FISA renewal: Report suggests spy law allows mass #surveillance of European citizens.
►http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/08/fisa_renewal_report_suggests_spy_law_allows_mass_surveillance_of_european.htm
[the report author is] Caspar Bowden, who was formerly chief privacy adviser to Microsoft Europe.
According to Bowden, the 2008 FISA amendment created a power of “mass surveillance” specifically targeted at the data of non-U.S. persons located outside America, which applies to cloud computing. This means that U.S. companies with a presence in the EU can be compelled under a secret surveillance order, issued by a secret court, to hand over data on Europeans. Because non-American citizens outside the United States have been deemed by the court not to fall under the search and seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment, it opens the door to an unprecedented kind of snooping. “It’s like putting a mind control drug in the water supply, which only affects non-Americans,” says Bowden. The lack of attention European data protection authorities have paid to this provision has been “shocking,” Bowden adds.