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It's great that American software monopolies do not have access to Korean data and that Korean companies can create jobs hiring Koreans and add to the GDP. ALL

It's great that American software monopolies do not have access to Korean data and that Korean companies can create jobs hiring Koreans and add to the GDP. ALL sovereign countries should practice sovereign software and safeguard PII of its citizens It's rather inconvenient for non-Koreans but you were never the intended audience nor is there much care for foreigners these days-there is growing hostility towards foreign tourists who have flocked to Japan and Korea in recent years.

hiccuphippo 2y ago
I don't know about SK's privacy laws, but wouldn't a country's government have more power to tap into the data of local companies?
- dingnuts 2y ago
  yes, and they also have the power to tell multinationals where they are allowed, geographically, to store the locals' data. the grandparent has invented a fake problem (data regionalization, as though it cannot be addressed with regulation) and has conflated a nationalist-socialist desire to replace a foreign private enterprise with a nationalized public one. it's nationalist because it assumes that the nation needs to own it, and socialist because at the national level a public solution is proposed. the solution, in turn, doesn't actually solve the regionalization problem unless the state organization running the nationalized ride share app is required through further legislation to keep the data local -- the same legislation that would be needed to regulate private entities, except now it's the government regulating itself since the public national ride share app is operated and owned by the government, and is now open to all the problems of corruption that plague every command economy. But by all means, be more like North Korea, South Korea. Just nationalize everything. You don't want American influence. Those American monopolies and American dollars have really made you worse off in the last seventy years. /s
  - localfirst 2y ago
    I have a problem with your comment. It's extremely condescending and emotionally charged. Data sovereignty/regionalization is not a fake problem. Many governments around the world are trying to keep foreign companies from accessing their citizens data. A sovereign country wants to create its industry by keeping foreign companies out isn't communism. Much of the West does this already and uses regulation/fines/antitrust lawsuits to keep em down.
    - oefrha 2y ago
      Amusingly, U.S. Congress has been making a ruckus about this so-called “fake problem” lately (and I can’t fault them) even though TikTok already stores American data in Oracle Cloud on American soil.
- lmm 2y ago
  Right, which is exactly why it's dangerous to allow foreign (that is, US) companies to control your citizens' data, particularly if that data is not safeguarded against those foreign governments (e.g. due to "national security" laws).
akdev1l 2y ago
> ALL sovereign countries should practice sovereign software and safeguard PII of its citizens Most countries are incapable of this and when they do try they do a worse job. My government has a website that allows you to fetch a person’s voting centre by knowing their ID number. Our ID numbers are sequential. Therefore you can use that website to get approximate location for literally everyone. My government also has a website to request passports online. I was playing with it and it turns out they have an open GraphQL endpoint that lets me query billing transactions for _everyone_. But sure the software was made in my country.
- naniwaduni 2y ago
  > Therefore you can use that website to get approximate location for literally everyone. Approximate address, surely. Addresses are ... usually not very secret in the first place, though? It'd be absolutely fascinating if your government not only tracked everyone's location but assigned their voting center by current location, but, well,
  - Aerbil313 2y ago
    > It'd be absolutely fascinating if your government not only tracked everyone's location but assigned their voting center by current location, but, well, That's exactly what happens in Turkiye. I assume GP is there.
  - akdev1l 2y ago
    I guess you misunderstood the word “location”. The voting centre is typically the closest public school to where you live. So when I say location here I mean the neighborhood where you live. Also the main concern isn’t the government. They clearly already have the data and will always have that data. They also have the actual address of people. The main concern is literally anyone can access the data and this thread is about countries protecting PII lol.
    - codedokode 2y ago
      In some Western countries voter's lists with names and addresses are publicly accessible, if I understand correctly. Helps to make sure government doesn't add dead souls to vote for them.
indoordin0saur 2y ago
As an American in the software industry, I whole-heartedly agree.
mattnewton 2y ago
Why would we think that every country blocking out foreign companies would result in better software being written for consumers in that country? I think some tiny amount of protectionism can be necessary to get a domestic industry started, when it is important for reasons beyond giving access to the best products like national security. Especially in edge cases like competing with foreign companies with the backing of their state government or an international market that has degenerated to a monopoly. But ultimately free trade makes better products and international consumers richer and is the desired end goal, not every nation rewriting the same tech stack and providing local flavors of software solving similar problems.
- lmz 2y ago
  > not every nation rewriting the same tech stack and providing local flavors of software solving similar problems. Why not? Isn't Diversity good? Wouldn't it be nice to have multiple colors, implementations of things rather than the monopolistic (and probably American) beige?
  - kcb 2y ago
    You would be doing the opposite of that. Creating 100 monopolies.
    - lmz 2y ago
      Better a hundred of them than only one or two.
      - L-four 2y ago
        It doesn't matter how many there are if only one is available in your region.
        lmz 2y ago
        At least a local monopoly answers to local pressure. Good luck getting a global one to do so.
spongebobstoes 2y ago
Sovereign software would break the open Internet as it exists today. A lot more work needs to be done on open protocols before interoperation would work nearly as well as the products we have today. Not to mention the colossal waste of effort in engineering hours, the disparity in quality between rich and poor countries, etc. Reuse is good. I would rather see open data and open protocols too, but look at Cambridge analytica, a scandal that was a direct consequence of giving people control over their data!
google234123 2y ago
Ha, imagine the Korea economy if the US and EU did the same with respect to Korean tech companies
- localfirst 2y ago
  There isn't any large software company from Korea that is setting up shop in US/EU Most of its hardware and yes US has slapped tariffs on Korean EVs to boost their own. Koreans prefer Naver over Google because its interface offers a lot more than Google. It's more of a portal site with social verification.
maeil 2y ago
> It's great that American software monopolies [...] and that Korean companies can create jobs hiring Koreans and add to the GDP. Largely agree with this, but this > do not have access to Korean data > safeguard PII of its citizens Is incredibly ironic on a post "I found a 1-click exploit in South Korea's biggest mobile chat app". Zerodium pays $1 million for a WhatsApp (the Western equivalent of Kakaotalk) one-click exploits. As a consequence, any new exploits must be incredibly involved, else they'll already have been cashed in (and patched after being reported/exploited). Whereas this Kakaotalk exploit is trivial. Americans share their PII with the FAANGs, us in Korea share it with the entire world because, as this article shows, security is absolutely atrocious.

hiccuphippo 2y ago

I don't know about SK's privacy laws, but wouldn't a country's government have more power to tap into the data of local companies?

dingnuts 2y ago
yes, and they also have the power to tell multinationals where they are allowed, geographically, to store the locals' data. the grandparent has invented a fake problem (data regionalization, as though it cannot be addressed with regulation) and has conflated a nationalist-socialist desire to replace a foreign private enterprise with a nationalized public one. it's nationalist because it assumes that the nation needs to own it, and socialist because at the national level a public solution is proposed. the solution, in turn, doesn't actually solve the regionalization problem unless the state organization running the nationalized ride share app is required through further legislation to keep the data local -- the same legislation that would be needed to regulate private entities, except now it's the government regulating itself since the public national ride share app is operated and owned by the government, and is now open to all the problems of corruption that plague every command economy. But by all means, be more like North Korea, South Korea. Just nationalize everything. You don't want American influence. Those American monopolies and American dollars have really made you worse off in the last seventy years. /s
- localfirst 2y ago
  I have a problem with your comment. It's extremely condescending and emotionally charged. Data sovereignty/regionalization is not a fake problem. Many governments around the world are trying to keep foreign companies from accessing their citizens data. A sovereign country wants to create its industry by keeping foreign companies out isn't communism. Much of the West does this already and uses regulation/fines/antitrust lawsuits to keep em down.
  - oefrha 2y ago
    Amusingly, U.S. Congress has been making a ruckus about this so-called “fake problem” lately (and I can’t fault them) even though TikTok already stores American data in Oracle Cloud on American soil.
lmm 2y ago
Right, which is exactly why it's dangerous to allow foreign (that is, US) companies to control your citizens' data, particularly if that data is not safeguarded against those foreign governments (e.g. due to "national security" laws).

akdev1l 2y ago

> ALL sovereign countries should practice sovereign software and safeguard PII of its citizens Most countries are incapable of this and when they do try they do a worse job. My government has a website that allows you to fetch a person’s voting centre by knowing their ID number. Our ID numbers are sequential. Therefore you can use that website to get approximate location for literally everyone. My government also has a website to request passports online. I was playing with it and it turns out they have an open GraphQL endpoint that lets me query billing transactions for _everyone_. But sure the software was made in my country.

naniwaduni 2y ago
> Therefore you can use that website to get approximate location for literally everyone. Approximate address, surely. Addresses are ... usually not very secret in the first place, though? It'd be absolutely fascinating if your government not only tracked everyone's location but assigned their voting center by current location, but, well,
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  > It'd be absolutely fascinating if your government not only tracked everyone's location but assigned their voting center by current location, but, well, That's exactly what happens in Turkiye. I assume GP is there.
- akdev1l 2y ago
  I guess you misunderstood the word “location”. The voting centre is typically the closest public school to where you live. So when I say location here I mean the neighborhood where you live. Also the main concern isn’t the government. They clearly already have the data and will always have that data. They also have the actual address of people. The main concern is literally anyone can access the data and this thread is about countries protecting PII lol.
  - codedokode 2y ago
    In some Western countries voter's lists with names and addresses are publicly accessible, if I understand correctly. Helps to make sure government doesn't add dead souls to vote for them.

indoordin0saur 2y ago

As an American in the software industry, I whole-heartedly agree.

mattnewton 2y ago

Why would we think that every country blocking out foreign companies would result in better software being written for consumers in that country? I think some tiny amount of protectionism can be necessary to get a domestic industry started, when it is important for reasons beyond giving access to the best products like national security. Especially in edge cases like competing with foreign companies with the backing of their state government or an international market that has degenerated to a monopoly. But ultimately free trade makes better products and international consumers richer and is the desired end goal, not every nation rewriting the same tech stack and providing local flavors of software solving similar problems.

lmz 2y ago
> not every nation rewriting the same tech stack and providing local flavors of software solving similar problems. Why not? Isn't Diversity good? Wouldn't it be nice to have multiple colors, implementations of things rather than the monopolistic (and probably American) beige?
- kcb 2y ago
  You would be doing the opposite of that. Creating 100 monopolies.
  - lmz 2y ago
    Better a hundred of them than only one or two.
    - L-four 2y ago
      It doesn't matter how many there are if only one is available in your region.
      - lmz 2y ago
        At least a local monopoly answers to local pressure. Good luck getting a global one to do so.

spongebobstoes 2y ago

Sovereign software would break the open Internet as it exists today. A lot more work needs to be done on open protocols before interoperation would work nearly as well as the products we have today. Not to mention the colossal waste of effort in engineering hours, the disparity in quality between rich and poor countries, etc. Reuse is good. I would rather see open data and open protocols too, but look at Cambridge analytica, a scandal that was a direct consequence of giving people control over their data!

google234123 2y ago

Ha, imagine the Korea economy if the US and EU did the same with respect to Korean tech companies

localfirst 2y ago
There isn't any large software company from Korea that is setting up shop in US/EU Most of its hardware and yes US has slapped tariffs on Korean EVs to boost their own. Koreans prefer Naver over Google because its interface offers a lot more than Google. It's more of a portal site with social verification.

maeil 2y ago

> It's great that American software monopolies [...] and that Korean companies can create jobs hiring Koreans and add to the GDP. Largely agree with this, but this > do not have access to Korean data > safeguard PII of its citizens Is incredibly ironic on a post "I found a 1-click exploit in South Korea's biggest mobile chat app". Zerodium pays $1 million for a WhatsApp (the Western equivalent of Kakaotalk) one-click exploits. As a consequence, any new exploits must be incredibly involved, else they'll already have been cashed in (and patched after being reported/exploited). Whereas this Kakaotalk exploit is trivial. Americans share their PII with the FAANGs, us in Korea share it with the entire world because, as this article shows, security is absolutely atrocious.