
Facebook pressured Canada to ease up on data rules, U.K. reports say - stygiansonic
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/facebook-canada-data-pressure-1.5041063
======
merricksb
Original story discussed two days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289381)

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jszymborski
Just for a little context, I think it's worth mentioning that this news comes
to light when Canadians are thinking quite a bit about companies lobbying the
gov't, as a bit of a scandal is brewing with the current liberal gov't[0].

This news implicates the former conservative gov't, and might quickly become a
talking point for the current liberal gov't.

[0] [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-scheer-
call...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-scheer-calls-for-
full-disclosure-as-trudeau-denies-pmo-directed/)

~~~
foobarbazetc
Man... as someone living south of you guys where there are 10 worse scandals
generated per day (a scandal DDoS ?)... I’m envious of the one (1) scandal.
Seems quaint. :)

~~~
personjerry
I think it is your perception that there are less scandals.

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marcell
From the article:

> Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in
> exchange for the federal government offering assurances that it would not
> impose its jurisdiction over the company's non-Canadian data.

The Canadians agreed to not regulate other countries data. This seems pretty
reasonable. Why should the Canadian government regulate how an American tech
company handles German data? It makes a lot more sense for each country to
have jurisdiction over data from (1) its own citizens, (2) residents on its
soil or (3) data physically stored on its soil.

That this was a result of "lobbying" or "pressure" is supposed to rile us up,
but this type of thing could not be more common in the political world. FB,
one of the 10 most valuable publicly traded companies in the world, would be
stupid not to engage in global lobbying.

~~~
braythwayt
What do you think the phrase "non-Canadian data" means? From what you write,
you appear to presume that "non-Canadian data" means data that is not about
Canadian citizens anywhere in the world, not about businesses or individuals
on Canadian soil, and not physically stored in Canada.

I don't see anything in the article clarifying that. You may be right, but
then again the discussion could have been about data that is physically stored
in the data centre but is not about Canadian citizens or resident entities.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that what was being discussed was data
stored in the data centre on Canadian soil, given the clue that what they
wanted was the data-centre exempt from jurisdiction.

If Canada was asserting jurisdiction over data not in the data centre, I would
have expected the terms to be worded around seeking worldwide exemption from
jurisdiction.

JM2C.

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walrus01
> > Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs

The idea that a datacenter creates a lot of good paying jobs is almost 90%
bullshit. There is a brief burst of construction and trades related jobs when
it's being built. But after that, all of the software engineering and systems
engineering is going on elsewhere. Companies have no need to pay their high
six figure salary staff to relocate to Quincy, WA.

The number of people you need to do maintenance activities like rack and
unrack equipment, swap hard drives, swap fans and power supplies is really
minimal. Like, a rotating shift of six people for a huge facility. And those
persons don't need to be very expensive salary wise. I've seen persons who
were previously $16/hour Comcast TV installers successfully recruited into
entry level datacenter technician jobs.

~~~
Scoundreller
All that, and plenty of places in Canada have cheap power and cooler climates.

There’s no need to offer incentives for data centres, they’ll get built in
Canada anyway.

~~~
walrus01
not that many places have a combination of really good fiber infrastructure/IX
points and cheap power. The big OVH datacenter in Quebec in the former
aluminum smelter is a notable exception. Other than Hydro Quebec, the $/kWh
rate in a lot of Canada is not attractive.

Maybe you can get a good $/kWh rate in parts of Manitoba but the fiber
connectivity options to get to major IX points (Seattle, Chicago, Kansas City,
etc) are very poor.

And in those places where it is moderately attractive, with USD to CAD
exchange rate (BCHydro territory), the fiber connectivity options are limited
compared to sites that are slightly south, fed from the American BPA
hydroelectric dams on the Columbia river (Quincy, East Wenatchee, The Dalles,
and Hillsboro). Those places happen to have both cheap long term power
contracts _and_ great fiber connectivity by comparison.

~~~
Scoundreller
Depends on how much redundancy and low-latency you need.

If cheap processing power is mainly what you’re after, Quebec still seems like
the way to go.

Cheap electricity without being on a fault line is somewhat unique (admittedly
less of an issue the more inland in WA).

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angott
> Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in
> exchange for the federal government offering _assurances that it would not
> impose its jurisdiction over the company 's non-Canadian data_.

This should not be legal in the first place.

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gruez
which part?

>Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in exchange
for the federal government offering assurances

or

>impose its jurisdiction over the company's non-Canadian data

?

~~~
komaromy
The latter part is italicized in the GP.

I don't really understand the legality argument though. Canada is a sovereign
nation.

~~~
gpm
Canadian here. I could maybe (by which I mean probably not because of edge
cases but the concept basically makes sense) get behind making it illegal
under under Canadian Law to say "we'll do X if you promise not to pass laws
about Y". That sounds a lot like bribery to me.

Note that "assurances" is italicized in OP - the former sentence better
captures the meaning of the italicized area despite only containing one word
of it.

~~~
angott
That is exactly what I meant, sorry if I was unclear.

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jammygit
Its embarrassing to have your sovereign government changing its policy for a
social media company's data center.

We need to create our own jobs, give smart people a good reason to stop moving
to the states.

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yingw787
What exactly is Canadian data? Is it data generated by Canadian citizens? What
if people change citizenships? Is it data generated by all people on Canadian
soil? What if you post something while transiting the Arctic Circle in an
airplane? How does it include relationships between Canadians and non-
Canadians? 90% of Canadians live along the U.S.-Canada border. Does data
partially derived from Canadians count (e.g. ML models)? I read the article
and it was not clear how the lines were drawn and how they will evolve with
time.

Pretty sure this messiness is both why Facebook does not want the government
to be enforcing privacy rules, and why the government wishes to do so in the
first place.

~~~
braythwayt
All laws are messy, but what is even messier are the consequences of laissez-
faire capitalism.

One minute you're saying that the government has no business in the private
communications of its citizens, the next minute somebody's operating a child
pornography ring on the internet.

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vkaku
The Canadian government better stay off greasing these tech companies or it
would lose in the upcoming elections.

Canada likes tech, but it also values privacy.

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snek
normally these big tech companies have something mildly redeeming about them.
google has a huge presence in oss, apple cares about privacy, etc. but it
seems facebook has nothing. even their outreach into third world countries was
a thinly veiled attempt to lock more users into their platform.

~~~
lostctown
Not a fan of facebook, as a consumer app. But what you're saying just isn't
true. This list is crazy impressive
[https://opensource.facebook.com/](https://opensource.facebook.com/)

