Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

korte.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 239 posts

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#151

Post by fc417fc802 »

nottorp wrote: post #63
fc417fc802 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. Are you saying that BigCorp would demand key escrow? They already deploy custom email solutions today so I don't see the issue.

I am saying you can't keep the keys just on a stick in the employee's pocket since multiple people need to have access to the data. And if those keys are stored by a company subject to US jurisdiction, we're back to the same problem.

Well yes, if you hand your keys over that is indeed a problem. Of course handing your keys over to the provider rather defeats the purpose of E2EE so hopefully no one is doing that.

Key escrow is the usual solution to an employer needing access to employee materials.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#152

Post by dmurray »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125
beloch wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Swiss didn't vet their clients. If Vladimir Putin wants to contract a data centre on your soil for the privacy, you can always have regulations that say, "No.".

The entire premise of "other countries can trust your companies to protect their privacy" is that you can't. "US reads Dutch emails" is the thing you have to not do.

You can be strict about who you do business with while still respecting their privacy once they are set up.

The respectable, politically popular country setting this up would simply say yes to the International Criminal Court, but no to Putin.

This doesn't work well as a blacklist of "everyone's allowed unless they turn out to be sanctioned", because some shell company or reseller could register and actually be a front for Russia or whatever other bogeyman. But just serving enormous respectable organisations is a big niche in itself.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#153

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

Chris2048 wrote: post #129
lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not as simple as banking - people tend to want low-latency and high-speed connection which necessitate the data center to be in close proximity. Which basically means that founding a country with strong data protection laws somewhere in Antarctic won't get you many clients in Europe.

> people tend to want low-latency and high-speed that might change is privacy is an option. The real problem is the cost of building in the middle of nowhere, even if you use spare Starlink capacity, where do you get power & personnel from?

> where do you get power

Wind, hydro, sun? This is 2026 after all.

> personnel

Depends on what that theoretical country would offer. Some kind of strong constitutionally-enshrined protections for privacy and perhaps from tyranny-of-the-majority exploiting upper-middle class like all other western countries and with strong IT jobs market? Are you kidding, sign me up!

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#154

Post by valzam »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #144
vitalyan1234 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a psyop from the cloud evangelism era. a few hundred milliseconds of latency make fuck all any difference for 95% of things, even voice/video calls.

That is just like, your opinion, man? I personally find it a very poor experience talking to someone over high latency connection when we tend to always start talking over each other.

The question is, is that really only due to data center geo? I am always amazed how low latency and high quality Facetime between Europe Australia is. Seems like good engineering can overcome less optimal geographics.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#155

Post by noir_lord »

hnben wrote: post #72
mrtksn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Americans understand what US used to mean for the rest of the world. America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old world where you invest or you go to build things, where your past or identity wasn't the primary concern but your dreams your abilities were. It wasn't nationalistic place, it was open to all and pretty much it was the group work of human…

> America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor wat

Indeed, hilariously blind to the actual history of the US.

They’ve (just like any powerful country) never been good though they do have excellent propaganda.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#156

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

valzam wrote: post #154
lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just like, your opinion, man? I personally find it a very poor experience talking to someone over high latency connection when we tend to always start talking over each other.

The question is, is that really only due to data center geo? I am always amazed how low latency and high quality Facetime between Europe Australia is. Seems like good engineering can overcome less optimal geographics.

I find that hard to believe. Are you implying that Apple is running their own fiber network providing low-latency connection between Europe and Australia? Or what kind of "good engineering"?

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#157

Post by Chris2048 »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #153
Chris2048 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people tend to want low-latency and high-speed that might change is privacy is an option. The real problem is the cost of building in the middle of nowhere, even if you use spare Starlink capacity, where do you get power & personnel from?

> where do you get power Wind, hydro, sun? This is 2026 after all. > personnel Depends on what that theoretical country would offer. Some kind of strong constitutionally-enshrined protections for privacy and perhaps from tyranny-of-the-majority exploiting upper-middle class like all other western countries and with strong IT jobs market? Are you kidding, sign me up!

The original post was "somewhere in Antarctic", what does that offer?

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#158

Post by nottorp »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #151
nottorp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying you can't keep the keys just on a stick in the employee's pocket since multiple people need to have access to the data. And if those keys are stored by a company subject to US jurisdiction, we're back to the same problem.

Well yes, if you hand your keys over that is indeed a problem. Of course handing your keys over to the provider rather defeats the purpose of E2EE so hopefully no one is doing that. Key escrow is the usual solution to an employer needing access to employee materials.

> Key escrow is the usual solution

Yes, and you move the problem to "is the entity/process/whatever handling key escrow under US jurisdiction"?

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#159

Post by closewith »

jurgenburgen wrote: post #122
djaro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell .gov.nl is only used for pages aimed at i.e. expats and businesses. Most services dutch people use simply have a .nl page like the digital id or filing taxes.

This makes sense because gov is anglocentric and would make the URLs sound weird in non-English countries.

And overheid.nl is their government site for that reason.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#160

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pjc50 wrote: post #87
fc417fc802 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mind blowing that government bureaucrats would be permitted to use commercial providers for official business at all. The provider being foreign is merely the cherry on top. I was going to ask why something like mail.gov.nl doesn't exist but it turns out [0] (edit: wikipedia is full of lies) that they don't have a reserved second level domain for official government services to use? Is this really one of the cou…

Privatization: in much of the (neo)liberal West, it is seen as better to use commercial providers. They're supposed to be cheaper and better, because they're not using (union) civil service staff. Yes, this results in enshittification.

The thing that results in enshittification is market consolidation. Notice that Comcast sucks whereas there aren't a lot of complaints about Big Shampoo because that's a fairly competitive market.

If the government needs trucks then they should just buy trucks, not build a factory to make trucks and then another factory to make lead acid batteries for the trucks and then start mining lead to make the batteries etc.

At some point they have to interface with the market and you still have to solve the problem of keeping the market competitive and keeping the bidding process from being captured. If you're not doing those things then you're screwed either way; if you are doing them then it's better to just buy finished goods than to have civil servants manufacturing doorknobs and operating rubber tree plantations to make weather stripping.

Post reply on HN