Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> In the financial sector, the extra-territoriality of US laws has been a problem for decades.

This is a problem for the internet that has long been present but is increasing: multiple jurisdictions with global reach. Historically the First Amendment has shielded the internet from a lot of attempts to interfere with it, but there's no particular reason why only the US should claim that its laws apply globally. Why not Franco-German laws against Holocaust denial? English libel law? Saudi blasphemy law? Chinese censorship law?

Sooner or later someone's going to find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation where two global jurisdictions demand incompatible things.

View on HN

> Sooner or later someone's going to find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation where two global jurisdictions demand incompatible things.

That's exactly what we're already talking about here: companies are unable to obey both EU rules concerning privacy, and US laws concerning law enforcement access to data.

And that's basically why borders between internet jurisdictions are now being drawn up.

The sad thing is that Europe also has laws enabling law enforcement access to data, including (until recently) mandatory retention of certain data by ISPs. All this is about is mass surveillance without due process. All that would be required to fix it is interpreting the Fourth Amendment in the same way as Article 8, and abolishing the whole secret court infrastructure.

> The Court adds that legislation permitting the public authorities to have access on a generalised basis to the content of electronic communications must be regarded as compromising the essence of the fundamental right to respect for private life.

> Likewise, the Court observes that legislation not providing for any possibility for an individual to pursue legal remedies in order to have access to personal data relating to him, or to obtain the rectification or erasure of such data, compromises the essence of the fundamental right to effective judicial protection, the existence of such a possibility being inherent in the existence of the rule of law.

Actually, data retention was declared illegal several times. No government can force you to do it.

Sooner or later? It's been happening for a while in mapping. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10922595/Reveal... http://qz.com/224821/see-how-borders-change-on-google-maps-d... “Google Maps makes every effort to depict disputed regions and features objectively. ... Where we have local versions, we follow local regulations for naming and borders.”

Microsoft was ordered to hand over an Irish citizen's emails stored outside of the US to US government officials in a drug case. The case is still in appeals.