Hacker News Reader

Comment by beberlei | Hacker News Reader

If privacy shield gets scraped, then I might have to switch my European business to use only European third party services. At our company we use a carefully selected number of U.S. services that we believe have the interest of their customers and data at heart, but without privacy shield we might not be allowed to use them.

The massive downside for me as EU business:

1. Lost time and money having to migrate. 2. Usually european companies providing the same service are worse, leaving me and my customers worse off.

View on HN

Privacy shield is just one way to satisfy GDPR requirements for a US business. EU model clauses can be used as well, so it doesn't mean you cannot use US companies any more. The question is if they offer a good enough level of protection if the US government can demand access to data anyway.

EU model clauses can be used as well, so it doesn't mean you cannot use US companies any more.

So all you would have to do is have every EU business renegotiate contracts with or review new terms with every US business they work with where personal data transfer is involved? No big deal.

The question is if they offer a good enough level of protection if the US government can demand access to data anyway.

Right. But since essentially the same concerns arise when dealing with businesses based in the EU, let's be honest and acknowledge that this isn't really an ethical question and doesn't really have much to do with either privacy or security either. It's just a matter of the EU and its privacy legislation considering EU prying to be acceptable but not US prying, which is a political decision.

Oh absolutely. In other words, you'll be in exactly the same situation US businesses are in, that rely on Chinese and other suppliers that are now subject to tariffs. Politicians, eh? Hope someone wins this trade war soon so we can get it over with.

This is not a trade-war issue. This is a long planned review of the Privacy Shield regulation. Even if all trade conflicts ended, this would continue because it is not about trade but fundamental rights.

It is possible that the resolution gained more votes because of the trade war.

In general, Members of the European Parliament have less understanding of business and trade than businesspeople and traders, and in my view[0] tend to follow their emotions more in those areas.

Some also have a streak of anti-Americanism, in varying degrees. As the heat increases, this sort of resolution may occur more frequently.

I'm sceptical of the notion that MEPs all voted according to their devotion to fundamental rights.

None of this means that I believe pursuing the resolution into legislation is a bad or a good idea. I'd have to see (and understand the consequences of) the proposed measure.

[0]This is an impression; I have no empirical data

> I'm sceptical of the notion that MEPs all voted according to their devotion to fundamental rights.

This is what it comes down to, your disbelief that MEPs could have a genuine interest in their constituents' privacy.

It's the rational belief to hold.

You can't just claim a position is rational just because it is cynical.

It seems like a sadly reasonable assumption given past behavior and their own spying and loopholed cooperation.

So you don’t think passing GDPR and the previous data protection legislation going back decades, and enforcing them counts as evidence? I’m sorry, that is a bit snarky, but the EU has been pushing strongly in this direction for a long time and it’s been perfectly apparent it was going to come up hard against the US on this.

So you don’t think passing GDPR and the previous data protection legislation going back decades, and enforcing them counts as evidence?

Sure it does, but so do all the loopholes they wrote into those laws so EU member states could continue their own surveillance programmes and data seizure powers, and for that matter all the then-illegal spying programmes that were retrospectively legalised when Snowden et al brought them to light. Let's not pretend the EU and its members are whiter than white in this area, nor that the EU is above attacking the US tech sector through non-technical means.

>It is possible that the resolution gained more votes because of the trade war.

or probably just general dissatisfaction with the U.S.

The MEPs are simply doing their job, which is a different one than that of businesspeople and traders.

> This is not a trade-war issue

There’s certainly plausible deniability that it isn’t, I’ll give you that. Is it extra leverage that will almost certainly come into play? Yes, it’s also that.

I think it's clear there is a relationship between the two. Perhaps incidental, but they're still bound together.

According to the article, the only implementation on the US side was by presidential policy directive. So our faith in the US implementation of the 'privacy shield' is only as good as our faith in the integrity of said Directive.

Even starting from a low point where it's quite clear Trump is interested in tearing up anything Obama put his name to; his increasingly reckless approach to international relations lowers our faith in any presidential directive by the day. At this point 'privacy shield' either needs to make it into law proper, or we should just assume its days are numbered.

In a trade war we all lose.

So because someone else has it bad, we have to have it bad as well?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com