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."

Comments

Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[dysmey]

If it reaches the point where Belgium, which is notorious for its disruptive behavior on the Internet, tries to extract money out of Yahoo! on the grounds of tortuous logic, as its press wing has tried to extort money out of Google, then maybe it is now time to dissolve the Belgian State and distribute its three regions between the Netherlands (Flanders), France (Wallonia) and Germany (Eupen). These groups do not get along, anyway; and the only reason there is still a Belgium is that nobody knows what to do with the capital, Brussels, when the country does break up.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[geekoid]

What about the beer?
Won't anyone think of the beer?

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[beakburke]

Since Brussels is the headquarters of the EU, maybe you could DC it. An independent city under the jurisdiction of the EU.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[arnodf]

Luckily we have something called mobile beer where the brewers come to your house and brew the beer for you with some kind of 'breweryized' caravan. So: country or not, there will always be beer!

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[McNihil]

don't forget the Belgian chocolates for the women too. Though I am 99.9999% sure that any woman reading slashdot would be a beer aficionado.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[jcwayne]

So she claims.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[Councilor Hart]

For all I care Belgium can disintegrate. If wallonia wants to join France, so be it. If Eupen want to join Germany, so be it. If both want to stay independent, so be it. I don't care. But Flanders will become an independent republic. It would never join the Netherlands. You would have to pry Brussel from our cold dead hands, before we would let it join Wallonia. Or it could go to the EU as the DC capital of europe, which is also fine. Fighting over Brussel costs too much money, and we are a peaceful people anyway. But sending billions of euros to wallonia, while they spit on our culture and threaten our territorial integrity, has to stop. Bonus point if you guess which side I am from.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[mrchaotica]

Moreover, it's not as if Europe doesn't have several independent city-states (Monaco, Vatican City, Liechtenstein, etc.) already anyway!

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a wider variety of higher quality beer brewed in the United States than any other country. You just have to buy beer somewhere other than Big-Box-Mart. Buy from a micro-brewery. I wish people would stop this lie that the best beer comes from Europe, when it no longer does. Our microbreweries are as wonderful as our macrobreweries suck -- a whole lot. DFH ftw.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[socrplayr813]

There is a wider variety of higher quality beer brewed in the United States than any other country. You just have to buy beer somewhere other than Big-Box-Mart. Buy from a micro-brewery. I wish people would stop this lie that the best beer comes from Europe, when it no longer does. Our microbreweries are as wonderful as our macrobreweries suck -- a whole lot. DFH ftw.

I'm not a big fan of generalizations like this, but parent is right that there are some truly spectacular microbrews in the US. Worth pointing out, even if it is a bit off topic.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[Magee_MC]

Waffles so good that a country was named in honor of the inventor.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[SomeKDEUser]

Of course Brussels is virtually french-speaking (80%) and richer than both. If the country broke up, it would join the Walloons (if you let people choose, that is). But Flemish don't like to be reminded of that.

As someone living in Switzerland, where everything is in three languages (yes, all the food items you buy in the supermarket are multiply-labelled, and administration is possible in all languages), I have no sympathy for people trying to force other people to speak another language when they already speak a language of the country the live in.

Having more than one language is a good thing. Embrace the other language, support multiple language labels. Support administration in multiple language, and people, feeling more relaxed, will maybe learn Dutch. But forced? You'll get nowhere.

And Flemish "territorial integrity" ?! Who the _fuck_ are you to decide where your fellow countrymen can reside?

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[johannesg]

For all I care Belgium can disintegrate. If wallonia wants to join France, so be it. If Eupen want to join Germany, so be it. If both want to stay independent, so be it. I don't care.
But Flanders will become an independent republic. It would never join the Netherlands. You would have to pry Brussel from our cold dead hands, before we would let it join Wallonia. Or it could go to the EU as the DC capital of europe, which is also fine. Fighting over Brussel costs too much money, and we are a peaceful people anyway. But sending billions of euros to wallonia, while they spit on our culture and threaten our territorial integrity, has to stop.

Bonus point if you guess which side I am from.

Oh, come on! The Netherlands really isn't that bad. We love our southern neighbours, their chocolate, their beer, their friendly demeanor... And you might enjoy our liberal drug-policies and cheap, fast internet. When you join, we will (as a bonus) finally get around to fixing the access to the Antwerp harbor, as well as the railway to Germany that you have been craving for such a long time.

On the other hand, we wouldn't want to share a border with France, so I'm in favor of keeping at least something of a buffer zone...

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[huckamania]

Honestly, the waffles in Belgium are incredible. They sell them from carts, like hot dogs in NY, and sprinkle them with powdered sugar. They are nothing like what they sell in IHOP or the diy machines in the hotel buffet.

Their french fries are also about the best in the world. They have some mutant growth gene that creates ginormous potatoes and horses.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[damienl451]

I knew you were a Fleming when I read your first sentence. So am I FYI, and I fully support Flemish independance, but could you *please* get your history right?

For starters, the was a ruling class that *spoke* French. But they were not French or Walloons. I hate to break it to you but if the elite in Flanders were French-speaking Flemings! They only spoke French because it was fashionable to do so. Just like the lower-classes in Wallonia spoke... Walloon (not French).

Now, once again, I'm sorry to rain on your parade, but those who fought for independence were mostly Flemish-speaking inhabitants of Brussels. Who was *opposed* to independance? The French-speaking (Flemish) upper-classes in Antwerp and Ghent, because they derived their wealth from trade with the Dutch and Indonesia.

As for the current political situation, what business of mine is it what language my neighbors speak? For all that matters, they can speak Chinese, I don't care!

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[Dahamma]

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!

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[cthulu_mt]

Their french fries are also about the best in the world. They have some mutant growth gene that creates ginormous potatoes and horses.

They put horse in the french fries?

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[Councilor Hart]

>And Flemish "territorial integrity" ?! Who the _fuck_ are you to decide where your fellow countrymen can reside?
A large part of the country is french speaking, the other part is dutch speaking. When the Flemish move to Wallonia, they adapt and learn French. When the Walloons move to Flanders (mostly in the area around Brussels), they continue to speak French and expect the locals to adapt to them. After a few decades of refusing to adapt and learn the local language, the french speaking population has become the majority. Now they demand that the original Dutch-speaking village should no longer be part of the Flemish territory but part of Brussels. In my opinion, that is annexing. I don't care where they live, but they should have the decency to adapt and learn the local language. Until 50 years or so ago, Dutch was looked upon as the language of peasants and French was the defacto language. The Flemish are embracing their language and culture and taking control of their own future.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[Councilor Hart]

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.

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[celjabba]

Technically, the best french fries are made in horse fat.

But to my knowledge, only 1, perhaps 2, shop still do so.
Good places use beef fat.
bad places use vegetable oil.

celjabba

Catch 22

[SirFozzie]

If this was true, then talk about your dammed if you do, dammed if you don't moment. 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?

Re:Catch 22

[kent_eh]

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)

Re:Catch 22

[socrplayr813]

Until we (people) get our act together, I'd rather have the option to move to a place where things are run differently. That way, I'm stuck if and when system in my home country goes completely crazy.

One bloated and mismanaged government is not better than lots of smaller bloated and mismanaged governments. They might all suck, but at least they suck in different ways, giving us choices. Hey, it's kind of like Linux.

Okay, so I'll get modded down for that last sentence, but the rest needs to be said. It's worth the karma hit.

Iran Elections + Twitter

[Hadlock]

potentially exposing individual employees to a variety of criminal sanctions

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.

Re:If Bush were still President

[Anonymous Coward]

Barack Obama will fly there next week to apologize.

Re:If Bush were still President

[CorporateSuit]

Damn you, and thank you, Anonymous Coward, you inglorious basterd... you just made me realize that I'm actually missing the days of King George W.

Serves you IT geeks right. now ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

... get off my lawn.

Following logic...

[Jack9]

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.

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.

How do they enforce the ruling?

[javacowboy]

This is about as laughable as a Brazilian judge ordering YouTube shut down because a incriminating video of two Brazilian celebrities kept getting posted on that site. Needless to say, YouTube is still up and running.

This isn't the first strange internet ruling coming out of Belgium. There was the row between Copiepresse and Google over Google linking to Copiepresse's newspapers. Google was fined and promptly stopped linking to the newspaper's sites.

Re:How do they enforce the ruling?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

There was the row between Copiepresse and Google over Google linking to Copiepresse's newspapers. Google was fined and promptly stopped linking to the newspaper's sites.

At which point, IIRC, Copiepresse sued Google to force them to link to Copiepresse, and have Google pay for said "privilege".

Re:How do they enforce the ruling?

[javacowboy]

At which point, IIRC, Copiepresse sued Google to force them to link to Copiepresse, and have Google pay for said "privilege".

I searched for this, but I wasn't able to find any references to the story. Not that I don't believe you, but do you have a link?

Re:How do they enforce the ruling?

[andr386]

Has any of you read TFA. Belgium demands private informations about BELGIAN USERS ..., "The United States and Belgium have a formal international treaty which the prosecutor should have followed to properly seek information from a US company." Had they gone trough the proper, channels the might have well received it legally, since Belgium has special agreements with the U.S on such matters, and it goes without saying that it goes both ways. What I really don't understand is why they didn't do it the right way, and didn't understand how laughable it was to fine Yahoo when it didn't work out as expected.

Re:If Bush were still President

[Em Emalb]

twice. Once in English, once in tortured "Belgish".

This will, naturally, piss of the Gremans, who will then be forced to bomb Pearl Harbor.

sovereignty

[bigpat]

This is appears to be a threat to our sovereignty. Time to bring in the State Department.

Can't have foreign governments pushing their laws on US companies operating on our own soil. If this were data collected in their country by a company operating in their country then that is a different story. Otherwise this would be like a foreign government demanding the contents of my underwear drawer just because someone they were interested in had called me on the phone.

Practically speaking, if Google has any finances or offices in that country then they have to make a value judgement because the local government has the ability to impose their penalties, but pulling out of this country rather than complying should also be their option. And if a US company is forced to pull out of the EU, then the US should retaliate in kind.

That's what the copyright chasers do

[petes_PoV]

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.

Re:Who gives a shit about Belgium?

[i.r.id10t]

FAL fanatics as well... mmm... nice crisp waffle, with a nice Browning G series FAL... I can do the waffle, can't afford the FAL. :(

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh, wonderful internet, horrible internet

[girlintraining]

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.

Re:Oh, wonderful internet, horrible internet

[DM9290]

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.

Re:Oh, wonderful internet, horrible internet

[BJ_Covert_Action]

...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.

if the usa never existed

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[whoever57]

Let's not forget the USA's actions against foreign based gambling operations. The USA started this type of action!

The real problem here

[lamadude]

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.

Individuals affected already

[sugarmotor]

I am getting the suspicion that this story pretends this to be a bigger issue because it affects an American company.

However, this kind of "which laws are affecting what I do" has already got individuals. See for example the case of Hew Raymond Griffiths,

  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths
  * http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?id=1778&s=latestnews

Griffiths was extradited from Australia to the U.S., a country he had never visited, for some "Intellectual Property" crimes.

For a company it is a mere money issue, but when individuals are extradited it becomes extremely problematic.

Stephan

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[sbeckstead]

We already fixed that and Kentucky has been rebuffed.

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[Tanktalus]

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).

Belgian or US court?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[whoever57]

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

Then you haven't been paying attention. The USA has pursued actions against foreign-based Internet gambling sites, including Partypoker.com. Also, forbidding credit card payments is against WTO treaties, which are (per the constitution), the law of the land.

Nobody saw this coming?

[mea37]

Somewhere along the line, everyone assumes that technology changes making something easy will automatically cause the legal landscape to fall in line so there are no repercussions when you do it.

The Internet has made it so easy to "act" simultaniously in, and interact simultaniously with the citizens of, every country on Earth, that even a small business potentially does it without even thinking about it; and even if you made the conscious decision not to, that would be hard.

So we say the Internet erases boundaries, but we don't really comprehend what that means. One thing we should realize it doesn't mean: it doesn't mean the whole world is suddenly one big USA.

The approach Belgium is taking here isn't one I want to see take hold, but I can't say I'm surprised to see it tried. A lot of the more "reasonable" approaches we could land on are not, in a lot of ways, "better".

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[pitch2cv]

And, wasn't it the CIA who extracted individuals from wherever they please? http://www.google.com/search?q=CIA+extract+learjet Why go through the hassle of ordering through court when one can unilaterally deceide to extract suspects from other sovereign countries? Maybe Belgium should just send a Learjet and extract the Yahoo responsables, and question them in some marginal country in exchange for a batch of P90 machineguns.

How can you own land?

[gillbates]

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.

Quid pro quo, or something along those lines?

[RobVB]

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.

The Only Logical Outcome...

[Quantus347]

The only logical outcome is such a ruling were upheld on the international stage would be to segregate the Internet and seal the borders. If one nations privacy laws can be so easily circumvented by any other country, then such protections are meaningless, and the internet cannot be maintained as global community.

Re:Catch 22 (sorta)

[davecb]

The library community faced this years ago, and the results are embedded in library software to this day.

Records are kept of who has a book until such time as they have returned it undamaged, after which that item is destroyed. Records of how many fines a customer paid are kept for longer, and records of how many books circulated are kept for substantially longer.

In effect, it's horses for courses. Privacy-sensitive information has a short life, billing longer, but not forever, and totals, which are needed for the grants process and planning, are kept for long times.

Because this is clearly sane, as well as an honest effort to meet legal requirements re privacy, most jurisdictions in the world accept it. They could object, but then they'd have to pay for a "belgium only" system to provide to their libraries.

--dave

Re:If Bush were still President

[Asic Eng]

More likely the bombs would fall on Bulgaria, since it's name also starts with "B" and they had nothing to do with the whole thing. It's hard to keep track of all these places when you are under attack. Besides according to unconfirmed intelligence Bulgaria has been known to aid and abet Belgians. Here is a picture of a Bulgarian mobile weapons lab or possibly a truck. What more proof do you need?