Hacker News Reader

Comment by mkempe | Hacker News Reader

Overall the US government acts as if other countries are not really sovereign entities, because software is eating the world. Hence the US is entitled to listen to everything non-US people say, read everything non-US people write, search data not stored on US soil, monitor non-US financial transactions, etc. All without having to respect any law of any other country.

The EU data protection bans storage of data about EU citizens outside the EU. Eventually the ban may have to include storage of data by US companies, even if in the EU.

This is going to end badly for American Internet companies. It's not just the NSA scandals. Americans need to realize that people outside the US have options, and at some point it will become a major handicap to be a US business -- seen as a conduit for US government power and spying.

I don't see how the US could or will step back from these abuses of power.

View on HN

>This is going to end badly for American Internet companies.

Agreed. Of course, it's going to end badly for Americans in general. The "undue burden on the government" reasoning has been used to weaken almost every right that we have. Police don't have to announce themselves before entering, or even have a warrant (if they get one later), because these things would constitute an "undue burden". It is a very strange loophole that the government uses, again and again, to break the law. My rights are worthless if they inconvenience a police officer. And in this case, a companies rights are worthless if they inconvenience law-enforcement.

I think it's time we hang up the "undue burden" loophole once and for all. The constraints on behavior our laws represent should not be conditional on convenience, particularly not on the convenience of law-enforcement.

I couldn't agree more. What an incredibly lame excuse. The problem with such wording as "undue burden," "probable cause," "reasonable suspicion," etc. is that the phrases themselves are so broad and ambiguous, they can and do end up being meaningless when interpreted in court. It's clear that the original intent of the authors is irrelevant when interpreting such phrases as is any semblance of reasoning or logic. The only thing left is the warring parties intentions and their rationalizations for intentional misinterpretation.

What's wrong with undue burden on police and government? The constitution itself provides for many such burdens specifically to prevent an overzealous government from overstepping its power. The courts can and have applied such arguments to specific portions of the constitution, generally with great success. What gives law enforcement the right to be free of undue burden anyway?

They aren't, sovereignty is only a concept when each nation is capable of independence through economic, resource, and most importantly military. Since America spends more money on military than the next 9 largest spenders combined, America doesn't have to respect sovereignty. America's goal is to feed it's consumption, and ensure that nothing threatens the way of life for the wealthy at the cost of other nations. It frustrates me to no end because although I really hate this as a concept and practice, I really enjoy being given the opportunities that that this enables.

Yea, that's great and all but what happens when China and it's 1.4 billion people get their stuff together?

It's astounding that it seems that few in the US government seem to acknowledge that we may not be on top always, and what goes around comes around. There will be real future costs for our moral corruptness.

Regardless of what the US does now, China will do later what the US is doing now. So the US might as well do the same thing now.

China has a several thousand year history of not getting it's shit together so it might never happen.

China is millenias old and has mostly kept their shit to themselves. That's an example everyone else should follow

They have a long history of failing to concur other areas which is not the same as keeping there shit to themselves.

The military only comes into play under certain circumstances, for instance it gives the US a lot of leeway in Eastern Europe, as long as it acts as a credible counter-balance to Russia. It doesn't have so much of an effect in most of the rest of the developed world. The US is not going to invade Germany or France if they act independently to protect the interests of their citizens. In much of the world, the credibility of US actions matters just as much as brute strength, and that will become more and more the case. And arguably, in many circumstances, strength is better measured through economic leverage than military expenditure.

US still has the occupation forces on German soil since WW2

For context, the US population is currently less than 5% of the world.

A danger for US companies is that their business will be cut off from 95% of markets, because of US government policies.

Well, not really true. In fairness though the US population is less than 5% of the world, they amount to lot more than 5% of the market. The distinction is between the population and number of customers of internet/software based services/products.

As of 2012, US Internet users represented about 10% of world-wide Internet users. [1] Internet usage is far from being an exclusively American thing.

Given recent trends, US users will within a decade represent 5% of world-wide users, with relatively more expensive and narrower bandwidth at their disposal.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

That's population not wealth, trust me I am sure most US businesses (technology based ones) currently don't have a strong foot hold in China. Which by your calculations make up ~15% of the world markets. If we however look by wealth and assume our allies are alright with our methods (given it also helps them spy on their citizens it's a fair assumption) we aren't risking that much, considering the countries we aren't in are the only ones who would oppose this.

I'm not saying that it's good practice to do what the U.S. did and I am appalled. However, they will not lose 95% of the markets, at least not now. There is currently no country with the capacity to generate as many new ideas into businesses, and the U.S. is roughly 25% of the worlds entire economy. Hell, just California is the worlds 7th largest economy.

Further, you don't think the other large nations (by economy), such as Japan, China, India, Russia, the U.K. are not doing/going to do the same thing (I omitted Germany and France since they seem to not wire tap.. Not necessarily true).

Business wouldn't and wont be cut 95%, I am pretty sure most countries are grateful the U.S. is setting precedent and will request them to issue warrants on their citizens.

Actually the US GDP is the same as the EU GDP -- almost 18% of the world's. [1] That's a little above China's. About the same as Japan + India + Brazil + Russia.

Currently non-US economies represent 82% of the world. Non-US Internet users represent 90%. Non-US people are 95% of the world.

And the US is not growing its share of world GDP, Internet usage, nor population.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)#...

> That's population not wealth...

I'd argue that the "wealth" (aka "valuation") of many US Internet companies is increasingly dependent on a larger user base instead of a richer one. Facebook paying $16B to acquire Whatsapp (and its 450M decidedly non-wealthy users) comes to mind.

> I omitted Germany and France since they seem to not wire tap

You can remove France from that very short list. It has been revealed that France does its own surveillance on its own population, and exchanges this data with the USA through the Lustre program [0], revealed in a German newspaper [1].

What's even more interesting is that the USA has little penetration in Africa's surveillance, but due to its history, France has a very strong presence there: Most of the intercontinental cables end in France, and the biggest telecom operator (Orange, ex France Telecom) is present in pretty much in every french-speaking country in Africa, along with Bull-Amesys, the one that installed the shiny surveillance toy for Al-Assad.

If the USA wants intelligence on Africa, signing a deal with France was a very important move. The french press not saying anything about it says everything about the level of independence and journalism.

[0] http://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2013/10/30/surve...

[1] http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/codename-lustre-frankreic...

Do other countries not get affected? What about India, the UK, and China? Many other countries have even more intrusive domestic spying programs.

Looking at it from a B2B perspective, I can think of a lot of business situations where my own country spying on the data I store is acceptable, while any other country spying on it is not. Any sort of work with your local aerospace/nuclear/etc program falls into this case. Or any sort of work with a biggish company with ties to the power, really.

It's fascinating to see how some people seem to find silly the idea that their domestic government could be on their side.

> Hence the US is entitled to listen to everything non-US people say, read everything non-US people write, search data not stored on US soil, monitor non-US financial transactions, etc. All without having to respect any law of any other country.

I hope you realize that the US most definitely does all of that inside the US too! The NSA's pretending to only target "Outsiders" only serves to make the all-encompassing surveillance more abstract, and thus somewhat more palatable to the local masses.

Yes, but my point is that non-Americans have and will increasingly choose options that US residents don't have.

You can rest assured that all governments monitor their citizens to the best of their abilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com