Europe being rattled by NSA issues looks towards doing business with its own companies

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Germany dumps Verizon for Deutsche Telekom over NSA spying | The Register

Previous Coverage on this topic

The French Have Fielded Another Alternative To TrueCrypt

My Comments

The fallout from the NSA spying issues has effectively put Europe on notice. Previously, with the cessation of development for the TrueCrypt,encryption engine, the French and Swiss have worked on their own forks of that engine to keep it alive and to European values.

Now the German government have dumped Verizon Germany and shifted their general communications-technology business from Verizon Germany to Deutsche Telekom, although they implement the latter for their classified-communications needs. This is a country who was bitten twice by the menace of “big government” through the Third Reich and the West-Germany/East-Germany split and fell victim to Angela Merkel, their Chancellor, being spied on by the NSA.

As well, the European Union litigated for European citizens to have the “right to be forgotten” by enforcing Google to obliterate search details on a individual European citizen at their whim. There is even talk of allowing European-Union citizens to litigate in US courts against American-based companies who violate European privacy norms.

Could this mean that one or more European-based companies or consortiums establish search-engines, online-storage services, online-advertising networks, social networks or similar services making sure that this service conforms to and represents European values? Similarly, could people, companies and organisations around the world, like the SBS in Australia, who fear the kind of spying in the US while supporting and underscoring European values end up deserting American companies and start doing business with European businesses when it comes to their information and communications technology needs?