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Comment by kingnothing | Hacker News Reader

Applies to EU citizen data for companies that operate in the EU. You can't enforce laws against a company outside of your realm of jurisdiction.

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GDPR has what is called extra-territorial applicability.

It may, but they'll play hell trying to enforce it worldwide, as if any countries would let them (some may).

If it’s outside their jurisdiction, they can claim whatever applicability they like: the law is simply not enforceable outside that jurisdiction.

Technically yes, laws only apply within sovereign borders, but this is where trade agreements come into effect. EU is a big enough market that most countries will likely agree to uphold the rules for European citizens. It has been a big focus for online retail in Australia lately, and for good reason.

The law can be enforced against people who are, or have assets, within the jurisdiction, whether or not the alleged violation occurred there.

You can also have some very weird legal definition of a nexus, like this bank that allegedly opened a nexus in the US because they used US dollars for a transaction between two non-Us countries.

And there is also the case that the US army just land in your country and arrest anyone they could not kill.

> And there is also the case that the US army just land in your country and arrest anyone they could not kill.

Unlikely; its a lot easier to kill people than arrest them, especially if you are the US army, which is optimized for the former over the latter.

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