Live data from Hacker News

US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

reuters.com

391–400 of 509 posts

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#391

It's not even just data stored on US servers. According to the CLOUD Act, any data stored by a US company, regardless of location, can be demanded by any authority in the US. No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period. The attempts to shift to open source or non-US services are inevitably hobbled by US companies lobbying (read: bribing) politicians.

European countries aren’t known for strong privacy against the state. There are exceptions, but the EU’s “privacy rights” are almost exclusively against corporations. American privacy, by contrast, is almost exclusively focused on state surveillance. There are holes, the biggest being that foreigners on foreign soil have no privacy rights. Nor do the dead. But I’m not impressed with the “rights” Europeans have agains…

I read an article that dug into public GDPR cases, which is a surprisingly small set, and it explained they have had a near zero impact on the massive advertising and data broker industry. They mostly just have a large back log of legal cases against large US companies like Google which occasionally result in fines - but even that moves very very slowly and has little impact on their global business models. They do also occasionally charged a few smaller European companies a few grand for violations.

The key thing is that companies like Google and Meta run giant ad networks, there's many thousands of companies buying ads then collecting data in their own systems and reselling it.

The privacy issues of data retention on Google/Meta/etc social and SaaS platforms is something to care about but it is only a small piece of the puzzle of data privacy.

Ads will remain a major business for the foreseeable future as nobody is going to pay $5/m to use Instagram with no data collection.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about this but JumpCrisscross seems to use "political" to mean "has donated large sums of money" while your use of "political" is more like.. someone who does politics.

I think they're using it in a technical sense that's idiosyncratic to America: "career" members of the Foreign Service Corps, versus "political" appointees that can be directly appointed at higher ranks, but at the pleasure of the (in turn politically-appointed) secretary. The first might have joined the Foreign Service and worked their way up; the second might have had a career elsewhere (not necessarily in politica…

> but at the pleasure of the (in turn politically-appointed) secretary

Parent is correct. The amount varies from administration to administration. But if you really want to be an ambassador, you're well positioned if you bundle a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars for the winning campaign. (There are traditionally limits. You can't usually buy your way into the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or London. But for the postings with limited security implications, where the focus is on trade, you're mostly hosting expensive parties for your post.)

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if you meant to say what you said. By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at the moment, "stop pretending to be sovereign" and actually BE sovereign. At least that seems to be the claimed attempt. If anyone is not sure why I would say that Europe is not sovereign, I will answer that question if you ask, but considering the current stat…

The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win? Maybe. But how many millions dead Americans? US lost in Afghanistan and there they just fought terrorists.

The US (like any country) struggles in asymmetrical/guerilla warfare. It always devolves to the famous statement by a US officer during the Vietnam war that “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.”

If the gloves were off then the equation would be different. A fight with the rest of NATO would be conventional warfare where the US has a giant advantage.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#394
post #338
post #210

Similarly, in the 2000s, the US pushed back against the development of Galileo and preferred that Europe continue relying on GPS. That created tensions between the US and the EU. Fighting data sovereignty is a losing battle for the US: data are too strategic to outsource, even to allies. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)

At this stage tech companies should be pushing for very strong legislation that makes the US a bastion of data privacy to restore trust. But they are still pushing in the other direction.

None of them want that. Meta actively hates you. Google doesn’t want data privacy. Neither does Apple, even if they aren’t overtly abusing it for advertising. Why would any of them push for more privacy? Their users largely don’t care (or they wouldn’t use those services in the first place).

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of legislation can stop subpoenas, wiretapping and other extrajudicial means the US has used for data surveillance since the inception of the Patriot Act. With data privacy increasingly becoming a critical matter of national security, strengthening data sovereignty laws and holding corporations accountable was always the way forward.

This is untrue. Subpoenas, wiretapping, and other extrajudicial means can be stopped by legislation that bans them. You can't say in one breath that legislation that enables it (Patriot Act) cannot be undone by more legislation. There are many hurdles required to produce the required legislation, which may not even be broadly supported by the public, but it isn't correct to say "no amount of legislation can stop exis…

A bad legislation is comparatively difficult to revert than a good legislation

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#396

It's not even just data stored on US servers. According to the CLOUD Act, any data stored by a US company, regardless of location, can be demanded by any authority in the US. No sovereign nation should use US companies for data storage or processing. Period. The attempts to shift to open source or non-US services are inevitably hobbled by US companies lobbying (read: bribing) politicians.

European countries aren’t known for strong privacy against the state. There are exceptions, but the EU’s “privacy rights” are almost exclusively against corporations. American privacy, by contrast, is almost exclusively focused on state surveillance. There are holes, the biggest being that foreigners on foreign soil have no privacy rights. Nor do the dead. But I’m not impressed with the “rights” Europeans have agains…

[flagged]

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#397
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if you meant to say what you said. By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at the moment, "stop pretending to be sovereign" and actually BE sovereign. At least that seems to be the claimed attempt. If anyone is not sure why I would say that Europe is not sovereign, I will answer that question if you ask, but considering the current stat…

275 US military installations across Europe that are not prepared or equipped to fight a conflict against the nation's military that host them.

US abducted the leader of a sovereign in a night without having any military installations in his country. Sovereignty is very brittle in this context. I am sure an unprepared installation can still be useful if need be. But in any case no need in sight. Europe is not sovereign because it’s not a nation, it’s a loose union with very limited actual integration outside the integration required to facilitate easier trading from strong industrial economies to their poor neighbours. There is nothing to be concerned about in this space for the US until someone in Europe (France or Germany) actually becomes more dangerous to Europe than the US.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if you meant to say what you said. By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at the moment, "stop pretending to be sovereign" and actually BE sovereign. At least that seems to be the claimed attempt. If anyone is not sure why I would say that Europe is not sovereign, I will answer that question if you ask, but considering the current stat…

The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win? Maybe. But how many millions dead Americans? US lost in Afghanistan and there they just fought terrorists.

>The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win?

what are you even talking about? nowhere is anybody on any side even hinting that the problem with NATO is it stops the EU from having a war with the US.

the problem with NATO is that it shares a burden and some feel they don't want to pay their obligations and some feel their share is too much, and then it was based around invasion of the territories of western and then middle europe, and ukraine came along and it's a serious threat to middle europe but its not covered by NATO.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance is a Weapon. Much of the US media is captured, so virtually nothing is fed back to us Americans. This also builds on top of US gunboat diplomacy going all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. Keeping Americans ignorant allows our government and corporations a free hand in foreign affairs. The limited information allowed through is heavily sanitized and depicts US actions as the Good Guys attacked by the Evi…

I find it hard to look at the actions of the Japanese and the Americans in the late 1930s and come away with any other impression than that the Americans were the good guys.

Right? Ask any European POW who was imprisoned in Japan.

Re: US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives

#400

It increasingly feels like the US sees everyone as an enemy. Is it just the government that feels this way, or do the general population of the US feel like everyone else on the planet is an enemy?

Ignorance is a Weapon. Much of the US media is captured, so virtually nothing is fed back to us Americans. This also builds on top of US gunboat diplomacy going all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. Keeping Americans ignorant allows our government and corporations a free hand in foreign affairs. The limited information allowed through is heavily sanitized and depicts US actions as the Good Guys attacked by the Evi…

> caused the Pentagon to get far more involved in how wars are presented in future conflicts

Don't be better, be better looking!

Post reply on HN