While Europe was in an uproar Sunday over a magazine’s charge that Washington bugged European Union offices in the United States, the backlash on another type of intrusion has been surprisingly muted, namely the disclosure that U.S. technology leaders — Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo — may have shared E.U. citizens’ personal data with an American surveillance program called Prism. […]
But the volume in Europe on privacy issues has been greater than the actual movement on the ground: Initial reactions to the leak by Edward J. Snowden, a former worker at the U.S. National Security Agency, have not led to concrete demands for greater controls on data sharing or stricter privacy controls that could hinder the operations of those U.S. technology giants in Europe. […]
“The Prism revelations have made parliamentarians more receptive to stronger measures,” said Joe McNamee, the executive director of European Digital Rights, a Brussels group advocating greater restrictions in data sharing between the European Union and the United States. “But the reaction has not been as strong as we had hoped for.” […]