Slashdot Mirror
Belgium Tries to Fine Yahoo for Protecting US User Privacy
Techdirt is reporting that Belgium is trying to extract fines from Yahoo for not producing user data that was recently demanded of the US company. Instead of following normal diplomatic channels Belgian officials apparently made the data demands directly to Yahoo's US headquarters and then took the company to criminal court, where a judge issued the fine. "The implications of this ruling are profound and far-reaching. Following the court's logic would subject user data associated with any service generally available online to the jurisdiction of all countries. It would also subject all companies that offer services generally available on the global Internet to the laws of all jurisdictions, potentially exposing individual employees to a variety of criminal sanctions."
I mean seriously?
Meaning if you were a Twitter employee, you could be sued or sentenced to a prison term by Iranian officials? I doubt the US would honor an extradition request from a country it's cut off political ties with, but Pakistan or North Korea might.
moox. for a new generation.
Barack Obama will fly there next week to apologize.
Since Brussels is the headquarters of the EU, maybe you could DC it. An independent city under the jurisdiction of the EU.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Some countries require this data to only be kept for a small amount of time, others require it for a long amount of time. They demand data.. do you face trouble for not turning over the data that the foreign folks require, or fufill the data request and take it in the shorts from your home nation?
And other countries demand that users' personal information be kept private. (see the earlier thread of Facebook and the Canadian privacy commissioner)
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Historically, this has always been the case. This is not alarming to me in any way. The courts pick and choose when to enforce foreign and domestic policies. Ever been subjected to a pissed off Israel? All your logs are belong to them vis a vis the FBI. What's more, who thinks that stare decisis matters when dealing with such a major change? Sensationalism on /. I'm seeing the trend now. Get back to me when this is at the court of appeals thx.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
would subject user data associated with any service generally available online to the jurisdiction of all countries
You have organisations in one country trying to impose their rules on people in other countries. The basic problem is that the internet does not follow country boundaries and until there is some internationally agreed (as opposed to single-ended imposition) treaties to say exactly who has jusidiction, over what and where, these things will continue to cause trouble. The U.S. already assumes that any data which touches servers in their country makes the sender / receiver subject to their laws (ref: the Natwest three - look it up), so it's only fair that other countries should uphold the same standards.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Why is it that only our generation understands the truly public and universal nature of the internet? Nobody owns the internet, and nobody ever will. You can claim to own the wires, the equipment, the computers, the software, and every other component, but you still won't own the internet. The internet has given birth to an idea -- that we're all interconnected and nobody owns the spaces in between. This idea recurs generation after generation, only to die because society can't find a place for it.
Oh, but they'll try. They will cast their books down on our heads, scream a million epitaths of criminal, deviant, terrorists, and invent new terms to express their disgust. They'll arrest us, punish us, and wage massive campaigns of fear. But they'll never get the idea out of our heads that maybe, just maybe, we don't have to pay their tax to touch the life of another person.
they disagree with you, and they are the ones with the guns, jails and judges to enforce what they believe.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
all of the horrible crimes you ascribe to the usa would still go on
please stop ascribing to american behavior that which is basically human behavior. its better to have an ideology that is based on some sort of principles, rather than mindless kneejerk anti-americanism
then you can still find america guilty of plenty of crimes, and rightfully so. but then you can extend that to find other countries guilty of many of those same crimes, without sounding like an idiot because you want to put forth the idea that the usa is somehow magically the originator of a crime someone else committed
example: the usa meddled in central america... therefore the usa is guilty of absolutely every crime committed there by every player ever since. the usa meddled in the middle east... therefore the usa is responsible for absolutely every crime committed there by every player ever since. etc., ad nauseum, and other such retarded thinking
dude: belgium is not "following the example of the United States". belgium is being retarded all by itself, all on its own. really
i now await the typical and retarded response: i'm a neocon imperialist dick cheney cocksucker, i'm from the lunatic right wing fringe. all because i ask for some logical coherence. can you tell the difference between a moderate opinion and a far right opinion?
please, go right on criticizing the usa. you may hate the usa all you want. go on with your bad self, be my guest, keep the venom flowing and the high holy moral outrage and indignation fresh. i fully support all the anti-american tirades you can muster. zzz
just try to notice at some point all of the other crimes committed by all the other countries in the world
k thx
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's not forget the USA's actions against foreign based gambling operations. The USA started this type of action!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
...And it is precisely this realization and attitude that makes me hopeful of the future. Societies may rise and fall, governments may dictate and mandate, all hell can break loose politically, but frankly, humans, and the younger generations in general, have tasted the freedom of the internet and the ideas it embraces. Laws can be passed and a whole world can be turned into criminals, but as long as the attitude of the parent post prevails there will always be some group of hackers, some tech junkies, some basement geniuses that will find new ways to connect humanity and laugh flippantly at the established powers.
The power of humanity comes from its ideas, not its technology or biology or whatever, but fundamentally from its ideas. As long as we fan the flames of ideas like those discussed above, even if we do so in a very limited scope by talking only to one person our entire lives, the future will always be a bit brighter.
Thank you for iterating these thoughts so well and concisely girlintraining.
I, for one, welcome our own ideologies and intelligence as overlords.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
is not that Belgium wants this information, it would help in the fraud investigation that is ongoing. The fraud was commited in Belgium by people using yahoo email adresses, how are they supposed to find these people? The problem is: 1. That Belgium takes Yahoo to court instead of relying on the mutual legal assistance treaty which already exists between the US and Belgium 2. That the court actually followed Belgium's reasoning, which creates a dangerous precedent.
We already fixed that and Kentucky has been rebuffed.
Why bother
Hmmm. And here I thought that the US merely forbid US-based credit card companies from paying to on-line casinos. That'd be entirely legal (even if the effect, or even the desired effect, is of dubious value). Not quite the same thing as fining foreign casinos, or even outlawing them (per se).
Was this decision rendered in a Belgian or US criminal court? TFA and the summary don't make this important distinction.
If it was in a Belgian court it's a "go whistle" to get the decree enforced. (But Yahoo executives will have to be careful about European travel in the future if they thumb their nose.) If it was in a US court it's a whole different can of worms.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The native Americans used to ask. To them, the land was so fundamentally free that to own a piece of it seemed a sacrilege (sp?) against nature.
But then, along came Europeans, and land the Indians had used for centuries was suddenly denied them. You see, Europeans had this notion of property rights extending to the very stuff you put your feet on. You might think it's absurd to lay claim to the internet, but believe me, someone is already thinking about ways of divvying it up and making ordinary people pay for what they used to get for free. You'll pay to transmit, and your recipient will pay to receive. And somewhere, somehow, if the telecoms can manage it, you'll pay a monthly fee to them to *store* the content you received from the internet. Let's not forget Time Warner, who wanted to triple bill YouTube - once for the priviledge of connecting to the Net, a second time for the priviledge of providing *premium* content, and the third time is the user who pays for the bandwidth of downloading it from YouTube.
Freedom isn't free, after all - as the saying goes. If you think the internet can't be owned, you've obviously never met a US legislator.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Not too long ago a number of European countries (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Belgium, possibly more) at least partially gave up their banking secrecy after being pressured by the US, because the US wanted that information to fight fraud. Now Belgium is asking for information and suddenly privacy becomes an insurmountable issue.
I'm not defending the way this requesting and sharing of information is going, and I'm not defending Belgium for trying to bypass privacy laws, but I do think it's awfully hypocritical of the United States to quickly hide behind their privacy laws after making us change ours.
And another thing - why do people immediately suggest to "Put Belgium to Sleep" when it causes a problem in the international community? Instead of focusing on the issue at hand, they think dividing this country among its neighbors will fix everything? In a discussion about American sovereignty on a very important issue, don't forget to respect Belgian sovereignty on an even more important one. The continued existence of the Belgian state is something its citizens, and its citizens alone, should decide about.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Nah, the best Belgian beers are brewed by monks. The monks won't care what happens to the Belgian government, and the Belgian government, while having no problems with picking on some US Internet company, will think twice before interrupting a major revenue stream of the Catholic Church!
Yahoo or any such provider should just cut off service in such countries with a notice of why. Let the disgruntled user base take their country's politicians to task for their foolish laws.
No, the Netherlands ain't bad. But why would we exchange an annoying minority in the south with a nice majority in the north. We want independence, so that we can determine our own future.