3 ms·

I am American and believe as patriotic as anyone but honestly it does not make sense to me for the US gov to be able to go after data stored outside the US. T

I am American and believe as patriotic as anyone but honestly it does not make sense to me for the US gov to be able to go after data stored outside the US. This is a very important rulling and I worry about the ruling being the wrong one, imo.

tzs 9y ago
Think about it in terms of physical documents or items, and it might make more sense. Suppose, for example, I have leased a rare car from you. The lease has expired and I have refused to return the car. You have sued me for the return of the car. You have won, and the court has ordered me to turn over the car. The court can force me to comply, even if I'm keeping the car in a garage I rent across the border in Mexico. Does that raise issues of extraterritorial jurisdiction? Will Mexico be upset with the court? Will the court have to work with Mexican authorities to enforce its order? The answer to all three of those questions is no. The key is that the court is not ordering anything to happen in Mexico. It is just ordering me to produce the car. Sure, I may have to act in Mexico to do this, by sending someone to go get it, or calling up the garage there and paying them to ship the car back, but those are ordinary acts that I am allowed to do in Mexico at will. As far as Mexico is concerned all that is happening is that someone (me) who has legally stored a car in a garage there is legally retrieving that car. They don't care WHY I'm retrieving the car. Now if the court was not ordering me to produce the car, but instead was authorizing a sheriff to go seize the car from the garage, that would be an attempt at a US court at exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction, and Mexico would quite strongly object. The sheriff would have to go through the Mexican judicial system and get a Mexican order to seize the car. The above example used a civil case, but the principles apply in general. I used the US and Mexico, but that's how it is between pretty much any pair of countries. If it did NOT work this way, it would be a complete disaster for consumer protection regulation (and most other regulation). Any company that wanted to keep their records secret from regulators could simply keep those records in another country. Nowadays, in the age of paperless, this could even be made automatic. Keep your internal mail servers and file servers in another country that does not have good relations with your home country and most of your internal records are now out of reach of regulators.
- CrossWired 9y ago
  How does this work if the car was never in the US in the first place, and you are being ordered to turn over a car that was procured, leased, operated and contracted in Mexico entirely, nothing to do with the US, other than the fact that you live here and were ordered by a Judge to go get the car and bring it back? Isn't this closer to what has actually happened? The account holder indicated he was from Ireland when he signed up with Microsoft, thus the account was created and maintained in Ireland to reduce latency, thus the Fed should invoke the mutual assistance treaty with Ireland to get the data properly. The example of using the Government agents to do the bidding being bad and FORCING me to do the bidding is proper is completely wrong. If I am being forced to do something by the government, am I not acting as its agent at that point? If the government is denied a warrant for a building, it can't convince the janitor to steal the docs at the end of the night, thats just a run around the checks and balances of the law.
- yread 9y ago
  EU considers your personal data still partially yours even though some company is hosting them. So the analogy is broken. Also intent is important in law. If data is kept outside US so that they are the closest to the customer it's different from doing it to keep them secret from government

tzs 9y ago

Think about it in terms of physical documents or items, and it might make more sense. Suppose, for example, I have leased a rare car from you. The lease has expired and I have refused to return the car. You have sued me for the return of the car. You have won, and the court has ordered me to turn over the car. The court can force me to comply, even if I'm keeping the car in a garage I rent across the border in Mexico. Does that raise issues of extraterritorial jurisdiction? Will Mexico be upset with the court? Will the court have to work with Mexican authorities to enforce its order? The answer to all three of those questions is no. The key is that the court is not ordering anything to happen in Mexico. It is just ordering me to produce the car. Sure, I may have to act in Mexico to do this, by sending someone to go get it, or calling up the garage there and paying them to ship the car back, but those are ordinary acts that I am allowed to do in Mexico at will. As far as Mexico is concerned all that is happening is that someone (me) who has legally stored a car in a garage there is legally retrieving that car. They don't care WHY I'm retrieving the car. Now if the court was not ordering me to produce the car, but instead was authorizing a sheriff to go seize the car from the garage, that would be an attempt at a US court at exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction, and Mexico would quite strongly object. The sheriff would have to go through the Mexican judicial system and get a Mexican order to seize the car. The above example used a civil case, but the principles apply in general. I used the US and Mexico, but that's how it is between pretty much any pair of countries. If it did NOT work this way, it would be a complete disaster for consumer protection regulation (and most other regulation). Any company that wanted to keep their records secret from regulators could simply keep those records in another country. Nowadays, in the age of paperless, this could even be made automatic. Keep your internal mail servers and file servers in another country that does not have good relations with your home country and most of your internal records are now out of reach of regulators.

CrossWired 9y ago
How does this work if the car was never in the US in the first place, and you are being ordered to turn over a car that was procured, leased, operated and contracted in Mexico entirely, nothing to do with the US, other than the fact that you live here and were ordered by a Judge to go get the car and bring it back? Isn't this closer to what has actually happened? The account holder indicated he was from Ireland when he signed up with Microsoft, thus the account was created and maintained in Ireland to reduce latency, thus the Fed should invoke the mutual assistance treaty with Ireland to get the data properly. The example of using the Government agents to do the bidding being bad and FORCING me to do the bidding is proper is completely wrong. If I am being forced to do something by the government, am I not acting as its agent at that point? If the government is denied a warrant for a building, it can't convince the janitor to steal the docs at the end of the night, thats just a run around the checks and balances of the law.
yread 9y ago
EU considers your personal data still partially yours even though some company is hosting them. So the analogy is broken. Also intent is important in law. If data is kept outside US so that they are the closest to the customer it's different from doing it to keep them secret from government