technology is at home in the digital world, then safeguards are not just self-evident, but also necessary. If Europe wants to play a greater role, it must break the U.S. hegemony over the Internet — and much more quickly than it set up the European banking union. Otherwise, we are left with the bitter realization that the situation of 1776 has been reversed: The U.S is now a colonial power, but who, in Europe, in 2014, is going to write the Declaration of Independence?