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Comment by keewee7 | Hacker News Reader

I'm an EU citizen and support the GDPR. But it's only a question of time before the US will interpet these fines as an undeclared trade war and make up the legal framework to do retaliatory strikes against EU tech companies.

Borders and tariffs will be the long-term future of the Internet.

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Given that EU companies are also getting fines, not only foreign ones, this interpretation would be silly.

The real trade war is all of the Cloud act chicanery https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33562182

I should clarify that anyone under fire regarding Schrems II either needs to convince an EU member state's court that the Cloud Act is unlikely to result in GDPR data protection issues, or that the US has no way of obtaining that information in the first place (eg. no US corporation or persons have access to EU citizen data).

Well, the US has already a lot of restrictions to companies that want to do business in dollars and not just on Internet companies.

See https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bnp-paribas-agrees-plead-guil...

This is a case of trade with countries under embargo.

One of the main use of internet surveillance was trade (e.g. Boeing vs. Airbus deals).

I believe the US department of justice have the right structure to make this kind of fines, part of the fines goes to found the department of justice.

The GRPR is fully within the remits of existing trade agreements and does not violate US constitutional law, so as long as the EU is not selectively targeting US companies(and there is no evidence of that being the case), it's going to take a lot of crazy politicians and some tearing up of bilateral trade and cooperation agreements for the American authorities to take any action other then assisting the EU in collecting fines from American companies.

There nothing new about companies enforcing their existing laws on imported goods and services and the eu-us free trade agreement's already contains clauses where both parties have to assist each other if a company is trying to evade those rules. The only thing new is that the regulators are now considering digital services to cross the border when there is money flowing the other way.

If the US were going to raise a stink they would have done so when the EU kept doubling MS antitrust fine until MS eventually paid up, issuing GDPR fines to discord that is smaller then what smaller European companies have been fined ain't going to be an issue for the trans Atlantic trade relationships. Especially as GDPR style rules are being proposed at the state level in the US.

Region locking of copyrighted material is where the real blocks in content is going to come into play(as it already have) but that is a whole different can of mud.

I guess their assumption is that US wouldn't have that many options whom to retaliate to. Who would they fine? Spotify, maybe? Who else?

If regulating foreign companies is an undeclared trade war, could the US government please give Volkswagen its billions of dollars back?

Eh, maybe, but also maybe not.

Five states have passed their own privacy laws, with one in effect now and others coming online soon.

If this practice continues, and it likely will, it will soon becoming completely unmanageable for US tech companies to keep up with the myriad of state privacy laws.

At that point the federal government will likely pass a federal privacy law, which supersedes all the state privacy laws. And once we have a federal privacy law, it will likely be designed to at least be somewhat compatible with GDPR.

So, I don’t see the US going to war over this issue. I think the political winds are drifting in the other direction, and the US will follow Europe on this. Eventually.

Good. More borders and tariffs (AND TAXATION, let me add) are definitely needed. Internet should contribute to a greater good, not enable transnational companies, tax evasion and data thief.

If the US choses to interpret the GDPR that way, despite the fact that some significant receivers of fines are European itself (like H&M, Vodafone, two Italian energy and telecoms, Marriott and British Airways) then that would just show that American tech is an extended arm of the American government and in that case we should prioritize our sovereignty in the EU.

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