> Nothing regulates the latter

That's not true. The Stored Communications Act _does_ regulate this. In fact, it was passed in response to concerns that the third-party doctrine would mean that nothing would be protected from the government if it was stored by a third-party service provider.

The law says that the contents of communications may not be divulged unless certain conditions are met, even voluntarily. See 18 U.S. Code § 2702.

The people you're replying to aren't glossing over it, the posted article (and the comments predicting the end of the European tech industry) is glossing over it. "European Parliament approves mass surveillance" really means "European Parliament suspends portion of privacy law that prevents third parties from voluntarily monitoring information entrusted to them" - as they're able to do in the US.

The European Parliament isn't (in this action, at least) compelling anyone to surveil anything.

This is a bizarre distinction to make when the third party doctrine has resulted in mass surveillance in the US.

> The European Parliament isn't (in this action, at least) compelling anyone to surveil anything.

Why shoot down something that you're adding to the article? Who said the European Parliament was compelling anyone to do anything?

This is true.. not much to be done with the major providers are all in bed with the Feds. I mean, the telcos literally allow the Feds to port mirror all their traffic. End to end encryption on your own encrypted storage perhaps.

I'm not sure if "allow" is the right word here. Really the NSA can set up another Room 641A at any company they want regardless of that company's wishes and with a national security letter the company can be prevented from even telling anyone (like their customers or the media) about it. I was furious when Obama granted telecom companies immunity from prosecution for their role in the warrantless spying, but really it's not exactly fair to pushing people who are strong-armed into compliance.

Perhaps, but if it became public that my telco was allowing NSA to backdoor comms, I’d say the devil made me do it, too.

https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts...