Hacker News Reader

"Participates" is the wrong characterisation, they are under the jurisdiction of FISA orders, if the NSA wants to call that PRISM, it's their business. Also worth mentioning is that providers in non-US countries are subject to their respective country's surveillance efforts, so either way it's a red herring argument.

View on HN

"Participates" is a perfectly acceptable word for silently complying with a law. Especially for an international company that could have changed jurisdiction of the relevant servers.

"Participates" is not at all an acceptable word for actions taken under duress, and for an international company, changing jurisdiction of the relevant servers would have made no difference whatsoever. As long as your flesh-and-blood body is located in the US, or in a country that chooses to enforce US law in such matters (or will ever be so located in the future, even for a stopover on an international flight), your servers could be on the moon for all it matters; you still have to obey the government.

There are different levels of duress. Nobody pointed a gun at Google. They could have refused if they truly wanted to.

Can the US serve a warrant to a server in Europe run by Europeans? I was assuming the answer was no, in which case you don't need violate any laws or worry about repercussions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com