USA opposes 'Schengen cloud' Eurocentric routing plan
The US Trade Representative is warning Europe not to proceed with the idea of EU data network services that don't cross the Atlantic.
The idea of a European “walled garden” emerged in February amid rising anger over revelations that the NSA wants to listen to the whole world – and that its sweeps included snooping on German Chancellor Angela Merke's own BlackBerry.
More in anger than in sorrow, Merkel called for European data networks to be built out in which citizen's communications “need not cross the Atlantic with their emails and other things, but we can also build communications networks within Europe”. The idea may seem, to those skilled in the art, as odd and redundant. Taking e-mail as an example: there's nothing stopping someone from setting up an e-mail server for (say) German citizens today, and the only communications that need to “cross the Atlantic” are messages sent between those citizens and people whose mail servers are in the US.