Foreign Data Unsafe From US Patriot Act, Says American Law Firm

natecochrane writes "A prestigious law firm warns non-U.S. businesses their data is unsafe from costly and invasive raids by American law enforcement even if they host their data in their own countries. The wide interpretation of the USA Patriot Act ensures U.S. cops can legally demand data from almost anyone, anywhere for any reason and countries and their citizens are largely powerless to resist. The advice has resonance with the arrest this week of Kim 'Dotcom' on alleged copyright violations in the U.S."

Comments

Re:legally demand

[snowgirl]

That means no American companies, no outsourcing to the U.S., and no data storage in the United States. The U.S. are international lepers in the privacy world and should be avoided at all costs.

Unfortunately, even this is not enough. The non-US company would have to ensure any and all contact with the US is prevented, to ensure that there is not even a crack of a sliver of the door to US jurisdiction.

The way they got a porno director here in the US who operated in California, was to order his product in Georgia and have them ship it there. BAM! Georgia claims jurisdiction and the guy goes to jail.

In fact, one of the wedges used to argue for jurisdiction over megauploads, was that they used PayPal. So, now you can't deal with USD, nor can you particularly even do business with American companies. That cuts out a lot of business, and every multinational company.

The world is getting so small now, that it will be impossible for any company or business person to ever manage to keep out from the from the ever expanding abuse of jurisdiction that the US is applying.