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But to get data from say, Facebook in the US, the NSA must get a secret court order. This requires Facebook's cooperation. To get data from European data cente

But to get data from say, Facebook in the US, the NSA must get a secret court order. This requires Facebook's cooperation. To get data from European data centers, the NSA can intercept data from direct network taps in the ground, under the sea, at peering points. They can intercept router or server hardware during data center construction and plant backdoors. In short, they can take all sorts of action that might be illegal domestically, but which they can't be prosecuted for in the US if done overseas. At best, European police/counter-intelligence could catch them in the act and arrest them as spies. So basically, European data held on domestic US soil has a greater level of bureaucracy get, compared to say, European data held on foreign soil, where all bets are off. Remember the Echelon scares of the 90s? That was the NSA using SIGINT interception of European cellular traffic with zero oversight or regulation. My point is, this seems to be solving a non-problem. It makes creating new companies harder and more expensive, won't actually decrease net snooping/surveillance, and threatens to silo the internet.

yardie 11y ago
You are thinking of the FBI. The FBI gets a court order to look for a specific subject and it outlines who they are interested (even if it is a John Doe) and what they are allowed to take. No judge is going to sign off on big data search. It's going to get punted in court or leaves any case made from it open to appeal. There are hundreds of datacentera throughout Europe. The equipment necessary to do all that would be very visible. And you would need the cooperation of all the employees to not say anything. You can tap a router or a switch it a server but a datacentet has thousands of these. You can't tap them all. If you did your customers would ask questions and the smart ones would be gone in an hour. We have a disaster recovery plan you know. American exceptionalism strikes again. How about you read their laws rather than assume ours are better. Anyone can listen into the airwaves. It's public property. Now they encrypt phone calls. They can do all these extra legal things knowing it's not admissible in court. You want to do business you follow the law. It's how it's always worked.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  I'm an entrepreneur, I want sensible laws, not laws that open up a hornets net of regulatory burden. Almost every new breakthrough startup in recent years did so by breaking existing conventions and laws. Should Uber or AirBnB not exist because existing regulatory capture by protected industries? Besides worrying about being sued by any jackass with a shitty patent and a lawyer, now you'll have additional regional specific worry. To me that means, if I was launching a startup today, I'd simply launch it US only. Don't you love how when music or media services launch in the US, you don't get to watch them in every country? How Netflix or say, Spotify, are blocked for certain regions? Get ready for a lot more of that, a balkanized internet, where a URL or IP address is no longer a uniform, universal access.
mhandley 11y ago
There are technical solutions (strong crypto) that can be put in place prevent the gathering of data from network taps. Unfortunately there are no real technical solutions to prevent the NSA leaning on Facebook and the like with secret court orders to hand over data.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  If you think putting HTTPS or other encryption on inter-data center traffic is sufficient to prevent NSA interception, I think you're being naive. The NSA was intercepting hard-drives from manufacturers and implanting firmware. The NSA doesn't have to lean on data centers, they just need to lean on Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, etc al. Besides, the European intelligence agencies have been caught snooping on the European internet and giving the data to the NSA, the Germans in particular. Basically, the surveillance is going to continue, with the threat of terrorism in Europe higher than the US, and restive waves of immigration from Muslim countries, do you really think they're going to lay down that capability? This is just re-arranging the chairs, but changing nothing in practice. So companies that can afford it will host data in European data centers, the NSA will ring up the UK or German intelligence agencies and trade data.

yardie 11y ago

You are thinking of the FBI. The FBI gets a court order to look for a specific subject and it outlines who they are interested (even if it is a John Doe) and what they are allowed to take. No judge is going to sign off on big data search. It's going to get punted in court or leaves any case made from it open to appeal. There are hundreds of datacentera throughout Europe. The equipment necessary to do all that would be very visible. And you would need the cooperation of all the employees to not say anything. You can tap a router or a switch it a server but a datacentet has thousands of these. You can't tap them all. If you did your customers would ask questions and the smart ones would be gone in an hour. We have a disaster recovery plan you know. American exceptionalism strikes again. How about you read their laws rather than assume ours are better. Anyone can listen into the airwaves. It's public property. Now they encrypt phone calls. They can do all these extra legal things knowing it's not admissible in court. You want to do business you follow the law. It's how it's always worked.

cromwellian 11y ago
I'm an entrepreneur, I want sensible laws, not laws that open up a hornets net of regulatory burden. Almost every new breakthrough startup in recent years did so by breaking existing conventions and laws. Should Uber or AirBnB not exist because existing regulatory capture by protected industries? Besides worrying about being sued by any jackass with a shitty patent and a lawyer, now you'll have additional regional specific worry. To me that means, if I was launching a startup today, I'd simply launch it US only. Don't you love how when music or media services launch in the US, you don't get to watch them in every country? How Netflix or say, Spotify, are blocked for certain regions? Get ready for a lot more of that, a balkanized internet, where a URL or IP address is no longer a uniform, universal access.

mhandley 11y ago

There are technical solutions (strong crypto) that can be put in place prevent the gathering of data from network taps. Unfortunately there are no real technical solutions to prevent the NSA leaning on Facebook and the like with secret court orders to hand over data.

cromwellian 11y ago
If you think putting HTTPS or other encryption on inter-data center traffic is sufficient to prevent NSA interception, I think you're being naive. The NSA was intercepting hard-drives from manufacturers and implanting firmware. The NSA doesn't have to lean on data centers, they just need to lean on Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, etc al. Besides, the European intelligence agencies have been caught snooping on the European internet and giving the data to the NSA, the Germans in particular. Basically, the surveillance is going to continue, with the threat of terrorism in Europe higher than the US, and restive waves of immigration from Muslim countries, do you really think they're going to lay down that capability? This is just re-arranging the chairs, but changing nothing in practice. So companies that can afford it will host data in European data centers, the NSA will ring up the UK or German intelligence agencies and trade data.