The attraction of the extreme north for many tech companies is both practical and environmental. In the tiny sub-Arctic town of Lulea, Facebook has operated a 30,000 square meter server farm since 2013 -- its first such facility outside the U.S.. TeliaSonera is currently laying down Skanova Backbone North, a 1,250-kilometer (776-mile) fiber cable that will serve mobile and communications networks as well as provide the digital infrastructure that data centers in northern Sweden require. Lulea will soon host another large data facility for UK-based data-storage specialist firm, Hydro66, while the nearby town of Boden welcomed Bitcoin mining group KnCMiner earlier this year. Across the border in Finland, Google runs a similar operation in the town of Hamina.
On Wednesday, China’s parliamentary spokeswoman tried to play down the impact the proposed legislation might have on foreign tech businesses, in the face of U.S. fears it would require companies to hand over sensitive data to the country’s government.
The anti-terror law is still under review, but if passed, it would require tech companies to give encryption keys to the authorities, and create “back doors” into their systems for government surveillance access.
Today, 28 member states of the European Union presented a joint proposal on the Telecoms Single Market — legislation that will determine whether Net Neutrality will become a reality throughout Europe. The proposal officially triggered the start of joint negotiations between the EU Commission, the EU Parliament, and the Council of the EU to produce a final text.
Today, EFF joins a broad coalition of groups to support the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), a comprehensive state bill that aims to update the California's electronic privacy statutes to reflect the realities of the 21st Century. While Congress is also currently considering an update to the statute that governs email privacy, CalECPA goes farther.
Ed Vaizey, the minister for culture and the digital economy, called for technology firms to “meet politicians halfway” on sensitive issues around privacy and internet safety, rather than react furiously with accusations that politicians do not understand the technology.
“So the prime minister, I think, is entitled to say: ‘We have a very sophisticated technology industry and encryption and so on… on the one hand I want to promote those industries and I want a successful technology economy, but I also have a duty as prime minister to keep our citizens as safe as possible. And we need to meet somewhere in the middle and talk about this’.”
Vaizey was speaking at a Big Digital Debate event in London organised by techUK, Computer Weekly and BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT, which aimed to give the three major parties a platform to set out their approach to digital issues.
Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday.
The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments.
The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on October 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover.
Policy Observatory