'Stupid' European legislation might leave data more open to hackers, claims Evernote CEO

'Cumbersome and silly' rules won't do anything to protect data, claims Phil Libin

The CEO of US online storage service Evernote has claimed that increased regulations over where European data should be stored won't make data safer and could even make it more vulnerable to computer hackers.

Phil Libin made the comments in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he described the desire of some European governments to require international organisations to store personal data about customers in local severs as "cumbersome and silly"

"Some of the proposed laws are really stupid," said Libin. "We have to comply with even the stupid ones," he added, without going into detail about which legislation he was referring to.

Concerns surrounding who has access to data - especially since the Edward Snowden revelations - have persuaded some European governments to insist that their data be stored within the EU and theoretically beyond the reach of US and other non-EU security agencies.

The concerns have prompted some technology and storage companies to build data centres in Europe. One of those is Apple, which plans to invest €1.7bn in two new data centres in Europe that will run completely on renewable energy.

However, Libin dismissed the plans for extra European legislation, arguing that all they will do is add to bureaucracy.

"That's not how data works. It means that for a few years we'll probably have to spend more time and money complying with things that in the end aren't really going to make a difference," he said, adding that the plans could actually make information more vulnerable to hackers because data storage will be more complex.

However, Libin said that he has no issues surrounding tighter legislation on how companies collect, store and use data, claiming that it wouldn't be an issue for Evernote because it doesn't sell or mine the data of users.

Evernote hit the headlines last year when a large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack affected its services across a number of operating systems. They included Apple's OS X and iOS, Google's Chrome OS and Android, as well as Windows and BlackBerry.