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Isn’t this sort of what we accuse the Chinese of doing? The US designs the technology and then the Chinese manufacturers steal that design to make their own? E
by jimbob45 4y ago
Isn’t this sort of what we accuse the Chinese of doing? The US designs the technology and then the Chinese manufacturers steal that design to make their own?
Except now, the EU is more or less forcing American companies to sell unaffiliated spin-offs to the EU to continue doing business there. Seems a bit underhanded to change the rules now after so long, especially considering the fact that the EU can’t make these companies for themselves or they would have already.
- pfortuny 4y agoThis is germany still, not the whole of the EU. But it does show how an all-reaching law like gdpr can have stramge consequences…
- f-jin 4y agoisn't the crux of the matter the all-reaching laws of the US that allows their intelligence agencies to order EU-subsidiaries of US companies to offer up their data..?
- xyzzyz 4y agoI would be frankly shocked if EU countries did not have the same laws on the book. If German court serves Volkswagen AG a warrant for data kept by Volkswagen America, can Volkswagen AG just not comply?
- angio 4y agoThey can fight in an american court. The issue is the cloud act which was passed explicitly to fight eu companies fighting in eu courts us govt data requests.
- solar-ice 4y agoPretty sure EU countries cannot in fact (in general) demand personal data of anyone from EU companies without due process. If you can find law to the contrary, let me know.
- xyzzyz 4y agoThe warrant is due process.
- solar-ice 4y agoThe procedure and requirements for obtaining a warrant under the CLOUD Act is not sufficient due process according to EU law - which is law which matters when operating a commercial business in the EU.
- xyzzyz 4y agoSure, and US can pass a law saying that safety regulations of Airbus planes made in France are not sufficient either. Americans just don’t like flying in unsafe planes! If you talk to actual people in Europe, outside of HN, you’ll find that overwhelming majority of people do not give a flying fuck about the “safety of their data” from US government. They just blissfully post shit on Facebook with no care in the world. This matter is a concern mostly to politicians and to activist hacker types. This is not to say that this is not a valid concern to have, but I’d like people to spare me pretending that it’s about politicians caring about people’s rights, when just past few years they trampled all the rights in the interest of fighting coronavirus (and if you want to argue that it was all worth it, because the goal justified the means, keep in mind that the US government can say the exact same thing about its data access!). This is just standard power politics, a protectionist trade war whitewashed with talk about “rights” and “privacy”, only surprising thing is how people on HN are gobbling it up. I guess maybe that’s just willful ignorance - by pretending you don’t understand why EU actually attacks American companies like that, you might actually get some extra privacy protections you care about.
- solar-ice 4y ago> Sure, and US can pass a law saying that safety regulations of Airbus planes made in France are not sufficient either. Americans just don’t like flying in unsafe planes! If you cannot see the difference between this and the GDPR, I have no idea why we're talking. The GDPR is some pretty reasonable law, for the most part - if we had carve-outs for Americans who don't have to adhere to it, it would be entirely pointless. The US is very welcome to end this by repealing their spy law.
- srrr 4y agoA German court can not, in fact, serve a court order to Volkswagen America. (Technically it can, but the order is not enforceable.) A German court is also forbidden to force Volkswagen AG to reach into Volkswagen America because these are separate legal entities. A German court would use judicial assistance and ask US law enforcement to help. US law enforcement would then adhere to local laws and protect the rights of US citizens while trying to help. This is named Mutual legal assistance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_legal_assistance_treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_legal_assistance_treaty .
- josefx 4y agoThe crux is that in most cases the EU subsidiaries are not even set up to prevent that. They just roll over. Someone else tracked down the AWS GDPR compliance document the court case cites a few times, any governmental agency can request data transfers out of the EU. The document isn't even specific on which government and as far as I understand the North Korean government could request all EU users data and AWS would provide a download link without even thinking twice.
- denton-scratch 4y agoDoesn't seem strange to me; I'm surprised it got to court.
- djohnston 4y ago
- bettysdiagnose 4y agoIf you cared about your fellow citizens, you could have the same. But judging by the hordes of mentally ill people wandering aimlessly around your cities harassing strangers (including visitors such as myself)—you don't.
- legalcorrection 4y ago
- throw827474737 4y agoI think it is more about the US flaunting in everybodies else face once too often that humans are not equal and that even when it comes to very basic rights, there is the US- and the other-human.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- legalcorrection 4y ago
- djohnston 4y agoFWIW I live in Europe now and am enjoying it XD, but I still call a spade a spade. I just hope Germany pulls its head of its ass before it supports China's ascension to global supremacy. We told them not to overly rely on Russian gas for like 40 years but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- legalcorrection 4y agoI'm sure. It's really a lovely place full of lovely people. And the standard of living is still relatively high. They are their own worst enemies sadly.
- akmarinov 4y agoThose US companies are free to not be on the EU market, just saying
- xyzzyz 4y agoThis sword cuts both ways. US can also stop sales of Airbuses, Volkswagens, IKEA furniture etc. under some fishy premise. If EU does that to US companies, why shouldn’t US do it to EU ones? This kind of tit for tat trade war would be a loss to everyone compared to cooperation, but is still preferred to cooperating with a defector.
- mirekrusin 4y agoComparable move could be for US to forbid using EU hosted services to ie. store medical records of US citizens etc., no?
- wins32767 4y agoNo, because Germany doesn't have that big of an IT space. Aerospace and automotive would be good sectors to hit back with because they are more relatively important to Germany as IT is for the US.
- bettysdiagnose 4y agoOK but not wanting our personal records to be arbitrarily sized by the US government is very reasonable. Your government made a law that lets it spy on us... that's your problem.
- wins32767 4y agoI don't think it's reasonable that I'm paying more than my share of taxes for the defense capabilities that allows Europe free access to a stable world market and roughly rules based international order that underpins the export economy of Germany in particular. If Europe would fix that, I'd feel a lot worse about the spying.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- olliej 4y agoNo? This is the obvious outcome of the US government’s repeated and explicit statement that non-US residents do not have any due process rights and thus no warrant requirements, followed by - when companies tried to compensate for this abuse by creating subsidiaries in the EU - stating that the US government also had access to all subsidiaries data, again with no due process protections. What did the US government think would happen when they made it clear that no US company could provide due process protections for any EU data that they possessed? This has nothing to do with the “IP theft”, but rather the inability of US companies to comply with universally applicable EU law.
- raverbashing 4y agoTrue, this is the crux of it If you let all subsidiaries of M/G/A within reach of US courts (including customer data) don't get surprised when other countries treat it as toxic The US gov would never accept this in procurement, so why should other countries? On the case in question, it seems the company changed the tender document to take out some (protection) clauses
- olliej 4y agoYeah, the late (post acceptance?) changes seem questionable on their own. Presumably they were reminded that the US gov argued and won with the Supreme Court, that they have unfettered access to all non-us-resident customer data of all US companies, and said companies subsidiaries, regardless of local laws. After all, as we know the US Declaration of Independence says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all residents of the united states are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights".
- superchroma 4y agoHonestly, nationally-owned spin-offs aren't an issue. If that's all that doing business with China entailed, I think people wouldn't be so mad, but unfortunately there are other practical and moral compromises needed. The EU may be challenging in certain ways, but at least they play by their rulebook and champion public interest a lot of the time.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoI hope you are aware that "the cloud" is not some secret, mysterious piece of technology that the EU can't figure out. We have software engineers as well as data centers and EU-based cloud companies. Digital consumer networks were established here long before the U.S and the internet was invented here. Your arrogance is grating.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> the internet was invented here In Europe?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoWell the Web if you prefer.
- chrisseaton 4y agoThey're two different things. The Internet was invented in the US. I'm European as well, but not sure why you'd need to overreach to claim we invented the Internet.
- kazen44 4y agopacket based networking was invented in the US... The internet was created by meshing many different networks together (mostly ARPANET and SFNET). Networks which now form the backbone of the internet also existed in europe at the time, mainly in britain and france.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoYes we are all aware they are different things, I made a semantic leap because the terms are used interchangeably in common parlance. I should have known a technical forum would take me up on that.
- lizardactivist 4y agoThey mean the WWW, which is really what the Internet has always been about. And yes, it was invented in Europe.
- colechristensen 4y agoI wouldn't say so. Restricting the sale or transfer of personal data to a foreign-held company that can and will obey foreign laws with regards to that data is, I think, perfectly fair. The dances companies go through to appear local or non-local with shell companies is an abuse of the intent of many laws. Microsoft/Google/Amazon/etc. probably can figure out how to operate in Europe to comply with the intent of the law, but it might require a rather large actual separation of interests rather than a shallow apparent one.
- testaccountfor 4y agoThis is rich coming from America. America engages at global level surveillance. American corporations can be coerced with a single national security level to spy on their customers. Ergo they are untrustworthy and should not be used.
- mlqaa 4y agoMany (if not the majority) of open source projects that are used to power the whole spectacle have originated in Europe and now have a majority of international contributors. But the power centers (foundations etc.) are in the USA. International contributors are expected to bow to U.S. cultural dominance and follow the latest whims. OSS has been stolen by the USA.
- superchroma 4y agoAlso noted elsewhere is that US tech companies are hand in hand with the US intelligence apparatus.
- joshuaissac 4y ago> Except now, the EU is more or less forcing American companies to sell unaffiliated spin-offs to the EU to continue doing business there. Isn't that what happened with TikTok? Both China and the US have laws that force global subsidiaries of Chinese/American companies to hand over data held overseas.
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoI would argue China-US relationships are not that of allies or friends. There isn't a war or cold war going on, but I wouldn't pretend that the relations between China and the US are peaceful and represent trustful tranquility. I would argue the relationship between Europe and US are substantially better, although not without frustrations from both sides, some warranted and some not. At the very least, several countries are in a formal defensive alliance with the US and each other (NATO).
- Macha 4y agoNATO membership is also true for Turkey, which is not always considered friendly with the EU and US.
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoTurkey is a very interesting case, and is rooted in the Cold War. But I do agree Turkey is less friendly dly and is on my personal no-go zone for safety reasons.
- htkibar 4y agoTurkey's status is (or should be) always about who is at the helm. It is an interestingly "supreme leader" type of a culture, and with Erdogan you can see how that plays out. Heart breaking, in my opinion, as they had a reasonable shot at becoming a properly European country (read: culture & rule of law wise especially). For example, you would have had an amazing time 20 years ago with a level of security comparable to other European countries. Nowadays? Personal no-go zone is a wise decision, to say the least. If I didn't have my biological family there; I would have done the same in an instant.
- masswerk 4y agoThis is about US legislation and jurisdiction extending to foreign territory and thus conflicting with local legislation and corporations subsequently failing to comply with legislation regulating that market.
- xdennis 4y agoIt's rich to accuse the EU of copying China when it's the US who copied China's "National Intelligence Law" as the "CLOUD Act"; laws which compel Chinese and Americans to act as spies outside their countries when it comes to data.