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Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

No, this is terrible.

These countries are demanding we run our services in their countries. This is a money grab.

Note that these same countries expect the United States to act as World Police, and do not contribute as much money as they should. They want the US to know about attacks ahead of time. I wonder how the US could possibly know about attacks ahead of time?

I deplore mass surveillance. I really do. But I think wiretapping with a warrant is a necessary tool for fighting crime, and terror, and bad state actors.

There's a part of me that desperately hopes all major internet services just shut off Europe entirely. Welcome back to the Stone Age.

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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10337519 and marked it off-topic.

I appreciate your efforts to make Hacker News great, but I think this action is heavy-handed.

The court's decision hurts the internet, hurts small companies on the internet, and hurts the ability of the United States to fight terrorism.

I may not have worded this opinion particularly well, but it's ridiculous that my comment cannot even be expressed.

It can still be expressed, of course. It's just that it wasn't particularly a reply to its parent and took the discussion on a generic tangent (U.S. = world police) that is also a classic flamewar topic. We don't kill such subthreads, but we do move them.

I can understand why you don't see it that way and wouldn't claim that our decisions are all obvious or all correct. They're imprecise judgment calls.

I really appreciate your response.

The US finds out about attacks ahead of time the same way we always have: through intelligence operations, not data mining. I don't think anyone is saying that targeted, legal wire tapping is somehow off-limits now. I don't see how this would impact the ability of a company to assist the authorities in monitoring individuals' communications, either - it will, possibly, make it more difficult for the NSA to do a blanket gathering of foreign communications, which I believe is the point.

Large service providers like Google and Amazon can and will comply with the laws. It is possible that social media start-ups will be unable to operate across borders due to regulations, but this will hardly be a staggering setback to the European populace's ability to share photos of their food. I doubt there are any real implications for things like freedom of speech/expression: these types of services are already effectively illegal in places with heavily authoritarian governments.

Congratulations. We just broke the INTERNET part of the internet.

Only large service providers will be able to comply with all of the laws. Why are we patting ourselves on the backs for this?

Only large service providers will be able to comply with all of the laws.

Why, exactly? And what are "all of the laws"? The data protection directive is not that complicated or onerous, and besides, you can avoid it wholesale: just don't store personal data.

> It is possible that social media start-ups will be unable to operate across borders due to regulations, but this will hardly be a staggering setback to the European populace's ability to share photos of their food.

There will be services that have not yet been invented. We cannot presume to know what they'll look like, but there's a big chance the startups that invent them will be harmed by this ruling. No, big services run by established players will not die, but that's hardly the point.

Wiretapping with a warrant is not obstructed by this, of course: it might require a bit of crossborder co-operation to get an EU warrant for the data of an EU national, but it's still possible to tap a specific user for law enforcement purposes.

What's not legal is warantless universal wiretapping.

(Also, I don't want the US to be "world police"! Like US domestic police they are far too trigger-happy. And the US is one of the few countries not signed up to the International Criminal Court. Would you want a police without a court?)

Crossborder co-operation? Great!

They hand over Roman Polanski, and we're off to a good start.

> What's not legal is warantless universal wiretapping.

So punish the government of the United States - not the businesses.

> Would you want a police without a court?

That's called "a military." And yes, I want a military. And since our enemies don't bother to dress up in bright-colored uniforms, and stand in a row in a field anymore, our military needs to be a lot more nimble. And since our international efforts (the UN) are often blocked by one or two security council members, I'm not impressed with the UN's ability to keep the peace.

our military needs to be a lot more nimble

Move fast, blow up hospitals? But I'm glad you accepted that the US is not a police service (ie legally accountable to the policed, following due process) but a military (ie an occupying force that executes people at will).

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars of choice by the US, and the end result has been a total destabilisation and millions of people killed or made refugees.

And the failure to intervene in Syria or Ukraine prevented a total destabilization and millions of refugees. Wait...

Intervention in Ukraine would have meant shooting at the Russians and starting WW3. Not invading Iraq would have left the region as-is without sacking the whole Iraqi army, leaving them and their weapon s to become ISIS.

> This is a money grab.

No, it really isn't. It won't be effective but the judge here is not aiming for EU companies to earn more money.

> There's a part of me that desperately hopes all major internet services just shut off Europe entirely. Welcome back to the Stone Age.

Economies have becomes so intertwined that shutting Europe 'off the internet' by any other party (presumably the US or the rest of the world) is no longer feasible. It will backfire tremendously on those doing the shutting off.

Besides that, you wouldn't really shut the internet down, merely split it. Even North Korea has internet access.

Have you looked at prices for data centers in Europe versus the US? Or their incompetence?

> Economies have becomes so intertwined that shutting Europe 'off the internet' by any other party

BS. Google shut off China. Independent companies are free to not do business anywhere the laws are stifling. I think it would be awesome if they did it all at once. Internet Blackout for Europe.

Maybe Spotify can go first. Then CERN can limit its "web sites" to only work from within its member states

What does CERN have to do with Spotify and EU member states?

I'm mocking the idea of an Internet (though I rather suspect VikingCoder meant HTTP) Blackout for Europe by pointing out European HTTP services.

No, I didn't mean HTTP.

I meant Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ebay, Bing.

Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ebay, Bing use HTTP. Which as I'm sure you are aware was created by a European, working at a European institute.

Unless by Internet Blackout you meant blocking NNTP and Gopher?

They also use TCP/IP. Remember where that was created?

Neither of which is relevant AT ALL to the fact that they are being hit with ridiculous laws that hurt companies - small ones in particular - and therefore hurt consumers.

Ah yes, TCP/IP, the technology that spurred founding of Ebay just 4 years after it was created ;)

Non-EU small companies will not be hurt. Companies not collecting personal data won't be hurt. Companies that don't have an office in the EU won't be hurt. EU companies won't be hurt as long as they don't mix personal data between EU and US - and knowing what we do now, why would you?

If you want to talk about things that hurt companies, you could start with NSA severely handicapping US datacentre industry.

> Have you looked at prices for data centers in Europe versus the US? Or their incompetence?

Yes, I'm quite aware of the price differences between data centers in Europe and the US. It all depends on who you want to serve, if latency is important then paying a (small) premium is usually not a problem. Also, plenty of EU data centers (maybe not the ones that you are familiar with) are extremely competitive with their US counterparts when it comes to pricing.

As for 'their incompetence', that would need some data to back it up, I have extensive experience with both and I'd be hard pressed to say which of the two groups are the more competent ones. Both are pretty good.

> Independent companies are free to not do business anywhere the laws are stifling.

You are dangerously mis-informed about where the balance of power lies - for now.

"Note that these same countries expect the United States to act as World Police".

Nobody (except some Americans) want this.

"I deplore mass surveillance. I really do. But I think wiretapping with a warrant is a necessary tool for fighting crime, and terror, and bad state actors."

I hate X but Y is necessary (because I said so) so let's do X anyway.

"There's a part of me that desperately hopes all major internet services just shut off Europe entirely. Welcome back to the Stone Age."

If by stone age, you mean 2006, great.

> Note that these same countries expect the United States > to act as World Police,

Why do you think that? And how about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_N...

I am actually appalled the Netherlands actually contributed to your shitty conflicts.

Wow a billion dollars. That would pay for about 60 seconds of the war against the Taliban.

Why do you want to wage war with the Taliban?

World police? World arsonist would describe it better.

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