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I continue to be disappointed the US doesn't have data protection laws (in the style of the EU), because that addresses precisely this issue: you own your data.
by Osmium 14y ago
I continue to be disappointed the US doesn't have data protection laws (in the style of the EU), because that addresses precisely this issue: you own your data.
Furthermore, I continue to be irritated that non-EU companies don't comply with these laws while still offering their services in the EU. You can't have it both ways. The physical location of the server or the legal entity behind it shouldn't matter: if you want to offer your services to a country, you should have to abide by local laws.
It's issues like this that really emphasise just how young the Internet is, in that the law still hasn't caught up. I find it sad that a lot of these issues are being resolved "accidentally" (i.e. when it comes up in court and laws that predate the digital world are used to set bad or misguided precedents) rather than proactively, by trying to make new laws that take the nature of the Internet into account. Surely that's what the EFF should be campaigning for. Why not require, by law, all cloud providers to offer an API to let users access, modify or delete any and all of their data?
- rsync 14y agoI'll just leave this right here: http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
- mseebach 14y agoNotes: This scheme is not infallible. Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations. The news clip in the signed message serves to demonstrate that that update could not have been created prior to that date. It shows that a series of these updates were not created in advance and posted on this page.
- nirvana 14y agoThe US has more fundamental protections for your data than the EU does. The US has it written into the highest law of the land, wheras the EU just has some promises. The reality is this: In neither jurisdiction are you safe, because in both jurisdictions the government will sieze or snoop on data at will. Sometimes it will do it publically with warrants (Which are generally fraudulent in the US and used to sieze things that are not covered by the warrent also.) Or they will simply pass some law "to fight terrorism" or "tax evasion" or "money laundering" or "child pornography" that exempts them from having to comply with the other laws. It doesn't matter. You cannot trust government because government is evil. It's like expecting a fox to guard the henhouse. It's silly if you think about it.
- yuhong 14y agoMore precisely, the executive branch. That is why there are the three branches in the first place!