Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

I think "international cyber-relations" is something that's more generally coming into mainstream attention [0], whereas it's always been a bit muted and behind the scenes because people never questioned where the Internet is. Another factor moving attention back to geography is energy. We started caring about what "the cloud" costs the planet. The magic of "The Cloud/Internet" was to make location disappear. Now, who has your data is an issue again. Clearly the Danes are not on BFF terms with US at the moment. Here in the UK our problem is GCHQ using a lot of AWS. I've no doubt current US politics will lead to big changes in how computing and storage is structured. Maybe we'll get some good new protocols and practices (I'm thinking of real massively distributed systems) out of this which make things more resilient and less parochial for everyone.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=31

View on HN

And this will be felt on both sides of the pond.

Unlike most other developed countries, the US has no real site blocking, mostly because it doesn't need it. They have enough control over the financial system and enough friends in foreign governments that they can essentially nuke websites that don't follow American law off the face of the earth, or at least force them not to serve American users of their own "free will". See e.g. crypto exchanges that don't follow KYC/AML, crypto-native prediction markets that nevertheless require a VPN for Americans to access, despite not even interacting with the non-crypto financial system, piracy sites which are often shut down at the behest of the US government, foreign banks that ask you whether you're a US citizen etc.

Once the answer to "we are the SEC, you can't let Americans visit your site or we'll get you extradited" changes from "yessir" to "fuck off, we're Europeans who have never stepped foot in the US, American law doesn't apply to us, and our government is gonna back us up on that", things will get really interesting.

As a European who is very much against EU tech regulations and the EU way of doing tech generally, this is definitely one change I'll welcome with open arms.

As an aside, I'm surprised "freely offering drugs / pirated content / havala-style unregulated P2P crypto exchanges to Americans on the open internet" isn't a model that a US-unfriendly nation has tried so far.

>foreign banks that ask you whether you're a US citizen

Note that this is largely the case for any bank where you're not a native to their country - because of the Common Reporting Standard. However the US asymmetrically applies FATCA instead of the CRS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard#Mult...

"The U.S. receives information relating to US citizens' accounts from many countries due to the compliance requirements of the FATCA. The United States, in many cases, will reciprocate by sharing banking data with countries for accounts which their citizens hold in the U.S., but not automatically, as is required by the U.S. in FATCA."

This makes serving US citizens in an "average" financial institution an added burden that might not be considered worth the cost.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com