Comment by embedding-shape | Hacker News Reader

Comment by embedding-shape | Hacker News Reader

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> Yes, but if any US three-letter agency knocks at a US companies door and says: "Nice business you have there", will they resist just to not sell out their EU customers? I don't think so.

I don't think it's a matter of "resisting or not", they literally have no choice and can typically also not tell anyone because of gag orders. That's why things like Amazon's "EU Cloud" isn't really interesting to anyone in EU and Europe, ultimately there is a US entity that easily folds in favor of the US government, and there isn't much you can do about it unless you stay 100% clear from US entities with your data.

Not that I think our governments in Europe are much better, time and time again they demonstrate they don't care one iota about personal privacy of individuals, so I wouldn't be surprised European companies wouldn't resist even requests.

> I don't think it's a matter of "resisting or not", they literally have no choice and can typically also not tell anyone because of gag orders.

I would not rule out there are organizations/companies in the US who would rather give up their business than fold to the pressure, which is why I let this open. I know there are some US entities who have public carnary style notices ("We have not been visited by a government agency, ..."), with the idea being that while they can compell you to not say a thing, they can't force you to say a thing. How well that would work in practise, I dunno, but it shows that some in the US anticipate the issue and at least signal to care about it.

But in the end I agree with you, the safer route for people in the EU is to not deal with this risk to begin with.

> I would not rule out there are organizations/companies in the US who would rather give up their business than fold to the pressure, which is why I let this open

I wouldn't rule that out either, but also to be entirely realistic, AFAIK, there been one (Lavabit) company in the last twenty-or-so years that went the way of quitting the business instead of just complying. People nowadays seem even less to give up profits in the name of principles, so I'd also wouldn't be surprised basically no one actually doesn't fold.

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