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Comment by dcc1 | Hacker News Reader

Over the last month I have cancelled all our servers in US, setting up a new one this morning in Amsterdam

One thing I am worried about is potential liability of having someone sueing us under data protection laws here in Ireland, claiming their data was inspected by US and we couldnt protect their privacy

Here in Europe we get to have data protection commisioners and strong laws on the subject unlike across the pond.

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One thing I don't entirely understand is whether having an EU-based server provided by an US company (Rackspace, AWS, Digital Ocean, you name it) makes any difference at all.

No one can say - although at the moment you can be sure they are subject to US intercept orders.

The companies are incorporated in the US, so subject to US law. But the physical servers are located in other jurisdictions, and sometimes US law conflicts with that law.

In practice, so far I suspect that the US law has won out, because other jurisdictions haven't known to fight it. In the future that might change, but... secret orders supported by secret laws enforced by secret courts can be pretty hard for other jurisdictions to fight.

A server that is located in the EU is almost certainly owned and operated by a EU-based legal entity that is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US parent. So strictly speaking you would be getting your services from a EU company that is owned and controlled from the US but that is subject to all the relevant local laws.

Rackspace wrote a blog post about this: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/government-surveillance-and-yo.... They say it depends on jurisdiction and location of data, not whether the holding company is in the US or not.

As I understand it the Dutch government are pretty much in bed with the Americans on a lot of things (we have some of their nukes dotted around the country for a start). I would be very surprised if the government aren't playing nicely with the NSA as well.

That's been the case ever since the PATRIOT Act was passed, back in 2001. So you were screwed even before Snowden came along ;)

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