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Comment by slezyr | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I think that FB will comply. They did a lot to be present in China, so they will do same here.

But I have one simple question: Should be data of Crimean users stored in Russian or not?

Yeah, next logical step is for Zuckerberg to learn Russian and ask Putin to name his next child.

And to add one to your simple question: What if you run a service where you don't know where users are from? (Facebook knows a lot! It's a terrible example in this context.)

The best answer we got from the lawyers was "geo-ip". Alas, given that it has both plenty of false-positives and false-negatives (and people travel), it might as well mean violating privacy laws in both Russia and whichever-other-country.

Good times were had.

I believe facebook banned users from Crimea. So is Google and other US corporations.

All Crimean traffic now has Russian IPs.

One way to soften the political blow of that question would be to store Crimean user data in Crimea.

Let's go one step further, and store data about individuals in their own homes.

lol

Given that Crimea is now part of Russia, this would mean storing it in Russia.

There are Russian forces in Crimea sure, but so are US forces in South Korea, or in Afghanistan if you prefer active combat. Doesn't mean they're US territories.

Most countries see Crimea as part of Ukraine. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...

What do the people of South Korea, Afghanistan, and Crimea think?

There're millions of people living in all these places and it's a typical mistake to think that they have the same uniform opinion. You can take any subset from the population and create an illusion that they all support or reject something, like US forces presence. I see this in news every time I open them or watch TV.

As far as Crimea, it's difficult to say precisely.

They had a referendum in 2014, but that was then, and it was hardly an open and transparent one (armed Russian soldiers occupying the entire peninsula, no international observers admitted).

Ideally, we'd need to hold a new fair referendum to find out. The problem is that even talking about holding one is in violation of the Russian laws on separatism, punishable by up to 5 years in jail. Conveniently, the corresponding bill was signed into law at the end of 2013, shortly before Crimea was annexed. And yes, people have actually been jailed over this.

(Having said that, if there actually was such a fair referendum, I would bet on them staying in Russia. But the percentages would probably be lower than last time.)

Neither EU or US think so, and might to hit FB with sanctions.

"Given that Crimea is now part of Russia"

Only according to Russia and its friends. In the eyes of international community it's disputed territory at best or occupied part of Ukraine for most.

The eyes of the international community don't matter a whole lot here when it's the Russian police who will come knocking on the door with(out) a warrant.

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