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Fastmail offers EU data region

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Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#251

Post by justincormack »

fragmede wrote: post #246
hn_submit wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're spreading misinformation since AWS, Azure, GCP (Google) and Oracle are all U.S. companies which are subject to the CLOUD Act. Just because they pretend to be European-based by setting up a European subsidiary with so-called firewalls means exactly...nothing.

The Double Irish Dutch Sandwich means € billions in tax liability saved. Unless you're a corporate lawyer that has put up those firewalls and can talk at length as to what they even are, why should believe you when you say it means exactly nothing?

The double irish dutch sandwich has not existed for many years, and tax law is different from data access.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#252

Post by intothemild »

carlosjobim wrote: post #248
intothemild wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow they completely missed the ball on why people want reassurances that their data stays in the EU

They found a cheap way to please the kind of customers who care much about their activism and not much about reality. A good business decision with little risk and a potential upside. To believe your data is any better protected here or there is already unrealistic, and the admiration for the European Union for data privacy among hacker circles is unfounded. But if many people believe something false, you as a busine…

Yeah this I think captures my initial feelings in my post better than I could have put it.

Any business that has strict guidelines won't touch this. As there's no real guarantee, and more importantly they have given themselves an out.

Whilst I like fastmail as a product, personally I would have waited to get everything in the EU before I launched this, as you've now got to relaunch it once you solve that last mile problem. Which is hard and costly.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#253

Post by hn_submit »

microtonal wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #9

EU data regions are a reflexive action by companies that try to hold on to their EU customers (and more and more are leaving, surprisingly the larger ones seem to be leading here). Realize that as long as you are still hosted on US owned infrastructure or that if there are US (or: five-eyes) owned companies anywhere in the stack your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happen…

Yeah, this does absolutely not solve the CLOUD Act issues. However , it is good to look at what the ramifications of the CLOUD Act is for e-mail: - The US could request your data. You probably shouldn't use e-mail for anything sensitive anyway for many reasons. E-Mail was traditionally not encrypted and I think that many servers still allow plain-text communication. The protocols are old and there are all kinds of do…

Email itself is not encrypted but the links between email servers are. That makes it non-trivial to intercept email.

However, most people these days are using webmail from the big-tech companies which makes it relatively easy for LEA and intelligence agencies to read your email.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#254

Post by jacquesm »

kazen44 wrote: post #215
yread wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont share your optimism: The US can just say: let us access this one customer or we will ruin your vpcs in the US. What can you do about it? FDE? Can you keep the keys away from Hetzner? How much hacking would they need to do to get them? Can US government break SecureBoot? Im just happy my business is not important enough

the alternative being hetzner giving away EU based information to the US? which would absolutely destroy their reputation in the EU. (which is a far larger market for them). The only way to spin this as hetzner is to go public with this and make it a political point for geopolitics between the EU and the US, and take the loss /call the bluff on the US threat.

Let me tell you about that time when I walked around in a DC in NL and ran into an unaccompanied FBI liaison officer...

I don't think any of us have the total picture, but the bits that I do have are sufficient to worry me about the degree to which I am automatically breaking the NDAs I sign by using a computer, email, online data rooms and so on.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#255

Post by Altern4tiveAcc »

sph wrote: post #180
jeffparsons wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just stops shy of asking Australian tech companies, like Fastmail, to build backdoors into their products so that the government can "legally access" data from them It stops just short of saying that you must do this preemptively , but is pretty clear that you must do it if they ask you to.

Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail which 99% of the HN audience is using? Isn’t USA a member of Five Eyes? I admit it is a concern, as a Fastmail user, but this discussion only seems to happen on the Fastmail threads, yet no one bats an eye if one is suggested to open a gmail account like everybody else.

> Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail

I can't relate, I hear people complaining about American spyware online all the time in tech circles like HN.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#256

Post by pigbearpig »

hn_submit wrote: post #245

I call this "sovereignty washing": American companies pretending they can magically free themselves from the U.S. CLOUD Act by setting up a paper European presence. Anyone who falls for this is a fool wanting to be fooled.

Interesting take considering Fastmail is very clearly not an American company.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#257

Post by eastbound »

benj111 wrote: post #231
eastbound wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he has a point. There are various degrees of democracy, between direct and many degrees of indirection. VDL is certainly not a good level of democracy: - Elections are so rare (every 5 years) and encompass so many huge life-altering choices (VDL being one of the criteria only) that it's not democratic. The Swiss vote every important law, like "Should we buy fighter jets". - De facto, party health is part of democ…

>The EU is too chicken to let citizen vote every 20 years on whether we should stay in Europe, because then answer would be a big NO. Well us Brits tried that experiment and it isn't seen as a success.

It is a success. UK leaving the EU is a form of democracy. People should have the means to choose their destiny, just like the Bengladeshi or the Timor people.

What is not a success is:

- The EU taking retaliation against them,

- The EU parties overturning members of the Leave party into the Libdem, AFTER being elected (yes, it happened for 16 members, plus the ones who didn't officially switch but stalled the Leave party's proceedings),

- From the moment they clearly voted NO, it took 3 more votes until they could be allowed to leave. Basically, it was until it was clear the UK citizenry would be entirely blocking the democratic process until the EU-Leave decision was enacted. You can understand people's despair of democracy when a clear LEAVE vote isn't enacted, like in France 2005.

In the rest of the EU, they're too chicken to let us vote. But they will let us vote... one day... only in areas where they're guaranteed a large STAY result.

The EU is only letting us vote when the answer is Yes.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#258

Post by walthamstow »

DarrenDev wrote: post #87
jacquesm wrote: post #9

EU data regions are a reflexive action by companies that try to hold on to their EU customers (and more and more are leaving, surprisingly the larger ones seem to be leading here). Realize that as long as you are still hosted on US owned infrastructure or that if there are US (or: five-eyes) owned companies anywhere in the stack your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happen…

EU sovereign clouds are taking off right now - especially when it comes to sensitive data (government, healthcare, etc.). Lots of players moving into the space. The common denominator - nothing touches the US. AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, Schwarz Digits, SAP

Don't forget Lidl!

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#259

Post by eastbound »

ywain wrote: post #197
eastbound wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he has a point. There are various degrees of democracy, between direct and many degrees of indirection. VDL is certainly not a good level of democracy: - Elections are so rare (every 5 years) and encompass so many huge life-altering choices (VDL being one of the criteria only) that it's not democratic. The Swiss vote every important law, like "Should we buy fighter jets". - De facto, party health is part of democ…

> look at the Rwanda: It is absolutely possible to have a genocide made by democracies, Rwanda has never been a democracy. Habyarimana was "elected" with 99% of the votes ffs. > and it is in fact more frequent than dictatorships It is trivially easy to verify that this is not true.

You may have a black eye about History.

Rwanda came for help to France 2 years before, and France conditionned its financial help to a democratisation process.

- From here, about 150 parties got born.

- The previous dictatorship, even of the majority, was protecting the minority, because they knew the international consequence on countries who don't protect the minorities.

- Once a democracy, it was a leadership of the majority ethnicity (90% Hutu) so you bet they had no qualms about protecting the Tutsis. Tensions and invitation to violence soared immediately, but in a coveted speech.

- A plane containing half the government was bombed, the country woke up without clear leadership, elections didn't happen fast enough. Citizen acted with their own machetes.

Democracy means the majority owns the decisions. Doesn't mean they'll be good people.

Re: Fastmail offers EU data region

#260

Post by jb1991 »

omnifischer wrote: post #220
sph wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail which 99% of the HN audience is using? Isn’t USA a member of Five Eyes? I admit it is a concern, as a Fastmail user, but this discussion only seems to happen on the Fastmail threads, yet no one bats an eye if one is suggested to open a gmail account like everybody else.

> Why do I never hear about this ‘feature’ from American products like gmail which 99% of the HN audience is using? Isn’t USA a member of Five Eyes? There is lot of hate toward Google (and other top US companies). Especially due to autobanning of accounts, 2FA etc. at the moment people have fastmail as their darling - because they are the underdog, no AI forcing in products (at the moment) etc. It is like stripe from…

What issues do you refer to for Proton?
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