
New Twist in International Relations: Corporate Keep-My-Data-Out-of-U.S. Clause - RougeFemme
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/a-new-twist-in-international-relations-the-corporate-keep-my-data-out-of-the-u-s-clause.html
======
beloch
Other HN readers are making some assumptions that I have to take issue with.

A1: Stories about this kind of thing are posted by people who want to take
business away from the U.S..

This is possible, but there are a lot of people who value privacy too, and I
suspect they are in the majority. Want to prove me wrong? Get polling.

A2: Everybody else is doing it, but only the NSA got caught.

First, this doesn't make it acceptable. Second, it's entirely possible not
everybody else is doing it. Third, even if everybody is doing it, the U.S. has
more money to pour into black-op projects than any other nation on Earth, so
it's a safe bet that the NSA is, by far, the _worst_ offender.

A3: Countries like China spy for corporate gain, but the U.S. would never do
such a thing.

Right, the U.S. has never staged a coup or conducted a war that benefited U.S.
corporations, and certainly wouldn't need intelligence to help with that sort
of thing in the future...

\-----

If you're okay with what the NSA has been doing, here's something to consider.
Several years ago Sony got a lot of bad press for putting rootkits onto audio
CD's. They wanted to stop piracy. Honest customers had nothing to fear from
Sony! However, honest customers did have something to fear from viruses,
malware, etc. that were subsequently written to exploit the security holes
created by the root-kit.

The NSA is collecting data on _you_. You trust the NSA and your nation, so
you're not worried about how they'll use that data. Fine. Do you trust
everyone who works for them? You probably shouldn't. They certainly don't
trust their own employees and they still got burned by Snowden! The NSA might
not be looking at your data until you do something terroristy, but who else
could have access to the NSA's data-stores? Would anyone know Snowden had
stolen all those files if he kept quiet about them? Probably not. Odds are
you're pretty boring and nobody is interested in what the NSA has on you. What
if you were actually really interesting, and your enemies had a lot of money?
Do you plan on becoming interesting at some point in the future, or are you
firmly committed to being a bore until you die?

~~~
Zigurd
I am particularly annoyed at the "everyone is doing it" excuse. Everyone may
want to be rolling with ten carrier battle groups in their navy, each equipped
with an air wing capable of air-superiority, but only one country actually
spends the kind of money to make that real.

Every government might have control freaks in it who WANT to implement
pervasive surveillance. But most places don't have the budget for it.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
That's right, but one of the corporations mentioned in the article is a UK
grocery chain. The UK must be the most surveillance happy country in the world
and we know that GCHQ cooperates closely with the NSA.

So I would love to hear an explanation from the people who put that clause in
the contract. Maybe it's some kind of protest, but if it is meant seriously,
it would be the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time.

Unless terrorism is actually just a cover for the NSA's true purpose of doing
industrial espionage on behalf of US corporations. But if the meaning of the
word "conspiracy theory" hadn't changed so dramatically recently, I could
swear this is one ;-)

------
rgj
The customers of the Dutch cloud-services conpany I work for haven been
demanding this for at least ten years. Snowden didn't change much there, it's
been going on since the Patriot act. European Union privacy legislation
demands that sensitive data is stored within the EU. Storing data in other
countries is only permitted if a satisfactory level of protection can be
offered. This was used in marketing by EU companies in order to promote their
own services, effectively creating FUD around US-based services.

When the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) recently opened up an office in
NYC there was a big fuss about it, because it would make the entire Dutch
internet traffic subject to the Patriot act, since it applies to any company
with an office on American soil.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
So what did AMS-IX say?

~~~
rgj
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A/...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A//tweakers.net/nieuws/92142/ams-
ix-kiest-niet-voor-onafhankelijke-stichting-bij-amerikaanse-uitbreiding.html)

------
bjelkeman-again
Everyone in Europe I talk to about online data agrees that this isn't empty
talk. Practically it really isn't possible today to in a meaningful way avoid
some of your data or data about your usage of the Internet to end up in the
US.

But, I would argue that this is more of a change in mindset and awareness at
this point, which eventually will force changes. Companies or local government
will want their data to be stored in a jurisdiction where they at least have
an influence over how it is protected. Balkanisation may be the result, or
ineffectual laws and regulations, maybe even something useful. But I believe
something will happen.

~~~
tombrossman
I'm surprised to see the focus on jurisdiction versus other more effective
methods, like open-source encrypting locally prior to moving the data off-
site. Key control and eliminating the need to trust third-parties is the way
forward, not trusting that some government somewhere is going to follow the
rules perfectly. This also has the added benefit of protecting against
unauthorised third parties gaining access via back doors or hacking, etc.

These ineffectual laws and regulations you warn about are already in place.
That's a dead end. It is time for people and corporations to take charge and
make their data safe before it leaves their control. We've seen this happen on
a big scale with Google now supposedly encrypting data between data centers,
and on a (much) smaller scale with people like me using EncFS to encrypt
before moving online backups to Dropbox.

~~~
zachrose
I agree that encryption could mitigate the actual threat posed by government
mass surveillance, but I also wonder how much of the new language in contracts
is about consumer perception and boycotting.

------
adventured
US companies would be lucky if all this did is reduce their international
sales. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

By far the worst damage is all that lost capital is going to flow into helping
to generate a vast supply of new and bigger competition overseas. So not only
will the US companies lose sales in the immediate future, they'll face
amplified competition that will hit sales even more so long term. Even if the
US Government has cleaned up this mess by the end of the decade, it won't
matter, the financial consequences will just keep rolling.

When it's all tallied up, I think the NSA and US Government abuses will cost
the economy trillions of dollars in value over the course of a few decades.
Something akin financially to a hundred September 11th attacks in damages. Oh
the staggering brilliance of the DC machine.

~~~
001sky
_Something akin financially to a hundred September 11th attacks in damages_

not to mention the waste of resources that spurnrd this on...

~~~
Systemic33
Ye, the NSA information trawling takes some serious amount of money to work,
and they don't exactly employ just a hand full of analysts, more like a an
army of them.

------
Maxious
This has been around for a while under the guise of "data sovereignty".

If you look back at search results for that term, there are now laughable
comments particularly by Microsoft that your data is safe in the US because
even the Patriot Act requires warrants right? Little did they know...

~~~
swombat
Even more ironic are the "digital safe harbour" provisions that cloud
providers have been operating under, telling their clients that the law
requires the US government to treat servers put under those provisions as not
located in the US.

The irony being that since the servers are "not located in the US", they are
even more easily targeted by the NSA since the NSA considers the rest of the
world to be sub-humans without any rights.

~~~
pilsetnieks
To nitpick somewhat, at least in the case of the US-EU safe harbor protection,
it meant that certified providers were to provide the same protection to
European data as it would have in the EU under the relevant EU directive, it
doesn't have anything to do with location of the servers. The certification,
however, is a complete joke since companies can self-assess and register
themselves as safe harbor compliant.

~~~
Silhouette
_The certification, however, is a complete joke since companies can self-
assess and register themselves as safe harbor compliant._

And this creates a genuine difficulty for EU businesses, because it's no
longer credible to claim that you thought a US business was compliant because
of safe harbour arrangements. It may therefore not actually be legal under
European laws to export personal data to those US businesses any more. If any
European company did so, and as a result there were negative consequences for
the subject of the data, that could lead to a nasty lawsuit for the company
that did it, even if their actions would have been considered reasonably
diligent because of safe harbour a few years ago.

------
EdSharkey
Seems to me that the reality is that big businesses hold the leash of the US
government, so this is as much a repudiation of them as it is the NSA, the
Obama admin et al.

Microsoft, Google, Facebook, RSA and the rest deserve the shame and scorn they
are receiving right now. I'm sorry if my techie friends working at those
places are hurt by this, but I feel very betrayed by these companies'
complicity in and taking moneys for all the surveillance and backdooring, etc.
So, shame on you, I hope your brands aren't totally ruined.

------
bowlofpetunias
This trend pre-dates the NSA scandal, at least from my European perspective.
The US government has legally given it's intelligence and security agencies
the right to secretly claim access to data stored by American companies
_including data not physically stored in the US_.

As a result, it's not just a matter of non-US companies and citizens not
wanting to store data with US companies, in many if not most cases it's not
even legal for them to do so.

As a European company, I have to give certain guarantees about the protection
and usages of privacy sensitive data. Storing it under the jurisdiction of a
country that does not respect that is out of the question.

This has nothing to do with any illegal activities by the NSA or their non-
American counterparts. This is the _existing_ legal regime of the US.

Of course the NSA scandal has highlighted the facts that any guarantees the US
so far has given about not abusing this are null and void. From the US _can_
get use data, it has now become the US _will_ us your data. That will
significantly and irreversibly speed up the process of taking data out of US
companies.

But the process itself had already started, it is just a very slow process (no
corporation or government can drastically alter their IT infrastructure within
a short term). The real effects won't be felt until another five to ten years,
if not more.

------
atmosx
I agree with most comments here. This was expected, these are not _empty
threats_ and no one is over-reacting. Everyone is just re-acting as they were
expected too. Except maybe the Obama administration, which has to do some hard
decisions. Snowden is growing stronger by the day now.

The part that caught my eye though was this:

> _It 's not all doom and gloom, however. Thompson's comments show that some
> U.S. firms stand to benefit from distrust of the U.S. government, and that a
> new model may be in the offing for protecting sensitive data from the NSA's
> prying eyes._

Apparently, Bloomberg sticks to the Liberal mantra that says more or less that
_when a market dies a new one emerges_.

Maybe the 5% of affected population, in terms of companies, will build a new
_business model_ but how this is _good news_ is beyond me. It's like when you
listen people saying that _YOU can now create a startup_ in TV because they
saw a Steve Jobs 2-minute video documentary on Apple. People apparently don't
know that for every successful startup there are 1.000.000 failed for no
apparent reason.

~~~
bryanlarsen
This is good news in the same way that a broken window is good news to the
glazier. The broken windows fallacy is alive and well in the media.
Journalists are also trained to show "both sides" of the story even if the
other side of the story is complete nonsense.

------
xacaxulu
The inevitable backlash. Bullies only last so long.

------
Paul12345534
Spying is an age-old game and it's not just the US doing it ;) I'd love to see
some leaks out of Russia and China. It doesn't matter where your data is
stored if it's off-premises. If you were putting it in the cloud unencrypted,
you were already at risk, Snowden or not. Intelligence agencies around the
world recruit workers in tech companies, the company need not overtly
cooperate to get screwed.

Countries around the world slurp up data over the wire, they just haven't been
caught with their hand in the cookie jar yet. At least the NSA's massive data
caches won't be easily hacked. Verint (just one of many companies in the
surveillance space) has 75 countries as customers. There's a ton of sh*t going
on under the radar. You may hate surveillance and want more transparency but
nobody can pretend it's just the US doing this stuff.

~~~
Paul12345534
On top of that, I suspect some of the anti-US stuff posted is for the express
purpose of gaining customers away from the US. (this may get downvoted, people
may disagree, but I have no doubt it's happening)

~~~
dspillett
No, that is definitely a factor here: non-US companies are taking advantage of
the recent growth in anti-US feeling to make themselves look more attractive
to potential customers and investors. No one should really be surprised by
this: it simply makes good business sense.

The politicians will be on the ball too, at at least those whose remit covers
national/international business or who have a constituency with a large
workforce that could benefit. You can see a push in the other direction too:
the "buy American" campaigns state-side have grown in volume, more so than can
be explained purely by economic factors (which have been the key driver for
that sort of thing since 2008) and an interest in protecting manufacturing
jobs. If the large (relatively affluent) American market can be discouraged
from buying goods/services without a US connection, companies will be
discouraged from distancing themselves from US interests.

Of course there has always been a certain amount of keeping business
information in particular places. Some regulated industries _have_ to by law
and have had to for a long time (you can't properly regulate something if you
allow it to move out of your jurisdiction), and all businesses should be aware
of the issue (though sadly many aren't) when dealing with personal data. In
the UK the Data Protection Act has clauses covering information security which
mean you need to be care careful not only _how_ you store personal data but
_where_ , and I assume most countries have something equivalent. A little
healthy paranoia always snook in to: if the data is more local to you there is
less chance you will loose access due to either technical, political, or local
issues.

The big difference right now compared to a-year-or-two ago is that the US has
fallen off the secondary safe location list for many, and for EU based
companies (and individuals) the balance in "I'd rather it be local, but if we
can save a bit by hosting in the US, where market scale currently makes it
cheaper, I might" has changed.

------
loomio
What will the alternative cloud solutions be? I assume that many will rush to
fill the gap as clients vacate US providers, offering increased privacy as a
specific selling point.

As a non-US startup, we're still using Heroku and AWS because we don't have
the resources to make the jump to something more secure, even though we'd
really like to. As soon as an accessible alternative appears we'd switch in a
heartbeat.

------
jmspring
An interesting idea to conform to and one I am researching for a service I've
been building. There is data in transit and data at rest. For many people I
know, North America (I assume Canada and the US are one and the same, at this
point) is the primary market/closest entry point. Do regulations require
tracking data in transit thT may eventually be stored somewhere other than the
US?

------
polskibus
As far as I know, similar data locality guarantees are now hot topic in
Germany and are often mentioned during sales pitches of SaaS platforms. USA
shot itself in the foot and it is competition's holy duty to its shareholders
to exploit it.

------
parag_c_mehta
Just imagine ramifications of this on person level too. You use Facebook ?
Google ? Dropbox ? SkyDrive ? you are already under NSA Scanner :)

I just hope corporates put pressure on US government to back out of NSA
treachery.

------
cpfohl
Well...if Americans cant get things changed with votes in their own democratic
society, at least non-Americans can get things changed with their own wallets.
(Debated using quotes around democratic...left 'em off after all...but it was
close). Americans obviously _can_ change things with their wallets, but it's
more difficult, and involves a lot more steps like encrypting before sending,
etc.

------
puppetmaster3
Predictable. This will make Silicon Valley into Detroit, and my job. Thank you
corrupt congress w/ your 10% approval.

~~~
csense
Actually the NSA's overreach is more a problem with the executive branch.

Congress tried to establish checks and balances over the intelligence
community by establishing FISA after Watergate, but it wasn't enough. Judge
Leon's ruling [1] actually discusses the shortcomings of the FISA court.

[1]
[http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/obamansa.pdf](http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/obamansa.pdf)

------
robomartin
I've probably devoted more time on HN to discuss the reality of politics and
government than to cover technology issues. At times I feel pretty bad about
this. I've also been subject to a partial new post hell-ban which may still be
in place (surprisingly enough, most of my new submissions are tech related).
And, yes, I've felt bad about this from time to time, to the point of limiting
myself to reading HN and not posting for weeks at a time.

As I have watched all of this NSA, IRS, ACA/Obamacare and big-broken-
government nonsense has developed over the last, say, ten years or so, I can't
help but think that the tech community needs to be shaken-up like this in
order to finally abandon ship and start really using their brains politically
rather than acting as mindless sheep following who knows what.

I'll issue a blanket statement and say that everyone reading HN is smart.
About technology. Not necessarily about politics and the ways in which the
world turns. And yes, I'll say it, there's a wide swath of HN'ers who have
been indoctrinated by the left-leaning academia, media and the echo chamber of
the circles they frequent and identify themselves with that they've stopped
applying critical reasoning skills to their political life.

As I said here [0], you have to be smart about your politics if you want to
succeed in business in general. If you are not, you run the risk of
incompetent moronic government-originated factors affecting your playing field
in small and major ways. And, by the way, it really doesn't matter if you are
an employee or an entrepreneur, a union or non-unionized worker. When things
like this start happening they affect EVERYONE and there's a chain reaction
that will make things suck in a big way for all involved, at any layer and at
every station in life.

What you want, in order to succeed, is as little meddling and interference as
possible. No, I am not suggesting anarchy. That's bad. No, I am not suggesting
no government. That's worst. What I am saying is that you want a small non-
intrusive government at all levels, from local to federal. You want a
government that truly has our long term best interests at heart and not one
that is a partisan prostitute acting almost exclusively to keep their sick
species and party alive at the expense of the opposition and, what's worst,
you, me, our families and our very country. We might just be entering into a
phase where we might just realize that terrorism can't even begin to match the
level of destruction bad governments and their policies are capable of
producing.

Yes, yes. Crazy talk. I really don't like talking this way. It's just that
sometimes I feel like people need a collective slap on the face with a well
timed "Snap out of it!" before they'll wake up and see what is really going
on. Snap out of it! Get involved!

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961005)

~~~
lambda
> rather than acting as mindless sheep following who knows what.

I'll tell you right now, that anyone who uses that phrase is more of a
"mindless sheep" than those he criticizes.

> What I am saying is that you want a small non-intrusive government at all
> levels, from local to federal.

Not particularly. There is no intrinsic reason to want a "small government"
over a large one (or vice versa). What you want is an effective government,
that best matches your interests. Of course, everyone has their own interests,
so the best rough metric that we've come up for maximizing the effectiveness
of the government across the whole population, and minimizing its harm, are
democratic institutions with various protections in place to prevent various
types of abuses.

Likewise, you don't necessarily want small corporations or large ones. A large
corporation has more power and is able to abuse that power more; but it is
also frequently more efficient than having lots of small actors, as lots of
transactions between independent actors can add friction and cost.

Distributed systems have problems, as they can exhibit lots of complex
behaviors that can cause destabilizing feedback, and they can be inefficient.
Centralized systems have problems, because they provide single points of
failure or points of corruption that can be exploited for gain. Some balance
between the two of them is necessary, and it's also necessary to spend effort
on simply fixing problems that come up rather than thinking that every problem
can be solved by adhering to some philosophy of "big government" vs. "small
government".

> mindless sheep ... wake up and see what is really going on.

Did you really just write a long winded "wake up sheeple" post? Are you trying
to be a self-parody?

~~~
robomartin
> I'll tell you right now, that anyone who uses that phrase is more of a
> "mindless sheep" than those he criticizes.

Why?

> There is no intrinsic reason to want a "small government" over a large one
> (or vice versa). What you want is an effective government, that best matches
> your interests.

You would have a point there if "big government" was used to convey the
literal meaning of the phrase by Libertarians. It is not. In proper context
"big government" refers to size, reach, complexity, all of the above and
sometimes even more. It is generally about government that has grown beyond
some boundary.

This is just like saying "big brother is watching". This doesn't literally
mean that your eldest brother or a some kind of a giant person is watching
you.

You do get that, right?

Big government: wants to touch, manipulate and regulate everything and wants
to have a say in everything in your life, from how much soda you can drink to
which doctors you can see and more. It spends money inefficiently and with
damaging results. It thinks it has power over people and that our rights are
granted by government and their laws.

Small government: stays out of the way and lets market forces act. It enacts
and enforces just enough regulations to create protections from extremes and
to protect and support those in need. It certainly stays the hell out of your
diet, home, sex life and medical choices. It operates within a strict balanced
budget framework that ensures our financial stability and well being as a
nation. It knows that they derive their ability to act from the will of the
people and that our rights cannot be trampled.

In this context, yes, you do want small government.

~~~
Nursie
LOL. Medical choices.

Medical care is not subject to normal market forces, nobody shops around in an
emergency. And by the way, nobody tells you which practitioner you can see in
the UK where we have had socialised medicine for decades. You're free to move
between practitioners in the state system, and you're free to go private if
you wish.

Your posts are just right wing and libertarian talking points, your
description of 'Big government' hopelessly biased and 'Small government' a
whitewash.

I also notice that in none of your posts are you in any way opposed to massive
defence spending, only healthcare. And you call others 'sheep'!!

~~~
robomartin
> Medical care is not subject to normal market forces, nobody shops around in
> an emergency.

Oh, please! In an emergency you are going to go to the closest available
hospital. As simple as that.

> nobody tells you which practitioner you can see in the UK where we have had
> socialised medicine for decades.

Well, that's not how Obamacare works. What's the point of making the
comparison of two approaches that are so different.

Let's just look at cost.

How much would a healthy family of four pay for the NHS? Is there a
deductible?

Before Obamacare my family paid $600 per month with a $5,000 annual
deductible. We got great care and got to choose where to go and which doctors
we see. With Obamacare our monthly premium increases to $1,400 per month and
our deductible to $10,000. Also, our choices at nearly every level in the
process of receiving care have become limited. There are questions about which
of the local hospitals we will, effectively, be "assigned" to by attrition and
which doctors we might not be able to see. The premium + deductible structure
pretty much means that we stand to spend over $26,000 per year on medical
care. And, BTW, this isn't a catastrophic plan.

With Obamacare the government is effectively, at a minimum, taking an extra
$800 per month from us and in the worst case an extra $14,600. And this is for
worst care and choices than we had with our prior system.

Taking $15,000 a year from a family's budget, when multiplied by potentially
millions of families across the nation will have serious consequences. That's
a lot of money that will not be available for purchasing. That extra computer,
uprgading the old car, intalling wood flooring in the house or taking a
vacation simply will not happen. And this will be the case with millions of
families and individuals across the nation.

You see, you can call me whaever you want. Extreme right wing libertarian
moron. That's fine. Shoot the messenger until you are happy. Now let's discuss
facts and numbers and real world effects. When we look at facts what i am
saying isn't theatrics from a moron but rather a screams from someone saying
"the emperor has no clothes!".

Besides, there's also this:

[http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/08/opinion/la-oe-
dalrym...](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/08/opinion/la-oe-dalrymple-
british-health-system-20120808)

> none of your posts are you in any way opposed to massive defence spending,
> only healthcare. And you call others 'sheep'!!

That is utterly false. I have not brought up the military in his thread but I
have in the past. Our military spending is sickening. Our wars are disgusting.
And a good deal of our foreign aid is simply wrong and ought to be
discontinued. Not only do I want our government to leave us alone, i want them
to leave everyone else alone.

Our military spending has distorted our economy in ways that are hard to
describe and probably even quantify. This is why I love Obamacare as the
example that pulled the curtains back to let everyone see how government
really works. Pick a number for how much was spent on the website. It's
ridiculous. And they are still spending untold millions to fix it. Now imagine
all military spending being equally bloated, wasteful and inefficient and
ineffective.

Add it all up and it is easy to conclude that our government is causing us
damage at every level and at a monumental scale. And don't get me started on
patents. Care to quantify how much damage just one government agency, the US
Patent and Trademark Office, has done to our economy, industry and progress?

Call me a moron if you must. You still have to face the facts behind my
arguments.

~~~
Nursie
I didn't call you a moron, but "Obamacare is bad therefore socialised
healthcare is wrong" seems a lot of a stretch.

And yes, people go to the nearest hospital in times of need. Need being the
key word. Free markets don't really deal well here IMHO.

Obamacare may be a great example of why the US government doesn't work so
well, but to an outside observer that seems to be because the market-
worshippers seem to need to be placated at every turn, when their requirements
are contrary to efficiency, fairness or good sense.

~~~
robomartin
> I didn't call you a moron

You did not. The self-deprecating bit is more about the fact that liberal lore
requires that anyone not on the left be characterized as a religious idiot
missing one or more teeth. Well, I am not any of that. I am also trying to
highlight the fact that someone can actually be a moron and his or her
argument can still stand on its own merits (or fall because of the lack
thereof).

If I must be a moron to be heard, fine. I'll be a moron. I am not, but that's
OK. Believe it or not, I am trying to be constructive here. HN is dominated by
younger people who are obviously indoctrinated to the left. The tech industry
actually went out of their way to help Obama get elected. This is nothing less
than religious, mindless indoctrination. All of these people are very smart.
They simply didn't want to stop and do a little thinking. And, of course, the
young ones simply don't have enough life and business experience to actually
get it. It takes effort and the ability to see the world from a very different
level to leave religious belief behind, political or theological.

> "Obamacare is bad therefore socialised healthcare is wrong"

Nursie, you are the only person saying that in this thread. Please do not read
past what I actually say. I did not say that.

> Obamacare may be a great example of why the US government doesn't work so
> well

It is. In fact, it is the best example money can buy. And it is fantastic
because everyone now sees it and everyone cares because it touches them
directly. Nothing sadder than talking on an extreme left-winger who just got
the news that he and his family are going to have to pay through their teeth
for healthcare that before Obamacare was pretty good and cost them less than
half what it will with the new program. I have a number of ideologically
leftist friends who work in Hollywood that simply don't want to talk about it.
They got so royally screwed by Obamacare that it has rocked their entire
belief system.

If we got any value out of this experiment is that we paid hundreds of
millions of dollars to demonstrate what NOT to do.

> to an outside observer that seems to be because the market-worshipers seem
> to need to be placated at every turn, when their requirements are contrary
> to efficiency, fairness or good sense.

And that's the problem with being an outside observer. Although, in this day
an age you have access to just about as much information as I do.

No, Obamacare isn't a failure because of the need to accomodate market-
worshipers. To the contrary. Obamacare was brewed and passed into law with
EVERYONE from the right and Libertarian parties either being explicitly
excluded from the process and/or speaking and voting against it. Democrats
used parliamentary twists and turns I couldn't possibly recite to get it
through Congress. It is fair to say, if we assume our representatives, well,
represent us, that half the country or more was against the entire thing.

Obamacare was passed with virtually nobody having read the law. It was passed
with the President publicly committing fraud by making promises dozens of
times, promises that are now well established to have been lies. It was also
passed with Senators making such false promises. And, of course, who can
forget our beloved Nancy Pelosi's "We have to pass the law to see what's in
it". In other words, it was, for all intents and purposes shoved down our
throats, falsely represented from the President on down and deemed into law by
parliamentary force. There was no learned debate of the issues and the
solutions. The thing is an ugly mess that was brewed behind closed doors. Now
the doors are open and we can see they were brewing poison rather than a
healthy concoction.

Perhaps that's what you missed as an outsider. Not because you didn't have
access to the information, but, let's face it, we are all too busy to be
concerned with the minutiae of things that, at the end of the day, don't
affect us personally. I have no clue what's going on in France or Spain. The
information is all out there. I'm just really busy with matters that concern
me and my family to really have the time to understand about issues from far
away that hardly touch me. In that sense, yes, you are absolutely correct, as
an outsider you are only seeing one aspect of reality. And, frankly, if your
information comes from liberal or right-wing outlets such as CNN and Fox you
will only be exposed to the ideological extremes. The sad reality is that
getting to the truth requires work and if it isn't going to affect you there
really is no incentive to do the work and really understand what's going on.

I can't criticize you for not understanding what is really going on here. All
I can say is that you should consider the possibility that you really don't
get it because you are not personally and emotionally invested enough to
expend the effort necessary to understand it.

Love the UK. Every time I go to Europe, London is my "base of operations". I
keep it low key and stay at the Holiday Inn @ Kings Cross. Fantastic little
Greek restaurant within walking distance.

Now, I'd really like to understand. What does a top-of-the-line plan through
the NHS (if such a thing exists) cost a typical family of four with no major
healthcare issues?

------
devrelm
This has been going on for at least a few years. Large financial institutions
in Europe have contracts with vendors stating that servers cannot be hosted in
the US because of all the warrantless snooping.

------
stcredzero
Could this be a possible benefit of the Google Barge? Could they be trying to
get data out of the jurisdiction of the US government?

------
codex
It's a bit laughable to presume that the NSA would be interested in a random
company's laundry, or would divulge it to anyone else. Snowden's leaks do not
contain any evidence of this, and yet it is well known that the Chinese, in
fact, do spy for corporate gain.

~~~
rgj
There is not much evidence of commercial espionage indeed. But it's not about
company's laundry. It's about the laundry of the users, stored by the company.
If NSA access to that hits the press, a EU company will lose a lot of
customers.

~~~
perlpimp
just because it was not aired particularly what kind of economic espionage was
happening - it does not mean that it is not happening.

------
zaroth
Worst possible knee-jerk reaction.

Data outside the US is the _easiest_ for the NSA to access. It's only data
that never _leaves_ the US which in theory you can argue is subject to
warrants.

Of course, since it's so easy to redirect your traffic outside the US using
BGP, it's not really a defense no matter where you are storing your data, but
the clause is certainly pointless.

~~~
skrebbel
Wait, so the NSA can walk into a German hosting provider's office and force
them to install a box and no we won't tell you what it does?

You're mistaken. The NSA might have more legal space to _hack into_ systems
outside the US, but their main snooping appears to happen in (forced)
cooperation with US companies.

So it's a pretty decent reaction.

~~~
inerte
The article is about US corporations. Doesn't matter where Cisco hosts the
data, the NSA can knock on its door and ask for access.

Do you really think Cisco is going to reply: 'Nope can't do, this data is "on"
Germany!'?, when the NSA spies on Merkel herself?

~~~
salient
That's why EU and everyone else is waiting for US to pass strong laws that
prohibit US gov doing that, and for them to acknowledge the EU laws for data
protection, before they can trust US companies _at all_.

At least if US passes such laws, they know that instead of risking losing all
of its foreign customers, Cisco would rather sue the US government next time,
backed by those new laws. This is why this reaction is _such a good thing_.
It's exactly what's supposed to happen to end forced backdoors by the NSA into
products bought by foreigners.

~~~
f_salmon
> That's why EU and everyone else is waiting for US to pass strong laws that
> prohibit US gov doing that

Thing is, neither the Constitution nor the law was respected, as we've
learned. So why should anybody have trust in some politician or President who
declares a new law? For agencies like the CIA and the NSA, there is no law.

