An analysis shows that government requests for user data from tech companies are increasing dramatically. An email provider specialising in encryption refers to this as ‘surveillance capitalism’.
Authorities from EU countries are stepping up their surveillance practices by requesting more and more data from large US internet companies. They received almost fifteen times more user data in the first half of 2024 than in 2014, according to a recent analysis by email provider Proton Mail, which specialises in secure encryption, as revealed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. According to the report, Google, Meta and Apple passed on data from 164,472 user accounts to EU governments in the first half of 2024. According to the figures, Germany is the undisputed leader with 76,910 data records requested, followed by France (25,772 data records) and Poland (17,916).
Raphael Auphan, board member of Proton Mail, explains that many of these requests from the authorities are aimed at ‘private, personal and sensitive data’ and can also include published content and even credit card information. Requests to hand over this so-called electronic evidence (“e-evidence”) are always checked by the mail provider to ensure they comply with the law. Proton Mail reportedly also requires the submission of court orders.
Auphan spoke to the ‘FAZ’ newspaper of a new ‘surveillance capitalism’: governments hardly need to carry out surveillance by secret services anymore, as law enforcement agencies in democratic countries are increasingly tending to ‘request as much electronic data as possible’. All a government has to do is send a request to ‘Big Tech in California’, he explains.
Proton Mail therefore also criticises the lack of end-to-end encryption of many services, which many EU governments want to further weaken. The alleged fight against sexualised content of children and young people serves as a hook. Some countries are demanding that tech giants search their customers’ smartphones for suspicious photos and inform the police in the event of a suspected hit.
Over 90 per cent of all EU citizens’ internet data is stored by the major US providers. This is why the Commission in Brussels and the government in Washington have been negotiating an agreement for years that would further facilitate the retrieval of electronic evidence and introduce short deadlines for its completion. Critics warn that this would also make it easier for US authorities to monitor people in the EU.
In an analysis at the end of February, Proton Mail showed that the American authorities’ hunger for data is also increasing dramatically: In the period from 2014 to 2024, Meta, Google and Apple alone handed over around 3.2 million user data records to police forces, customs and intelligence agencies in the USA.
However, the new administration under Donald Trump has now given Europeans a break: as ‘nd’ learnt, the year-long talks, which appeared to be on the verge of concluding an EU-US agreement on the exchange of electronic evidence at the end of the year, were ended by Washington and all American negotiators were unexpectedly withdrawn. The topic is therefore on the agenda of a first meeting between the new EU Commission and the US Attorney General and Trump friend Pam Bondi, which is due to take place in March.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: Thomas Jensen (Unsplash).
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