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Comment by click170 | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic news because I've recently been looking for a VPS with 0 ties to the United States and it can be tricky to determine who owns who.

With this ruling, I expect more companies to be advertising the fact that they operate entirely outside of the US and thus are not subject to these data-grabs. This will make choosing a VPS provider much easier for me.

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Will it? As much as I disagree w/ this ruling, grabbing data isn't isolated to the US government. Don't you also have to be concerned that those countries may subpoena the VPS provider?

Right, and that's assuming the hypothetical host country has the formality of subpoenas. Some countries would just send armed forces and demand access. I've heard firsthand stories of how Russia's tax collectors essentially hold businesses at gunpoint, by surprise.

The tax ministry of the Netherlands is pretty famous for doing the same (and for being total assholes about it too, locking people up without explanation until months later. Destroying businesses by "safeguarding evidence", ... And yes, it's not without cause, but they do get things wrong every now and then). Generally speaking, every western country gives that right to it's tax service, although I hope not all of them actually do things this way.

I think he was referring to countries like Norway, Switzerland, etc. who are a bit more pro-human/business rights than Russia.

Do you have to be concerned that those countries may subpoena the VPS provider?

You're right that data grabbing isn't isolated to the US but I argue no, not if the point of concern is specific to one government entity instead of all of them.

I'm pretty sure virtually every country in the world has court ordered subpoenas / warrants.

Nor do they accept "I'm sorry I can't provide the e friend's murder weapon as it is at my Irish country house" as an excuse to not turn over the weapon.

Your example doesn't make any sense as that's not the case they were debating about, it is not an excuse not to turn over the weapon from a different country, it is about who can ask you to turn over the weapon. In Ireland, it is the Ireland's legal authorities who should be asking you to turn over the weapon and then hand it over to the US as long as they agree with the request from US. Using your example, the closest (not really the most accurate one) analog would be:

1. Microsoft is the landlord of two places, one in US and one in Ireland 2. US court ordered Microsoft with a US search warrant to enter the property of a customer in Ireland and grab his murder weapon. This is basically what's happening. No country in the world including the US are entitled to anything in a different country. Last I checked, the US does not own Ireland. 3. The right way, US filed a request with the Ireland's legal authorities and they issued a search warrant for Microsoft to grab the murder weapon. In this case, this is legal because of the international agreements between both countries. Ireland should be in charge of issuing the warrant and enforcing it, not Microsoft with a US search warrant. In fact, the said US warrant should not even be valid in Ireland.

The US government admitted that they can go to Ireland's authorities to issue a local search warrant based on the international treaties, however they whined that it would take too long. So, they instead issued a warrant against Microsoft and asked it to get the data from Ireland.

Think about this the over way around.

Russia thinks you broke some laws or said something bad about their president and wants to access your blog data that's stored on the US servers. The company that is hosting your data is Microsoft.

Russia filed a local search warrant for Microsoft to hand in your data but your data is stored and hosted in the US. Do you think Microsoft should be allowed to do this or do you think Russia should file a request with the US government and the US would issue a search warrant to MS to grab the data. US would then hand over the data to Russia.

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