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Comment by julianpye | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty significant, because in Germany many corporations do require their data being hosted on German soil and protected under German consumer protection laws.

As a result the Cloud provider market is currently split into three categories: German corporations (e.g. Telekom) promoting themselves as truly compliant, US corporations with German hosting (Microsoft and Oracle) that self-promote themselves as compliant and US corporations such as AWS and Google that are aggressively attacked by German Cloud providers as violating German consumer protection law.

In the past I personally have lost customers in Germany because my services use App-engine and CloudSQL in Ireland. Thus, I hope Google follows with a German server for their cloud services.

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I can see in-EU vs. out-of-EU making a legal distinction, but how is it possible for German consumer protection law to require servers actually in Germany, vs. say in Ireland or Denmark? That seems like it would violate EU treaties on freedom of trade and services within the common market, which usually prohibits both direct and indirect restrictions (e.g. Denmark can't ban EU food imports by imposing unique food-safety requirements). Or is that just a marketing position (people prefer German servers) rather than an actual legal position?

Basically Germany has their own set of consumer protection laws (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) that are more stringent than the EU laws. There is an ongoing struggle if these laws should be regulated at EU level or at national level since some countries vastly differ in their attitudes in this space and common ground is difficult to establish.

In my personal experience the 'requirement' of some companies that data must be hosted in Germany is their own internal policy rather than something that is prescribed by their reading of the law. However there have been some court rulings where servers hosted in Germany are applied additional restrictions over servers hosted in Ireland.

A lot of this may also have to do with own interests. In the 80s and 90s every EU country wanted US silicon fabs in their underdeveloped regions. Now every country wants hosting farms.

There is an ongoing struggle if these laws should be regulated at EU level or at national level since some countries vastly differ in their attitudes in this space and common ground is difficult to establish.

Oh dear god let it be at the EU level. The only way small EU countries full of semi-corrupt conservatives get decent consumer protection law is when it's an EU law.

As far as I know it is already an EU law and, as with the vast majority of EU laws, each member state can decide to override with additional restrictions (usually under some limitations).

In this specific case, I think Germany is the only exception, but to me it makes perfectly sense: sensitive personal data like medical records should not circulate outside the country.

Even at EU level, how could Germany as a nation guarantee privacy if data is physically maintained in Ireland, where most of the US companies have offices just because of cheaper taxation...? As a country I would't promise that, and as a citizen I wouldn't trust such a promise (side note, I'm Italian so I have no gain/part into this).

> In this specific case, I think Germany is the only exception, but to me it makes perfectly sense: sensitive personal data like medical records should not circulate outside the country.

Having a computer on German soil does not mean that

1) the packets themselves will not travel outside Germany (hint: AMS-IX);

2) people interested in the data contained in that computer will not read it, store it, use it outside Germany.

From the technology point of view, country borders do not exist. (Unless you force a country-wide firewall).

If sensitive data must be properly encrypted. Once it is encrypted you can store it everywhere you want.

I see your point, but the reality is different. Data stored is not data in transit. Both must be protected, but the attacker models are different.

Unfortunately real-world (meaning, not theoretical) encryption is not perfect, thus the sole fact to encrypt is not sufficient to let you store any data wherever you want. At least not in Germany, and at least not from my pov.

To remain in topic with this specific law, data in transit can exit Germany soil, provided that the recipient gives guarantees on its usage (including not store it). This kind of laws should be seen to regulate sensitive (user) data as managed by (big, multinational) organizations, that are thus required to enforce security for both stored and in transit data.

I understand that this may seem silly, but without such laws the landscape would be way worse (consider, e.g., how many personal data are actually traded across the world for ads reasons).

That's not the point. The point is, how is the US government going to bring a case against a German company based on data they illegally intercepted sniffing traffic? If the data were on US soil, they could simply seize the computers once they knew there was offending data on them, and claim it was through an "anonymous tip" that they caught wind of the illegal activity. If the data is on German soil, they can pound sand.

As far as I know it is already an EU law and, as with the vast majority of EU laws, each member state can decide to override with additional restrictions (usually under some limitations).

Yes, but they usually have minimums. Like "Employees must get at least X weeks paid holiday", or "Customers must have a right to return something within at least X days". In countries where X was 0, or there was lots of exceptions, a minimum brings those laws forward.

Speaking as someone who grew up in Sweden I have a hard time believing the EU government is "less corrupt" than ours. Removing the ability to legislate (on anything) effectively forces every country to a lowest common denominator (that can be voted through) of legislation.

Then again I tend to be biased against centralisation of power so maybe don't listen to me when it comes to the EU.

Not a big fan of the EU or centralisation either, but when it comes to matters of privacy and standing up to US interests, I'll take the EU over Sweden's recent track record.

When it's just about minimum standards, nothing's stopping your legislative to vote for stricter policies -- right? Although I'm often worried that national legislators will point to implementations of the EU minimum standard as being enough and/or more stricter laws being a competitive hindrance.

> small EU countries full of semi-corrupt conservatives

Which ones would those be? From an American perspective, they all look like they're full of semi-corrupt liberals ..

> they all look like they're full of semi-corrupt liberals

What? Sweden and Finland and the Baltic states?

That was my question to OP.

Despite what Fox News may have told you, "Europe" is not coextensive with "France"

I watch Fox News more often than CNN. Which is 'never'.

But good try with the stereotyping and the assuming.

I'm in the UK, and the only thing holding both the Conservatives and Labour back from using 1984 as a manual is the EU (the Lib Dems may act as a little bit of a brake, but realistically they'll get gutted in the next election)...

The prospect of the UK leaving the EU terrifies me.

IANAL, but last time I looked, german data protection law regarded the level offered by other states within the european economic area as adequate.

Indeed - although the Microsoft vs US gov nonsense regarding Ireland is really the US gov taking their own cloud businesses out and shooting them, because it makes no difference where the data is if the operating company is HQed in the US.

That said, I wouldn't be so naive as to trust any government not to be attacking cloud providers, but it's important for companies making decisions to understand the jurisdictions their data will end up being regulated by.

You'd also have to be pretty naive to think that the german intelligence apparatus isn't out there actively attacking and subverting cloud datacenters. Google formerly operated datacenters in Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin, but they're all shut now.

http://www.quora.com/How-many-data-centers-does-Google-have http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/05/15/googl...

Just putting the data on german soil does not seem to help at all, as long as these data are accessible to Amazon personnel located in the US. See this case about data located on Irish servers for example:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2349550/microsoft-h...

Hmm...what about this then?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/03/microsoft-...

In Germany, the individual states have different privacy laws, which are often stricter than the EU minimum. I'm looking forward to AWS being forced to open a datacenter in every German state.

The Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (federal privacy law) is, as the name says, federal law. I have not heard of states imposing their own data privacy laws on businesses. It may however be true that the administrations of each state have slightly differing privacy requirements for their own systems.

My lawyer told me that individual German states have individual privacy laws. This was in reference to my company and the user data of German citizens.

The german states have their own different data privacy laws, e.g. see http://byds.juris.de/byds/009_1.1_DSG_BY_1993_rahmen.html for Bavaria.

Those regulate how personal data has to be handled within the state and communal administrations. Those regulations concern private businesses in so far as administrative tasks are delegated to the corporate sector.

how does that work with eu trade free trade directives seems an out and out illegal protectionist measure

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