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It's not that easy really. Several European countries have FISA s.702 functional equivalents that enable intelligence to get orders for interception of personal information on servers and entities within their legal jurisdiction. (e.g., The French Law on Intelligence and the German BND Act)

It's easy to say that the US should just scrap s.702, but unless it's reciprocal with Europe scrapping their interception powers as well, that's a pretty unrealistic ask.



> that enable intelligence to get orders for interception of personal information on servers and entities within their legal jurisdiction.

That is common indeed. What's peculiar with US law is that it can mandate companies to move data about people outside of US jurisdiction that is stored outside of US jurisdiction and turn it over to US authorities, even when it violates local law.


Hm. I was aware that French law was kind of awful on this, but never investigated the specifics. As, say, a non-EU person, would I be able to bring suit to a French court (and, if that fails, to the CJEU) regarding foreign-intelligence eavesdropping violating my privacy rights? (AFAIU the US answer is that if I’m a foreigner on foreign soil I don’t have any of those).


Yes, you could bring a suit if you knew about the interception. However, like FISA s.702, intelligence collection warrants under the French LI and German BND are generally secret, so most targets have no knowledge they are under surveillance. All three pieces of legislation have an oversight mechanism in terms of oversight bodies who have access to secret warrants and are supposed to ensure that they are being used appropriately.




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