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Comment by yunnpp | Hacker News Reader

Your position is fantastic because it immediately puts to death all of that nationalistic nonsense about the EU becoming "anti-American" by enforcing privacy laws on US Big Tech etc, when in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin. I might be naive, but your company to me represents a win for free/open software and cross-country collaboration.

That being said, I should ask: to what extent do you see being US-based an advantage or a problem in the current state of things? For example, in regards to exports controls, or any other such thing that may potentially limit your business scope depending on $current_admin.

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> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin.

I don't think it's just that. It's also the increasingly plausible idea that the US government could pressure the EU by actually or threatening to control, throttle or tax EU access to online platforms such as Zoom, Teams, MS Office, Google docs, Azure or AWS.

> in fact they are just protecting their citizens' rights against unethical business models regardless of origin

Would you elaborate how this "in fact" is "protecting their citizens' rights"? Very curious to know.

Microsoft, Google, et al very famously spy on everything you do and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government, regardless of whether the person is a US citizen.

Take this idea one step further. Microsoft, Google, et al also snoop on what foreign governments do with their software and report back to USGov.

> and have no compunctions about handing that data to the US government,

Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases.

Don’t think that this is a uniquely American property. If your data sits on servers within the control of any company that operates in a country, that country can and will apply legal pressure upon those companies to extract the data.

> Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases.

I'm not sure of your point. This is an excellent argument as to why the French government should run their government videoconferencing and chat on infrastructure in France, as they plan to do, isn't it? Using software that they have vetted. Regardless of if this is a "uniquely American" thing or not.

Right. I’m not disagreeing with that. A country should run their official business on tools that aren’t trivially liable for extraction by foreign governments.

The point was in response to the above comment. All governments can and will compel companies to turn over data. It’s often framed on HN as a feature of only American companies but it’s actually universal.

It happens that the major tech platforms are all US-based, so it's more relevant to talk about US government policy than any other. Even if they are all like that.

But, in addition, the US government has recently become more pushy and less friendly than it was before, which is prompting many other nations to re-assess their dependence on the tech of what was until recently a close ally. The headline is an example.

It seems to me more about "this foreign government is most relevant" than "only this foreign government is like that".

That's not the point. Yes, governments are sovereign within their territory. But the US can force any US company to hand over data, regardless of where that company has located the data center.

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...

> Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.

I fail to see how that addresses my question

for example EU privacy laws can be ignored in the states with for example the cloud act. having control over software and infrastructure is protecting the rights of eu citizen in that regard.

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