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> Where data is processed should not affect the care with which it is processed. I can conceive of some verifiable processing package that ensures data can be processed wherever and still meet regulations. Can that be part of the future?

Not with US laws. The whole problem are US laws essentially allowing government to force any company to disclose whatever they need with little reason. That's the problem. That the moment data are processed by US company (not even neccesarily in US), US government have right to violate privacy



You seem to imply that none of the EU member countries are violating their citizens' internet privacy on a regular basis. I recognize that there are certain countries with _much_ stronger privacy protections in place, and that might not have something on the scale of FISA (from some of the compliance work I've done in the past, Germany comes to mind, but I'm sure there are a strong set of others).

But I'm curious if you explicitly believe that EU/EEA member countries unilaterally _don't_ spy on their citizens. Because I'd be inclined to say that's unlikely (at best) given what we know about the nature of intelligence organizations, namely that they're basically data lake vacuums in the 21st century.


The question is what is legal or not.

The US has laws that give them the legal right to snoop on any data about EU (avd other foreign) citizens.

Those laws make it impossible to follow EU privacy laws as a US company.

One of the two have to give, and the US should make exceptions for EU citizens, or rescind the CLOUD act.


This is the crux of the issue.

It's frustrating how many people are stuck in this loop, where they think any company can "easily" follow GDPR by just swapping data regions with their cloud provider. It's not that simple and never was.

This is a broader political spat between two of the largest government bodies in the world, not about facebook.

The EU is not the global privacy champion everyone makes them out to be. They just don't like that US companies can access EU citizens data specifically (since most of the internet is run by US companies). Whether they're okay snooping on their own citizens themselves is a separate issue--they've also regularly challenged encryption domestically.

I'm also certain the EU is not upset that certain 3 letter agencies in the US have access to Russian's private data when in the context of the war in the Ukraine. Like all governments, the EU only cares about their own interests, not about the philosophical idea of privacy in general.


Idk if they have the “right” to violate privacy (or whatever) I think that the US government just does it and they don’t care.

It would be great if the US (and Chinese) governments didn’t act in this way (I’m sure the EU would act in the same way if they had tech companies) but it seems to be their nature.


> Idk if they have the “right” to violate privacy (or whatever) I think that the US government just does it and they don’t care.

No, the problem is that the US has specific laws that allows the government to require companies to secretly violate privacy, and punish them if they refuse, or even for just disclosing that the request was made.


I am pretty sure China and Russia have similar laws. Its just if a Chinese company tried putting a canary on their annual report they would find someone explain the difference between "letter" and "spirit" very clearly.

The administrations of china and the USA are different of course, but not so different. The big difference is in the institutions and norms.


> I am pretty sure China and Russia have similar laws.

Transferring the private data of EU citizens to China or Russia would also be a major crime.

> The big difference is in the institutions and norms.

In theory yes; however the US has a strong norm of following the letter of the law, so what the letter of the US law says is important.


" the US has a strong norm of following the letter of the law" The US Government doesnt


Yes they do - why else would they write so many careful loopholes into their laws?


Then they just ignore the law altogether. Like FBI making almost 300k illegal searches. Because they can. https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2023/05/21/f...

There will be no consequences whatsoever to anyone involved. The laws are for you to obey and for them to prosecute you, not the other way around.


"...if [The EU] had tech companies"?




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