<story><title>New Twist in International Relations: Corporate Keep-My-Data-Out-of-U.S. Clause</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/a-new-twist-in-international-relations-the-corporate-keep-my-data-out-of-the-u-s-clause.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>beloch</author><text>Other HN readers are making some assumptions that I have to take issue with.&lt;p&gt;A1: Stories about this kind of thing are posted by people who want to take business away from the U.S..&lt;p&gt;This is possible, but there are a lot of people who value privacy too, and I suspect they are in the majority.  Want to prove me wrong?  Get polling.&lt;p&gt;A2: Everybody else is doing it, but only the NSA got caught.&lt;p&gt;First, this doesn&amp;#x27;t make it acceptable.  Second, it&amp;#x27;s entirely possible not everybody else is doing it.  Third, even if everybody is doing it, the U.S. has more money to pour into black-op projects than any other nation on Earth, so it&amp;#x27;s a safe bet that the NSA is, by far, the &lt;i&gt;worst&lt;/i&gt; offender.&lt;p&gt;A3: Countries like China spy for corporate gain, but the U.S. would never do such a thing.&lt;p&gt;Right, the U.S. has never staged a coup or conducted a war that benefited U.S. corporations, and certainly wouldn&amp;#x27;t need intelligence to help with that sort of thing in the future...&lt;p&gt;-----&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re okay with what the NSA has been doing, here&amp;#x27;s something to consider.  Several years ago Sony got a lot of bad press for putting rootkits onto audio CD&amp;#x27;s.  They wanted to stop piracy.  Honest customers had nothing to fear from Sony!  However, honest customers did have something to fear from viruses, malware, etc. that were subsequently written to exploit the security holes created by the root-kit.&lt;p&gt;The NSA is collecting data on &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt;.  You trust the NSA and your nation, so you&amp;#x27;re not worried about how they&amp;#x27;ll use that data.  Fine.  Do you trust everyone who works for them?  You probably shouldn&amp;#x27;t.  They certainly don&amp;#x27;t trust their own employees and they still got burned by Snowden!  The NSA might not be looking at your data until you do something terroristy, but who else could have access to the NSA&amp;#x27;s data-stores?  Would anyone know Snowden had stolen all those files if he kept quiet about them?  Probably not. Odds are you&amp;#x27;re pretty boring and nobody is interested in what the NSA has on you.  What if you were actually really interesting, and your enemies had a lot of money?  Do you plan on becoming interesting at some point in the future, or are you firmly committed to being a bore until you die?</text></comment>
<story><title>New Twist in International Relations: Corporate Keep-My-Data-Out-of-U.S. Clause</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/a-new-twist-in-international-relations-the-corporate-keep-my-data-out-of-the-u-s-clause.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bjelkeman-again</author><text>Everyone in Europe I talk to about online data agrees that this isn&amp;#x27;t empty talk. Practically it really isn&amp;#x27;t possible today to in a meaningful way avoid some of your data or data about your usage of the Internet to end up in the US.&lt;p&gt;But, I would argue that this is more of a change in mindset and awareness at this point, which eventually will force changes. Companies or local government will want their data to be stored in a jurisdiction where they at least have an influence over how it is protected. Balkanisation may be the result, or ineffectual laws and regulations, maybe even something useful. But I believe something will happen.</text></comment>