Hacker News Reader

Comment by tandem_bike | Hacker News Reader

The title makes the data collection sounds sinister, but this is just a case of a company wanting to make the best product possible. It's necessary to collect data to improve systems.

Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed.

In fact, given the protective relationship the US has with Europe, wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology and hence the West's future defensive capabilities?

View on HN

I give for granted that those data will be shared with US military. In any case the company is free to collect data from its own planes, not those that it already sold

When that company is foreign and may have different interests to that of the country which bought the product it is a problem

Shortsightedness aside, it doesn't really matter what the intentions are, certainly not for the military.

Now say the exact same thing but referring to Huawei. How did that sound to the whole world, and especially to the US?

This isn't your thermostat sending temperature data to the manufacturer, it's a war plane sending critical information that the owner of the plane wants to keep secret.

To be fair, I cannot imagine any nation to sell a current-generation hi tech stealth fighter jet to foreign countries without hiding some kill switch somewhere in the firmware. I always thought this is somehow implied and that countries who fear to become the enemy of former allies diversify their weapon systems appropriately. At least, that's what I would do if I was in charge.

We more or less know this concept to be a fact since the Snowden leaks. Alliances are very fluid things and it was already revealed that the US had infiltrated power and utilities companies in Europe and Japan and prepared kill switches in case they are needed in a conflict.

I imagine this is the general practice to make sure your own tech is not used against you. I am also not surprised that some people find it perfectly acceptable when coming from one side, and unacceptable when coming from another.

Reminds me of this: https://pics.onsizzle.com/nationalis-our-blessed-homeland-th...

The difference is that Norway and the US are liberal democracies and allies. China, quite the opposite.

In fact, Norway (and all of Europe) has outsourced much of its collective defense to the United States, so if Norway and the Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them, it is quite surprising that Norway would have a problem with something as comparatively insignificant as flight data being sent back to Lockheed.

> The difference is that Norway and the US are liberal democracies and allies

And yet Norway wants to retain control over that data. Are you saying this should be overridden? Outsourcing doesn't imply handing over everything to the party providing the service. If India starts taking sensitive Boeing data is it ok because Boeing outsourced the coding of critical components there?

> Europeans are comfortable with the entire US military apparatus protecting them

Yes. But it's not kindness, it's business and it doesn't come for free. They'll keep doing it to keep said Europeans from finding other allies. So they can have a military presence close to their enemy. So they have a witness when WMD or dictators need a democracy treatment.

> wouldn't Norway want to

Obviously not.

>"wouldn't Norway want to provide as much data as possible to help improve Lockheed's technology"

Given the article, I'd say that we know the answer to this and it is something of a resounding 'no' -

"Norway says it has become impatient with continued delays in the promised provision of a data “filter” by Lockheed Martin. So it’s started its own project to find ways to block its new F-35s from reporting back to their former US masters.

It’s also worried that it won’t be able to optimize — or protect — the extremely sensitive Mission Data Files. These data packs optimize aircraft performance under different conditions, as well as provide a database of regional challenges and conditions.

Again, Norway wants Lockheed Martin out of the loop."

We aren’t talking about two IT companies.

Norway and US are allies that’s how Norway is comfortable to host most of its government data on AWS for instance, or to use US made products everywhere. But for obvious reasons there is always a limit when it comes to sensitive data.

I’m sure they do all sorts of intelligent cooperation and data sharing on demand. But we are talking about military and this is not on demand data sharing.

Do you expect US military to accept sharing the same type of data back to its allies for the same reasons? Norway’s military is simply asking for a way to filter these data.

There are data that they never want to share (e.g. secret missions), and there are sensitive data that they want to always filter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com