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Comment by DominikR | Hacker News Reader

Why should Russia allow a US company to mine private data about its citizens on a large scale when it is known that the US government basically can force any US company to hand over any data it desires.

That's why they have passed a law whereby private data from social networks about its citizens has to be stored within Russia and must not be transmitted to any other country.

Linkedin knew that but they ignored it, probably because it didn't make economic sense for them

You can argue if it is acceptable or not for a government to step in and prevent foreign governments from acquiring such data about its population, but calling people stupid like you did frankly makes _you_ look stupid.

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The question here is whether the government should deal with personal data access rights or the people themselves.

That was my point. As a libertarian I would in general tend towards not having the government involved with this stuff, but Russia and the US are two countries which have bad relations at the moment and there's uncertainty if they might have a military conflict in the near future.

Here it's hard to say if it is justified as I do not know what the US secret services and the US military might be able to do with this kind of data in a conflict. (having the passwords of XX million Russians could be devastating in a cyberattack as many will do the stupid thing and reuse the same password everywhere)

They already have the passwords. Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.

> They already have the passwords

Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?

> Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.

You state this as if it was a fact, but there is great uncertainty among lawyers and businesses if the law requires data to be stored exclusively in Russia or if that's not the case. In any way you'll have to ask for permission which they might never grant you if you are a company like Facebook that's storing very sensitive information.

> Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?

Which is not something your government can forbid or even verify, they have no way of enforcing anything under other jurisdictions. Whatever company says it did or didn't do there - the government has no choice but to believe them.

Look, I'm a Libertarian as I stated before, I do not even want a government to exist as they are oppressive by nature but I recognise that there's brutal geopolitical competition among world powers.

I can't say with the little information I've got if it is necessary or not but I understand the rationale whereby someone might implement this because they are not willing to bet the survival of their people or their nation on the goodwill of others.

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