Comment by GrimRe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GrimRe | Hacker News Reader

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This is such a ridiculously primitive view of the world it beggars belief. By taking this view you are significantly reducing your security posture, no improving it.

There is an AWS Region in Germany. Your data will stay in Germany unless you specifically decide to move it elsewhere.

AWS also provide you with the tools to encrypt everything and if done correctly means that Amazon no matter how "evil" they are cannot decrypt the data. Not only that, there is such a huge separation in access and rigour around governance that there is no way anyone within Amazon can simply login and see your data even if unencrypted.

Every single case of data being leaked from AWS is because the people working for the company that manage the data literally checked a box to make the contents public. Contrast this to "on-prem" where physical security can get compromised or the vendors of the physical hardware/software leave gaping holes or maintenance backdoors that get exploited.

Honestly these types of views are no more grounded in reality that flat earth conspiracy type views.

Your fancy view of the world is not as fancy as you think and your aggressive, disrespectful rhetoric is doing you a disservice.

The measures you've enumerated (EU zones, encryption, etc) are mitigations for working with a potentially compromised vendor and should be done anyway. Not using the vendor is such a blindingly obvious countermeasure that one has to be either unprofessional or have a hidden interest to dismiss out of hand.

> there is such a huge separation in access and rigour around governance that there is no way anyone within Amazon can simply login and see your data even if unencrypted.

I personally choose not to believe a company which puts on its board of directors a well-known perjurer [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-re...

Which companies do you believe?

We were talking about Amazon here, that discussion probably merits another thread. But yes, I do believe more in companies that don’t bring in ex-government crooks on their board of directors.

Don't forget the mass surveillance of his old job. Even if he didn't lie, you might want to think of hiring him for your cloud services.

>Your data will stay in Germany unless you specifically decide to move it elsewhere.

Prove it

Also, what happens if you find a leak? Or that it has been moved somewhere else?

They say "We are sorry", give you some free credit, and that's it ?

No, that won't happen.

"Sorry not sorry" and no credit.

How do you prove that a german company does not have secret data sharing agreements? Think cryptoAG.

I think its much more likely that an American company with a former NSA head as a board member is much more likely to have an agreement like that, personally.

My bigger worry would be continued data access. So even if the data is in Germany, access to it is still controlled by an US entity, which can be forced by the US government to shut off access. Given that the current administration seems to enact embargos on a whim, this doesn't seem too unlikely.

In my limited experience, Germans are more sensitive to personal privacy than other Europeans, even the rest of the world. To non-Germans they might seem paranoid. Maybe we can all learn from their historical mistake.

The problem I see with the DIY-attitude is that security is easy to get wrong and is moving target. The other opinion here is "keep it in the country". If someone really wants your data, the locale won't save you. And yet, if there is a breach, I could see an foreign company like AWS trying to hush it, where a German company would make a bigger fuss (diplomatic issue).

Hmm, mumble mumble mirrored switch port in the exchange mumble mumble mumble...

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