The ongoing debate between privacy and counterterrorism continues as the American and European governments pursue different approaches. Privacy is enshrined as a human right in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Online privacy is a cornerstone of the digital world. Yet as the war against terror escalates, virtual privacy has become a political battleground.
In April, President Obama emphasized that the US government needed to use cyber tools and attacks to help defeat the Islamic State, or ISIS. According to The New York Times article "U.S. Cyberattacks Target ISIS in a New Line of Combat," the US Cyber Command, the military equivalent of the National Security Agency, is shifting its focus from traditional cyber adversaries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea to dynamic, borderless terrorist organizations like ISIS. Cyber Command's plans are to use cyber attacks and hacking to disrupt the daily operations of ISIS. The news has been void of specifics, but officials have said that they hope to damage ISIS's ability to attract newcomers, pay members, and use money. But one challenge to Cyber Command's campaign is ISIS's use of encrypted apps to recruit and coordinate, which brings into question the line between individual privacy and national security.
In addition, President Obama has stated that the fight against terrorism requires government to access and monitor data. That stance puts him directly at odds with European privacy advocates. While European nations are once again debating privacy versus security in the wake of the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, they seem to remain more on the side of privacy. According to The New York Times article "Obama Stresses Need to Monitor Data in Fighting Terrorism," a European Union law going into effect in 2018 will impose fines of up to 4 percent of global revenue on companies with customers in the EU that violate European data protections rules. These rules include the new right to be forgotten, the right of individuals to require search engines to remove links to personal information. The new law will affect tech giants including Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Also, in February the US and EU tentatively agreed to a safe-harbor data pact that attempts to guarantee that US intelligence agencies will not have total, discretionary access to Europeans' trans-Atlantic data. Since the Obama administration wishes to collect and review digital data worldwide in the name of fighting terrorism, the US and EU will likely be negotiating in order to finalize a deal in the future.
A deeper source of the general differences in attitudes on privacy between American and Europeans is history. Europeans tend to be wary of surveillance and intelligence overreach because it conjures memories of twentieth-century fascism and totalitarianism. On the other hand, Americans live under a government engaged in a war on terror for over a decade. President Obama and Democrats are not the only ones arguing for more security. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has gone further, advocating censorship of the Internet as a counterterrorism measure. America and Europe will continue to disagree on the important issue until American regulators realize that absolute privacy as an individual right is the only sensible choice, that national security compromise efforts hurt both governments and consumers.
The author holds a long position in AAPL.