Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Patriot Act Clouds Picture For Tech

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-data-is-safe-except-from-us dept.

Harperdog writes "Politico has a piece on how the Patriot Act is interfering with U.S. firms trying to do business overseas in the area of cloud computing. Here's a quote: 'The Sept. 11-era law was supposed to help the intelligence community gather data on suspected terrorists. But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft: Put your data on a U.S.-based cloud, they warn, and you may just put it in the hands of the U.S. government.'"

10 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Probably, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...you put it anywhere on the "cloud", and it's one mis-step away from being everywhere.

  2. Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doesn't matter if you comply with EU data protection rules, we still don't trust you.

    1. Re:Yep by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Would you kindly step up the enforcement, then? We all know that the US government isn't going to listen to it's citizens, but it's just as obvious that they listen to corporations. Maybe if Amazon, Google and a few other major cloud storage providers take a huge hit, they'll tell the government to fix the situation.

  3. Well why not? by Pastor+Jake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Friends,

    I don't understand these companies' hesitance when deciding to do business with US-based companies. Sure, the data may need to be seen by the government, but we aren't China; the data will be kept safe while our researchers are doing God's work by looking for pedophiles, rapists, and terrorists. Perhaps they could even insert biblical references into the cloud, in order to spread the Word to those who would not otherwise hear it.

    Your Friend,
    Jake

    1. Re:Well why not? by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not anti-theist, it's anti USA-theism. Europe has plenty of Christians, after all, as do many other parts of the world, but Christianity as it's practiced in the USA is a very weird and disturbing mix of fundamentalist religion and politics. After all, you can go into any typical American "evangelical Christian" (aka fundamentalist) church and they'll preach about how the USA needs to wage wars in various countries, how you (the congregation) needs to vote for these particular politicians, how we need to worship The Invisible Hand, how rich people are better people than the rest of us because God has blessed them with so much money and "success", etc. Now obviously, not all Christians in America believe this crap, but the numbers of fundies has actually outgrown the number of "mainstream" Protestants in the USA, and they are a very strong political force (esp. since they are so politically involved, unlike most other religions). This of course is completely different from the types of Christianity practiced in Europe for example, where fundamentalism is almost non-existent.

  4. Goes both ways by Pozican · · Score: 5, Insightful

    American companies are scared their data might land in china and copied. This is only news in that the US is turning into the same crazy police state that we've thought was limited to china and north korea.

  5. 'Warn' ? by unity100 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    do they even need to 'warn' ? previous incidents and documents that are in the open shows that u.s. govt, police, secret service, departments etc can wantonly request data from these services and get it. many of these, we discussed here.

    --
    Read radical news here
  6. Who can blame them? by Calibax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Four thoughts:

    They may well be right in thinking their data will be more accessible to the US government.

    If I were an overseas competitor, I'd certainly use this as a reason to not to use a US provider. In a heartbeat.

    The law of unintended consequences bites the US yet again.

    This wouldn't be an issue if the US government hadn't acted the way it has over the last 10 years. The US government has so little trust overseas that people have no trouble thinking the worst of it. Karma is a bitch.

  7. We're MUCH safer then the other guy... TRUST us... by zarmanto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Salesman: "That's right, since we don't operate within the borders of those capitalist pig Americans, we're way more trustworthy then them... We absolutely promise that we'll never give away your data to the US government, no matter how many times they ask us.
    Customer: That's great... but what about your own government? Do you ever give data up to them?
    Salesman: Huh? Well, of course not! At least, not without a court order, anyway... or a law which says we have to for some reason.
    Customer: Ah... So how is that different from the US based companies again?
    Salesman: Ummm... but... capitalist pigs... ummm...
    Customer: I see. Well, this has been very illuminating indeed. I'll get back to you on my decision real soon.
    Salesman: ............... Wait... what just happened?

  8. Re:what's the problem? by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fascists rely on the Just World fallacy to back up their arguments.

    The world is just. Shit happens to you because you did something wrong.

    It's a load of horse-shit.

    --
    BMO