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Comment by barnacs | Hacker News Reader

As if the surveillance and regulation by the unelected EU bureaucrats was any better for the European citizens...

European citizens have the right to shop around. If they choose a cloud provider from a European country with higher data protection than their home country, they can send a message to their own government.

Swiss data protection law is an example of this. An Italian municipality could choose to use Infomaniak or Exoscale and increase their sovereignty and privacy.

As a European citizen, I can assure you, my options are getting ever more limited. Several global companies have kicked me off their platforms recently due to all the regulations they can't be bothered with. Those that make an effort to comply are by default required to submit to the EU surveillance system. At the same time, I have no illusions that any of this would somehow protect my data from the NSA and the like.

In my view, data can only be protected by its rightful owner. And for that, we need education, not regulation.

Even if you are right and everything is the same regarding surveillance and regulation: there are other important aspects that make the move to move european data out of the US worthwhile.

> other important aspects

like what?

I will just provide 2 examples, but you can find a lot more.

If your data is in the hands of a nation that uses this to block you from your data you should do something about it. [1]

If your data is in the hands of a nation whose representatives are threatening your territorial integrity (greenland) you should find alternatives.

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-emai...

Right, but next time your data may be threatened by some European idiot rather than one from the US.

To quote from my other comment:

> In my view, data can only be protected by its rightful owner. And for that, we need education, not regulation.

maybe, but education won‘t solve the issues I outlined above. So in interest of european security I‘m all for regulation of this.

"Unelected EU bureucrats"

Clearly shows you have absolutely zero idea about what you are talking about and just take your talking points from people like Elon Musk

Educate us, tell us when did we vote for the commission and the likes of von der Leyen. (If your answer is "you didn't vote for it, but you voted for someone who voted for someone who voted for it in a secret ballot" I am going to chuckle)

Do Americans vote for the supreme court or the chair of the fed?

And when did Americans vote for the director of FBI? Chair of the Fed? The local judge who can sign a warrant permitting the police to rummage your house?

Even that would be wrong. Von der Leyen was strong armed into her position by Merkel and the other heads of states, overruling Timmermans nomination.

> Educate us, tell us when did we vote for the commission and the likes of von der Leyen. (If your answer is "you didn't vote for it, but you voted for someone who voted for someone who voted for it in a secret ballot" I am going to chuckle)

Voters place their trust in representatives who then act on their behalf during the EP voting process and other legislative matters, such as electing the President of the European Commission

By that logic the president of the USA is also "not elected"

I happen to live in the EU so I may have a slight clue what I'm talking about.

But if you want an authority on the subject, look up Yanis Varoufakis and how sovereignty and democracy worked out for Greece when shit hit the fan.

Greece took on more debt than they could serve. Do you expect the tax payers from other countries to just pay for that without significant changes to how Greece operates? If you can't pay your debts and you can't print your own currency, you lose some sovereignty. But I feel like Greece would have been worse off if they still had the drachma and tried to print their way out of the crisis.

Pretty much every single country in the world has taken on more debt than they can serve. And the 2008 crisis wasn't triggered by Greece either. The private creditors should have taken the loss. And that holds true for the rest of the world.

If a debtor can't pay their debt, you don't just get to wipe out the bond holders. There is some kind of negotiation to try to restructure the debt and see how much the bond holders can still get. Simply wiping out the debt would create a terrible precedent with terrible consequences for the credibility of the whole eurozone. Who would want to lend money to an EU country if they just get wiped out when things get bad? It would've also had bad consequences for the financial system and potentially caused some institutions to go belly up. The way that countries typically get rid of their debt is by printing money to serve it and thereby inflating it away. But that is obviously not popular among the remaining EU countries. It was always clear that the Euro comes with this constraint that you can't just inflate away your debt.

Europe was able to impose policies to Greece because Greece was requesting loans from Europe. Those loans were required because other investors were unhappy that Greece had hidden the real state of its finance in its reports.

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