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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

> The case stems from European Union concerns that United States government surveillance may not respect the privacy rights of EU citizens

These are valid concerns that I share as a U.S. citizen concerned about my own privacy from government surveillance. It's appropriate for other countries to share them and to take action.

But is it clear that government surveillance by EU countries is more respecting of privacy? It seems to me more like the 5/9/14 Eyes countries are cooperating on just these kinds of intrusions. It isn't clear to me that Facebook data held on European servers will be any more secure from intelligence agencies than on U.S. servers ... including from U.S. agencies.

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The difference is that, as an E.U citizen, the governments and agencies that might access this data, along with the laws that allow for that access, are ultimately accountable to me and my fellow citizens. If my data is transferred to the U.S, I have no ability to influence how it's used at all, I effectively have no rights.

I’m an average random person. I have zero, even being high paranoia, of some other country surveilling me.

But my own country “spying” and surveilling me can be scary. They have a lot of power over me. My one voice isn’t important enough to change any legislation or actions. I doubt yours is either. If something unlucky happens with the surveillance of you in your country, you’re likely out of luck. OTOH, nothing happens if Russia or China surveils me (common boogeymen of the west)

> My one voice isn’t important enough to change any legislation or actions. I doubt yours is either.

It sounds like you're suggesting human rights (such as the right to privacy) should only be granted to those who really need. Presumably the government would then get to decide who really needs each right, and who isn't important enough to warrant them.

Also, I think you're forgetting cases where people have been spied on and ultimately renditioned or murdered by a hostile government while in a third country. Perhaps Assange and Khashoggi aren't perfect examples of that, but there are plenty of examples of Russian and Chinese dissidents who have been killed or threatened while living in the West.

> I have zero, even being high paranoia, of some other country surveilling me

Right until the point of some weird twist in geopolitics and oops, that other country is sharing all it had on you with your home country.

It's like Microsoft buying Skype or Facebook buying WhatsApp, but you can't opt out and delete your account.

>are ultimately accountable to me and my fellow citizens.

Haha yeah right. I don't even know the names of agencies which could have acces to this data in EU, I would supect neither do 99.99% of the people here. EU is really super distant entity compared to local government, we have 25%-30% voter turnout on those elections arround here.

Would you, as an US citizen, be fine with Facebook transferring all your data to another country with no control over it?

I'd be more comfortable with that than with my own government, that cares what I do and how I vote, having access to facebook's data on me. The scariest part of European data sitting on US servers for Europeans is that the US will have absolutely no regulations keeping them from harvesting, slicing, and packaging every bit of it, and sending it back to Europe.

Keeping the data from being shipped out is a good step (hopefully not just focused on Facebook), but reimportation of that data is a laundering process that can render local data protections moot.

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