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No Safe Harbor: How NSA Spying Undermined U.S. Tech and Europeans' Privacy

188 points by jdp23 11y ago

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
Good. Money talks more than moral outrage ever will, however justified. The only way it will stop is if enough companies with money (read: tech companies) tell the government that these policies are destroying their business and hence damaging the US economy. We base a great deal of our foreign policy on corporate interests anyway, the obvious solution here is to make corporate interests overlap with our righteous indignation at government snooping.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  All intelligence agencies of the West are working together, but you can't hate the entire West, that would be stupid.
mschuster91 11y ago
The real problem is that even if the US passes a law that EU citizen data is out of reach for the NSA the "backdoor" known as GCHQ still exists. Any form of true protection of EU citizen data requires throwing out the Brits. I personally hope that we won't have to kick them out because they will exit the EU out on their own for good.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  Removing every country whose intelligence service is cooperating with the US would leave no EU at all, although that may come about anyway.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    I wonder if that prospect might not form enough of a threat that national governments might finally have the gumption to rein in their intelligence services.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    There's a difference in cooperation between US/UK and USUK/Rest-EU.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      Germany is littered with US military bases so I don't see how you think they are not cooperating much.
      - mschuster91 11y ago
        FVEY is on the receiving end of the pipeline, Germany only gets fed what the US wants to feed.
        happyscrappy 11y ago
        The Fourteen Eyes consist of the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden. According to a document leaked by Edward Snowden, the Fourteen Eyes are officially known as SIGINT Seniors Europe, or "SSEUR".
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    There are 28 countries in the EU. Some countries among the 14 Eyes might even have elected leaders who are interested in having real autonomy and confidentiality in strategic government and industry areas, and would prefer not to have that leak out through an interlinked deep state.
mschuster91 11y ago
@dang: holy crap, what is going on with this thread? 95 upvotes in 1h and it's dropped to #14?
- woodymcpecks 11y ago
  Dude, it's Ycombinator - what do you expect? If you submit a Techcrunch article about it, it'll be at the top in 20 upvotes.
- dang 11y ago
  When there's an ongoing major story, we downweight follow-up posts (ones that don't contain significant new information) as quasi-dupes. Otherwise the front page tends to fill up with copycat articles. This is the lesson we learned from l'affaire Snowden. Arguably it shouldn't be on the front page at all, since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337299 is, and that's the thread the HN discussion crystallized around. Edit: and then there's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10338904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10338904. But I think that on the day the story broke, a few different angles are ok. (p.s. I only saw this by accident. If you want to make sure that we see something, please email hn@ycombinator.com. We can't read all the HN comments but we do read all the emails.)
  - jdp23 11y ago
    Interesting that you don't see this post as containing significant new information. The Business Insider article had only the briefest of mentions of the NSA, and nothing about the political consequences, and doesn't have any perspectives from US privacy and civil liberties organizations. The EFF unsurprisingly gives more context on all of these aspects. So the net result is a textbook example of Hacker News' "objective" policies penalizing alternate perspectives.
    - dang 11y ago
      There's a fallacy here (what's its name? maybe just sample bias?) where you're assuming that we've analyzed this as closely as you have, therefore must be making as precise a judgment as you, therefore must have an opposite agenda to you, therefore must have a hidden opposite agenda to you. But that's not how HN moderation works. In reality it's probabilistic: all we do all day is guess. There's no hope of reading every story closely and making precise calls. Not even close! If you'd do what other users (including other users who feel strongly about mass surveillance) do—consider the tradeoffs and help clarify which stories are best by HN's standards—you'll get better results than accusing us of sinister silencing.
tajen 11y ago
I'm not yet grasping what it means. I'm a lone developer targetting a B2B ecosystem made of 75% US, 15% EU. As far as I understand, the following activities are now forbidden. If so, that's the strongest protectionism that EU startups could ever dream of... - Emailing my EU customers using MailChimp, - Pasting my EU customer data in a Google Spreadsheet, - Using Google Analytics, - Hosting my services in AWS-US Am I totally off?
- outside1234 11y ago
  I think its worse than that - one interpretation is that you can't use AWS _at all_ because it isn't wholly owned by an EU company.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Time to write to your representative and complain that NSA activities are making your business suffer?
- GauntletWizard 11y ago
  Meanwhile, the EU countries have spying regimes of their own that are just as intrusive. They want EU citizen data on-shore so they can spy on it, not so that the US cannot. They've become the Iron Curtain. I'm not even certain I can blame the NSA. The Europeans have voted technological totalitarianism in. The EU Cookie law predates Snowden, and was a mild precursor of failures to come.
- kybernetyk 11y ago
  >If so, that's the strongest protectionism that EU startups could ever dream of... Sure, if you show me viable EU based alternatives to the services you mentioned. As a EU based developer I, too, am cooking with water - means I manage my mailing lists with MailChimp, use Google Apps for Email, use AWS, etc. There are just no EU based alternatives to these services. As usual when it comes to internet regulation by the EU: it's not really favourable for EU based companies (except the few ex state monopolists).
razster 11y ago
I wonder if Native American tribes are able to ignore government request? That is whom I deal with each day.

188 points by jdp23 11y ago

Good. Money talks more than moral outrage ever will, however justified. The only way it will stop is if enough companies with money (read: tech companies) tell the government that these policies are destroying their business and hence damaging the US economy. We base a great deal of our foreign policy on corporate interests anyway, the obvious solution here is to make corporate interests overlap with our righteous indignation at government snooping.

happyscrappy 11y ago
All intelligence agencies of the West are working together, but you can't hate the entire West, that would be stupid.

mschuster91 11y ago

The real problem is that even if the US passes a law that EU citizen data is out of reach for the NSA the "backdoor" known as GCHQ still exists. Any form of true protection of EU citizen data requires throwing out the Brits. I personally hope that we won't have to kick them out because they will exit the EU out on their own for good.

happyscrappy 11y ago
Removing every country whose intelligence service is cooperating with the US would leave no EU at all, although that may come about anyway.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  I wonder if that prospect might not form enough of a threat that national governments might finally have the gumption to rein in their intelligence services.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  There's a difference in cooperation between US/UK and USUK/Rest-EU.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    Germany is littered with US military bases so I don't see how you think they are not cooperating much.
    - mschuster91 11y ago
      FVEY is on the receiving end of the pipeline, Germany only gets fed what the US wants to feed.
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        The Fourteen Eyes consist of the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden. According to a document leaked by Edward Snowden, the Fourteen Eyes are officially known as SIGINT Seniors Europe, or "SSEUR".
- Zigurd 11y ago
  There are 28 countries in the EU. Some countries among the 14 Eyes might even have elected leaders who are interested in having real autonomy and confidentiality in strategic government and industry areas, and would prefer not to have that leak out through an interlinked deep state.

mschuster91 11y ago

@dang: holy crap, what is going on with this thread? 95 upvotes in 1h and it's dropped to #14?

woodymcpecks 11y ago
Dude, it's Ycombinator - what do you expect? If you submit a Techcrunch article about it, it'll be at the top in 20 upvotes.
dang 11y ago
When there's an ongoing major story, we downweight follow-up posts (ones that don't contain significant new information) as quasi-dupes. Otherwise the front page tends to fill up with copycat articles. This is the lesson we learned from l'affaire Snowden. Arguably it shouldn't be on the front page at all, since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337299 is, and that's the thread the HN discussion crystallized around. Edit: and then there's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10338904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10338904. But I think that on the day the story broke, a few different angles are ok. (p.s. I only saw this by accident. If you want to make sure that we see something, please email hn@ycombinator.com. We can't read all the HN comments but we do read all the emails.)
- jdp23 11y ago
  Interesting that you don't see this post as containing significant new information. The Business Insider article had only the briefest of mentions of the NSA, and nothing about the political consequences, and doesn't have any perspectives from US privacy and civil liberties organizations. The EFF unsurprisingly gives more context on all of these aspects. So the net result is a textbook example of Hacker News' "objective" policies penalizing alternate perspectives.
  - dang 11y ago
    There's a fallacy here (what's its name? maybe just sample bias?) where you're assuming that we've analyzed this as closely as you have, therefore must be making as precise a judgment as you, therefore must have an opposite agenda to you, therefore must have a hidden opposite agenda to you. But that's not how HN moderation works. In reality it's probabilistic: all we do all day is guess. There's no hope of reading every story closely and making precise calls. Not even close! If you'd do what other users (including other users who feel strongly about mass surveillance) do—consider the tradeoffs and help clarify which stories are best by HN's standards—you'll get better results than accusing us of sinister silencing.

tajen 11y ago

I'm not yet grasping what it means. I'm a lone developer targetting a B2B ecosystem made of 75% US, 15% EU. As far as I understand, the following activities are now forbidden. If so, that's the strongest protectionism that EU startups could ever dream of... - Emailing my EU customers using MailChimp, - Pasting my EU customer data in a Google Spreadsheet, - Using Google Analytics, - Hosting my services in AWS-US Am I totally off?

outside1234 11y ago
I think its worse than that - one interpretation is that you can't use AWS _at all_ because it isn't wholly owned by an EU company.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
Time to write to your representative and complain that NSA activities are making your business suffer?
GauntletWizard 11y ago
Meanwhile, the EU countries have spying regimes of their own that are just as intrusive. They want EU citizen data on-shore so they can spy on it, not so that the US cannot. They've become the Iron Curtain. I'm not even certain I can blame the NSA. The Europeans have voted technological totalitarianism in. The EU Cookie law predates Snowden, and was a mild precursor of failures to come.
kybernetyk 11y ago
>If so, that's the strongest protectionism that EU startups could ever dream of... Sure, if you show me viable EU based alternatives to the services you mentioned. As a EU based developer I, too, am cooking with water - means I manage my mailing lists with MailChimp, use Google Apps for Email, use AWS, etc. There are just no EU based alternatives to these services. As usual when it comes to internet regulation by the EU: it's not really favourable for EU based companies (except the few ex state monopolists).

razster 11y ago

I wonder if Native American tribes are able to ignore government request? That is whom I deal with each day.