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PARIS (BLOOMBERG) – A foreign power offering unlimited access to Europe's data is worrying the region. No, it is not China. It's the United States.
While the US is moving ahead with the "Cloud Act" promulgated about a year ago, Europe is trying to narrow its scope. By law, all US cloud service providers from Microsoft and IBM to Amazon – when ordering – must provide US authorities with data stored on their servers, regardless of their location. Given that these providers control a large part of the cloud market in Europe, the law could potentially give the US the right to access information about large segments of the region's population and businesses.
The United States baderts that the law is intended to facilitate investigations. However, some people draw parallels between legislation and the National Intelligence Law that China put in place in 2017, demanding that all its organizations and citizens help the authorities to access information. Chinese law, which in the United States is a spy tool, is cited by the administration of President Donald Trump as a reason to avoid doing business with companies such as Huawei Technologies.
"I do not want to compare the US and Chinese laws because they are obviously not identical, but what we are seeing is that on both sides, Chinese and American, there is clearly a pressure in favor of 39, extra-territorial access to data, "said the president. Laure de la Raudière, a French legislator who jointly heads a parliamentary group on cybersecurity and sovereignty.
"This should be an alarm signal for Europe to accelerate its own sovereign offer in the data sector."
The issues of espionage and foreign interference will be the focus of discussions at the largest European conference on telecommunications and technologies, the MWC Barcelona, which will begin this Monday, 25 February.
Irish case
The law on the cloud (or the law on the clarification of the lawful use of data abroad), was raised when Microsoft refused in 2013 to provide the FBI with access to a server in Ireland as part of a drug trafficking investigation. obliged to produce data stored outside the United States.
The extraterritoriality of the law is terrorizing the European Union – a problem that is worsening as transatlantic relations deteriorate and the bloc sees the United States under Trump as an increasingly unreliable ally.
Europe can seek to mitigate the impact of the law by inspiring a provision of the law allowing the United States to enter into "executive agreements" with countries allowing for an exchange mutual information and data. The European Commission wants the EU to start talks with the US and negotiations could start this spring.
ACTION OF THE EU
France and other EU countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium insist that the bloc present a common front while they strive to put in place regulations for protect privacy, avoid cyber attacks and secure critical networks in the increasingly amorphous world of information in the cloud.
Sophie in Veld, a Dutch legislator in the European Parliament, recently expressed her frustration at what she called "a huge weakness" in the face of "unlimited data hunger" in the United States. "Because of the Cloud Act, the long arm of US authorities reaches European citizens, in contradiction with the law of the Union," she noted. "Would the Americans accept it if the EU granted extraterritorial jurisdiction over US soil?"
An internal memo drafted by the French government in November indicates that "the law on the cloud could be a test for the United States and they expect a political response, which should be European enough to be European".
FRENCH RESPONSE
The law on the cloud was adopted a few weeks ago from the European Data Protection Act, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which stipulates that all companies that collect data from European citizens must comply to the rules of the bloc, which could put the two laws in conflict. .
While waiting for the EU's response, some countries are preparing theirs, with the French in the lead. President Emmanuel Macron's teams are preparing legal and technical measures to protect the country, four government officials said. The office of the president, the Ministry of Finance and the ANSSI, the state's computer security agency, have been working there for 10 months.
"The more we care about the Cloud Act, the more it worries us," said Guillaume Poupard, head of ANSSI. "It's a way for the United States to enter negotiations … but that has an immediate extraterritorial effect that is unbearable."
NOT AGREE
The French government has held meetings with banks, defense subcontractors, energy utilities and other actors, asking them to use cloud data providers. -safe ". He is also studying the legal options, said an official of the Ministry of Finance. One solution could be to update a "blocking law" of 1968 prohibiting French companies and citizens from providing "economic, commercial, industrial, financial or technical documents or information" as evidence in judicial proceedings outside the country. country.
"No one can accept that a foreign government, even an American one, can come to get data on companies stocked by a US company without notice and without being able to answer," said Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in a speech delivered on February 18th.
France has been more vocal in its opposition to the Cloud Act because its companies have been hard hit by other extraterritorial states in the US. laws. In 2014, BNP was fined 8.97 billion US dollars (12 Singapore dollars) in the United States for transactions with sanctionable countries. The French oil company Total SA has given up a $ 4.8 billion project in Iran after Trump's withdrawal from its nuclear contract.
LOCAL SUPPLIERS
One of the consequences of the law on the cloud is that European companies and organizations will start looking for local alternatives. European telephone operators, many of whom are already far from Huawei, see the law as a threat to US suppliers.
"On one side, you have this Chinese expansion and on the other, these new American rules put American companies at the mercy of the administration", said Thursday in Paris Gervais Pellissier, general manager Assistant of Orange SA. "The hardware bricks are American or Chinese, and now we need to find a layer of software to deal with the situation."
Local cloud providers use the Cloud Act and GDPR in their sales pitches. The French company Atos has announced to its customers that it will physically keep their most sensitive data on servers in Europe. He has an agreement with Google to protect customer data.
OVH SAS Group, which is a competitor developed in Europe in relation to Amazon's cloud market, is increasing its sales by 30% a year and making a profit by operating data centers in Europe.
"We can guarantee our customers the sovereignty of their data, which goes beyond anything that Amazon or other rivals can offer," Octave Klaba, founder and general manager, told reporters in October.
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