Does US have right to data on overseas servers? | Hacker News Reader

Does US have right to data on overseas servers?

arstechnica.com

30 pointskjw20 comments

I think in the next 5-10 years, the notion of a free, worldwide internet goes away. The current powers are realizing that the Internet is far too powerful a tool to let it be free. I think China showed the benefits of government control - suppression of dissent and making people who tow the government line rich. Tunisia demonstrated the danger of the government not controlling the Internet, and Russia demonstrated with Donald Trump that the Internet and especially social media is a great way to cause chaos at the highest levels of leadership even of a super power. You can be sure that everybody who has any kind of power has been observing and learning.

The US exerts it's influence over the world by the trillions they spend on weapons and soldiers. The idea of a "right" is quite irrelevant. The only relevant question is how much the target country spends on military.

And the US and it's citizens should not react with shock when they are seen as a hostile entity. The US is arrogant, history has a lot to say on the topic.

as hegemons go, there have been far worse

"Favourite oppressor" isn't exactly a saving grace.

apologies, i forgot that everything the US does is evil

Not everything the nazis did was evil either.

"There's someone more consistently harmful than us" doesn't make a good argument.

you can take this position about literally any power that has ever existed. it doesn't change the fact that during the period of US leadership the world has had objectively fewer wars and the greatest degree of economic growth in history, thanks in no small part due to that very leadership eg in establishing the UN. that doesn't mean it's perfect or hasn't done carried out many actions that may seem reprehensible from the political norms of our contemporary moment, but thinking of it as simply an 'oppressor' lacks nuance to such a degree that it's essentially adolescent.

you make the mistake of assuming that because your political opponents think america is good, it must be bad. hideously common sentiment these days, though.

Correlation does not equal causa... nevermind, I can't be bothered to carry this exchange any further.

Is that a reason we shouldn't expect better?

its influence

I always mess that up.

"In a nutshell, the US government claims it should not matter where the data is stored. What matters is whether the company can access that data in the US."

Ugh, not that I like the idea, I kind of think they are correct.

Sadly, that still gives US citizens effectively more control over their data : the right to not give up encryption keys because they might be used to incriminate you is pretty much exclusive to the US.

Also: US citizens CARE about this. Well, some do. That alone makes them far better off, over time. Europeans are really worse off, but no-one cares.

People should just once and for all assume that any data you have that is hosted on a drive that isn't encrypted OR has encryption, but you don't have exclusive control of the keys (e.g. all the cloud products) can and will be used :

(note that exclusive control of the keys means it can't be on a virtualized server shared with anyone)

1) in any court case against you or anyone else it might be relevant to. It does not have to be a criminal case (translation: you don't have to have done anything against the law, a mere commercial disagreement will do). This is especially true of divorce cases, but also for others.

2) This means that this data is no longer covered under the right to avoid self-incrimination in criminal cases in the US. Your Gmail/Outlook/Office 365 documents ... cannot be held from any court, no matter how much you disagree.

3) "to further the strategic interests of the US and it's allies" is the term, I believe. Essentially, anything one of the three letter agencies.

4) The way corporations are responding to this is to delete any and all mail, documents, ... after 2-3 months unless it's specifically marked to keep. Also, as soon as someone leaves the company, the duration is reduced, to avoid incriminating themselves.

The US DOJ certainly thinks that it has the right to go after a non-US citizen's assets in a foreign country even if the citizen has never been to the US, simply because the citizen's company had a server in the United States. All over copyright issues too.

It's ridiculous just how far reaching our government thinks it is sometimes.

2004, Rackspace, Indymedia, London DC. Precedent long since set.

Hmm, from [1]:

> US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace’s office in the US ... Indymedia’s hardware located in London ... Rackspace complied, without first notifying Indymedia, and turned over Indymedia’s server in the UK

So is the main difference here just that Microsoft was not willing to just immediately comply with the order from the US government? Or are there additional differences as well?

[1]: https://citizenlab.org/2004/10/fbi-seizes-imc-servers-in-the...

There is no "the US". There is only "we" (if you reading this are a US Citizen). And it doesn't really matter whether if we have a "right". Question is: Do WE go after data if WE think it is important to defend our country? And when you frame it like that, you suddenly realize we have been doing that since we sent out "spies" (basically farmers) to check on British troop movements in the 1760s.

Everyone else does it, too. So, go ahead: don't do it. See what happens.

I wonder if shell corporations that license a tech stack from a company in the US, but are administratively 'their own' company entirely incorporated within another country, are the way around this...

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