Usage of EU subsidiaries of US cloud providers deemed unlawful by German court

https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=VK_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemburg_-_Az._1_VK_23/22

by srrr • 4 years ago

92 185 4 years ago

gdprhub.eu

srrr3• 4 years ago

summary (English): https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=VK_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemburg...

news article (German): https://www.golem.de/news/vergabekammer-clouddienste-von-us-...

primary source (German): https://rewis.io/s/u/PjK/

press statement of law firm (German): https://gruendelpartner.de/newsroom/gruendelpartner-erwirkt-...

tpmx• 4 years ago

Golem.de article key phrase: "The use of a US cloud service can justify exclusion from a public procurement process."

(The emphasis is mine. Almost all commenters here so far seem to think it's broader than this, which it isn't.)

jimbob45• 4 years ago

Isn’t this sort of what we accuse the Chinese of doing? The US designs the technology and then the Chinese manufacturers steal that design to make their own?

Except now, the EU is more or less forcing American companies to sell unaffiliated spin-offs to the EU to continue doing business there. Seems a bit underhanded to change the rules now after so long, especially considering the fact that the EU can’t make these companies for themselves or they would have already.

pfortuny• 4 years ago

This is germany still, not the whole of the EU.

But it does show how an all-reaching law like gdpr can have stramge consequences…

f-jin• 4 years ago

isn't the crux of the matter the all-reaching laws of the US that allows their intelligence agencies to order EU-subsidiaries of US companies to offer up their data..?

denton-scratch• 4 years ago

Doesn't seem strange to me; I'm surprised it got to court.

akmarinov4• 4 years ago

Those US companies are free to not be on the EU market, just saying

xyzzyz4• 4 years ago

This sword cuts both ways. US can also stop sales of Airbuses, Volkswagens, IKEA furniture etc. under some fishy premise. If EU does that to US companies, why shouldn’t US do it to EU ones? This kind of tit for tat trade war would be a loss to everyone compared to cooperation, but is still preferred to cooperating with a defector.

curiousgal2• 4 years ago

Sorry to be so blunt but every EU competitor sucks ass. So if the EU has it their way, it is us Europeans the ones getting fucked.

ROTMetro2• 4 years ago

Why should they? Europe signed free trade agreements and promised they would open their markets to the USA if the USA reciprocated. Excluding American companies from doing business seems a pretty big violation of this. I guess EU is free to cancel those free trade agreements, but they aren't free to just ignore them and just make it illegal for American companies to do business in Europe because of privacy rules that exclude American companies purely on the fact that they are American.

olliej2• 4 years ago

No?

This is the obvious outcome of the US government’s repeated and explicit statement that non-US residents do not have any due process rights and thus no warrant requirements, followed by - when companies tried to compensate for this abuse by creating subsidiaries in the EU - stating that the US government also had access to all subsidiaries data, again with no due process protections.

What did the US government think would happen when they made it clear that no US company could provide due process protections for any EU data that they possessed?

This has nothing to do with the “IP theft”, but rather the inability of US companies to comply with universally applicable EU law.

raverbashing• 4 years ago

True, this is the crux of it

If you let all subsidiaries of M/G/A within reach of US courts (including customer data) don't get surprised when other countries treat it as toxic

The US gov would never accept this in procurement, so why should other countries?

On the case in question, it seems the company changed the tender document to take out some (protection) clauses

superchroma5• 4 years ago

Honestly, nationally-owned spin-offs aren't an issue. If that's all that doing business with China entailed, I think people wouldn't be so mad, but unfortunately there are other practical and moral compromises needed. The EU may be challenging in certain ways, but at least they play by their rulebook and champion public interest a lot of the time.

ad404b8a372f2b93• 4 years ago

I hope you are aware that "the cloud" is not some secret, mysterious piece of technology that the EU can't figure out. We have software engineers as well as data centers and EU-based cloud companies. Digital consumer networks were established here long before the U.S and the internet was invented here. Your arrogance is grating.

chrisseaton3• 4 years ago

the internet was invented here

In Europe?

mgraczyk4• 4 years ago

Right, and the goal of this sort of ruling is to make sure that those EU-based engineers have work and get paid. It has nothing to do with consumer protection or privacy. If it did, EU companies that have servers in the US would be banned from processing EU user data for the exact reason spelled out in this ruling.

kazinator3• 4 years ago

Digital consumer networks were established here long before the U.S

Really? In some places in Europe, people were starting to get excited about dial-up BBSes in the mid nineties, a decade after they were on their way out in North America.

In 1994 I was doing contract work in Vancouver on a website with paying subscribers.

jtwaleson4• 4 years ago

I'm European and I'll happily admit there is no EU alternative to AWS, GCP, Azure. The breadth of services _on_, and the amount of engineers able to work _with_ these platforms is incredible and can't be beat by the likes of Hetzner and OVH. We are so behind that we won't catch up. The arrogance is warranted in this case.

I like privacy, but the business person in me is very frustrated by these GDPR rulings as they make the life of European startups even harder than it already is.

colechristensen2• 4 years ago

I wouldn't say so.

Restricting the sale or transfer of personal data to a foreign-held company that can and will obey foreign laws with regards to that data is, I think, perfectly fair.

The dances companies go through to appear local or non-local with shell companies is an abuse of the intent of many laws.

Microsoft/Google/Amazon/etc. probably can figure out how to operate in Europe to comply with the intent of the law, but it might require a rather large actual separation of interests rather than a shallow apparent one.

testaccountfor5• 4 years ago

This is rich coming from America.

America engages at global level surveillance. American corporations can be coerced with a single national security level to spy on their customers. Ergo they are untrustworthy and should not be used.

mlqaa• 4 years ago

Many (if not the majority) of open source projects that are used to power the whole spectacle have originated in Europe and now have a majority of international contributors.

But the power centers (foundations etc.) are in the USA. International contributors are expected to bow to U.S. cultural dominance and follow the latest whims.

OSS has been stolen by the USA.

superchroma5• 4 years ago

Also noted elsewhere is that US tech companies are hand in hand with the US intelligence apparatus.

joshuaissac• 4 years ago

Except now, the EU is more or less forcing American companies to sell unaffiliated spin-offs to the EU to continue doing business there.

Isn't that what happened with TikTok?

Both China and the US have laws that force global subsidiaries of Chinese/American companies to hand over data held overseas.

ThunderSizzle2• 4 years ago

I would argue China-US relationships are not that of allies or friends. There isn't a war or cold war going on, but I wouldn't pretend that the relations between China and the US are peaceful and represent trustful tranquility.

I would argue the relationship between Europe and US are substantially better, although not without frustrations from both sides, some warranted and some not.

At the very least, several countries are in a formal defensive alliance with the US and each other (NATO).

masswerk• 4 years ago

This is about US legislation and jurisdiction extending to foreign territory and thus conflicting with local legislation and corporations subsequently failing to comply with legislation regulating that market.

xdennis7• 4 years ago

It's rich to accuse the EU of copying China when it's the US who copied China's "National Intelligence Law" as the "CLOUD Act"; laws which compel Chinese and Americans to act as spies outside their countries when it comes to data.

fvdessen• 4 years ago

Looking for an informed opinion; what are the practical consequences for European companies using American cloud providers (which I guess is most of them) ?

londons_explore• 4 years ago

Immediate consequences... None. While all of your competitors are still using american cloud services, you won't get fined.

But as soon as competitors start moving to european hosting solutions, you need to too - because if you're slow to move over you can bet the courts will be chasing after people with fines.

rubito5• 4 years ago

Not a problem with consumer facing services but usually problematic with comunal and state related projects that store personal data.

kazen443• 4 years ago

in my opinion, most european companies are not using the cloud (especially if they are not in the tech space).

Colocated hosting is very, very large in europe, and many small/medium bussinesses operate out of a couple of VM's on a server in some datacenter, usually managed by some MSP.

Also, Egress fees are very expensive in the cloud, especially if you look at the cost of data transfer inside colocated facilities. data transfer in the US seem expensive even if you look at colo/private circuits compared to europe.

miohtama• 4 years ago

Does anyone know the Company A and Company B in the question? Microsoft?

AFAIK public procurement documents are often public.

srrr3• 4 years ago

Searching for "12.1 Regions. Customer can specify the location(s) where Customer Data will be processed within the" (as mentioned in the verdict) yields AWS as the problematic sub-processor for company A: https://d1.awsstatic.com/legal/aws-gdpr/AWS_GDPR_DPA.pdf

plandis2• 4 years ago

US needs to economically retaliate in kind. If the US has the same data protections as the EU they’d make up some other excuse to attack US companies. This is what happens when you can’t compete you make up regulatory excuses.

I’m sure I’ll get downvoted by Europeans but it’s the truth. Look at the valuable companies and where they are located :)

ROTMetro2• 4 years ago

You should see how the EU screws American 'certain industry' companies and fails to honor reciprocity deals. Then add that it is legal and tax deductible for German business' to bribe/kickback to corrupt businesses overseas and man does Europe have a sweet deal without our 'open and reciprocal trade'. Unfair denied access to European markets but open access for Europe in the USA. Overseas company's officials expecting bribes/kickbacks like the Germans give overseas.

superchroma5• 4 years ago

The American government tolerates this and other things besides (e.g. lax NATO contributions) so it's evidently not that big an issue?

lizardactivist4• 4 years ago

The NSA and the CIA have been at that for decades. But of course people like you believe it is and has always been fully in their right.

superchroma5• 4 years ago

Sure, they can champion their own citizens' rights on issues of where and how data is stored, and prevent American user data from being sent offshore in Europe. That would be ideal. :)

plandis2• 4 years ago

It’s not about that. Even if the US copied German law verbatim Germany would just find some other excuse to harm the US. They can’t compete so they unfairly try to prop up their own companies via regulatory means.

rossdavidh• 4 years ago

While there are certainly cases where European laws are crafted to help keep American companies out, this is not really one of them. It appears to me that the western European institutions have genuine concerns about American companies and three-letter agencies accessing their citizens' data, and by the way they are not paranoid to be concerned.

End result is almost certain to be more cloud providers in Europe, but I'm not sure they're wrong to want that.

jiggywiggy2• 4 years ago

Yeah wondering about the consequences.

By this logic almost every non-EU Saas would be forbidden.

For sure Stripe is also not allowed, huge amount of customer data in US hands.

superchroma5• 4 years ago

IMO that could be good, I would welcome more competition in the payment processor space.

nickff• 4 years ago

But this won't encourage more competition in the EU, it will limit the number of competitors by creating an insurmountable barrier to entry for foreign providers. This is akin to import controls, which often cause stagnation, and generally lead to more costly and inferior goods.

arlort2• 4 years ago

non-EU

The problem isn't non EU services, it's the US CLOUD act

Other countries have legal systems which are considered as offering equivalent protection:

The European Commission has so far recognised Andorra, Argentina, Canada (commercial organisations), Faroe Islands, Guernsey, Israel, Isle of Man, Japan, Jersey, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Switzerland , the United Kingdom under the GDPR and the LED, and Uruguay as providing adequate protection.

And for many more countries standard contractual clauses would probably be enough

Ekaros• 4 years ago

Uruguay? I wouldn't exactly call them for known being a tech nation...

So why does USA fail at this? Or are they just too big and diverse for that sort of stuff? And you can't really expect such nation to succeed... In anything...

wewxjfq• 4 years ago

Still works with consent.

rubito5• 4 years ago

This is about getting qualified in comunal/state procurement and not general public business.

jiggywiggy2• 4 years ago

As far as I understand the reasoning is that the accepting of a bid of on of the companies in not allowed because they don't comply with the GDPR law. Although it was filed by a competing company it theoretically would mean according to this judge cloud hosting is not in line with GDPR. In that line, wether you are a governmental organisation or company doesn't matter if they decide to enforce it as such.

michaelbuckbee2• 4 years ago

The context for this: say you're a SaaS and you want to tap into the EU market. Per GDPR, personally identifiable data shouldn't leave the jurisdiction of the EU so you should use EU hosted servers, storage etc.

So you might then split your app to an EU hosted datacenter of your preferred cloud provider.

This ruling says that's insufficient as while the data remains functionally in the EU it's still possible for it to be accessed on the backend by non EU entities.

CGamesPlay• 4 years ago

it's still possible for it to be accessed on the backend by non EU entities.

Why is this the case? Why aren't EU employees who allow the data to leave the EU negligent?

jaywalk3• 4 years ago

What if there are no EU employees?

rad_gruchalski2• 4 years ago

Do you mean "liable" instead of "negligent"?

michaelbuckbee2• 4 years ago

It's not the employees so much as the legal aspects of it: aka could the FBI compel a cloud provider to give them all the data in the EU datacenter?

intunderflow• 4 years ago

And slowly but surely the tidal wave of the consequences of GDPR versus the CLOUD Act come into view.

It will take many years to of delays and fretting (due to the dependence on US clouds) but fundamentally the current legal position is that GDPR is fundamentally incompatible with any personal data transfer to the USA, that's how Google Analytics keeps getting banned too.

At some point this will all come to a head and something will have to budge given the gigantic consequences of such a position, from AWS to GCP to Stripe to even basic things like your Domain Registrar.

the_duke• 4 years ago

The cloud providers can work with independent operators that run their cloud solutions in Europe. Basically an on-premise setup, just on a huge scale.

Microsoft initially did this for Azure, I believe.

Certainly will cause a lot of friction.

xdennis7• 4 years ago

The cloud providers can work with independent operators that run their cloud solutions in Europe.

Does that exempt them from the CLOUD Act? If US companies have access to independent operators in Europe, presumably they can still be compelled to give that data to the US.

eli3• 4 years ago

But couldn't the NSA still spy on European cloud providers and domain registrars?

rubito5• 4 years ago

There is no tidal wave, Telekom partnered a long time ago with Microsoft for an EU only azure offering and it was sacked quickly because the demand from public procurements where too low since those largely require on-prem solutions.

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0• 4 years ago

It followed that company A's service qualified as an unlawful transfer of data to a third country because their parent company was located in the US, violating relevant data protection law (Article 44 GDPR).
The Chamber explained that a transfer in this context must also be assumed when data can be accessed from a third country, regardless of whether this actually takes place. The fact that the physical location of the server that provides such access was located in the EU was irrelevant.

I think this is an interpretation of GDPR that most companies are not prepared for. You could write an implementation that restricts access to EU data, but if the parent company is not in EU, I guess the implementation could always be changed to allow access. Ergo, GDPR violation?

mgraczyk4• 4 years ago

Sounds like blatant protectionism to me.

If I'm reading the ruling correctly, the relevant legal standard applied here is completely bogus. They find that it is a violation of GDPR because the parent company could access the data, in principle if they wanted to. It doesn't matter if there are safeguards, technical, or institutional preventions in place.

However, the exact same argument applies to any EU company with any internet connection, and directly applies to any EU company with infrastructure in the US. EU companies could, in principle, transfer data to the US intentionally or by accident. If technical, institutional, and legal prevention isn't good enough for US companies, why is it good enough for EU companies? Seems like GDPR has to also be construed to prevent EU companies from doing business in the US.

If the counter argument is that US companies could be compelled by the US government to hand over data, while EU companies cannot be, that is factually untrue.

testaccountfor5• 4 years ago

US cloud companies can be forced by the US government to spy on European citizens. That's the reasoning behind this ruling. Are you not aware of the NSA spying programs?

wins327675• 4 years ago

I'm sure industrial policy and thus economics had no factor in those laws being written.

mgraczyk4• 4 years ago

Right, that's why I included my last paragraph. EU companies can also be forced by the US government to spy on European citizens. It happens all the time.

colechristensen2• 4 years ago

I assume the WTO will get involved to clarify and the safegards required to operate in Europe will get rather well defined. Lots of powerful interests involved which should get this sorted out eventually. Much uncertainty until then.

light_hue_12• 4 years ago

It's not protectionism. The agreement with the US parent company allowed them to access the data!

A included clauses in the offer that stated, among other things, that it will not access, use, or disclose customer data to any third party, except as necessary to maintain or provide the Services, or as necessary to comply with the law or a valid and binding order of a governmental body.

So it is a transfer of data from EU control to US control. Very clearly.

mgraczyk4• 4 years ago

Lots of EU companies have the same language in their policies. For example

https://us.ovhcloud.com/legal/privacy-policy

josefx3• 4 years ago

It doesn't matter if there are safeguards, technical, or institutional preventions in place.

Except the American company made it clear that no such safeguards will be in place and that it will transfer the data out of its EU servers if legally complied to do so. This can be found in the German text at https://rewis.io/urteile/urteil/ocw-13-07-2022-1-vk-2322/ .

Regions. Customer can specify the location(s) where Customer Data will be processed within the X. Network (each a "Region'), including Regions in the EEX. Once Customer has made its choice, X. will not transfer Customer Data from Customer's selected Region(s) except as necessary to provide the Services initiated by Customer, or as necessary to comply with the law or binding order of a governmental body.

Any governmental body can request access to EU users data and the data will be moved out of the EU region. At best it provides that it will challenge any inappropriate or overly broad request, but there is no legal framework for what qualifies as such between the EU and US and the US is unlikely to care about challenges that have no legal basis.

viro• 4 years ago

that it will transfer the data out of its EU servers if legally complied to do so.

They have a legal search warrant, This is a EU country they likely have Law enforcement and judicial cooperation treaty with the US.

Rexxar• 4 years ago

When you read the original document it seems to be more about terms of the original contract and effective access to the machines than the location of the parent company so a clear split of should make it be possible.

solar-ice7• 4 years ago

However, the exact same argument applies to any EU company with any internet connection, and directly applies to any EU company with infrastructure in the US. EU companies could, in principle, transfer data to the US intentionally or by accident.

Yes, this might be a reasonable argument. You'd be in a bad place as an EU company trying to operate in the US right now. Perhaps the US should quit passing spy law and we can go back to cooperating.

webmobdev• 4 years ago

Thank god at least some government has the sense to take steps to protect their country's sovereignty. All the US has to do to regain trust is to stop using BigTech for spying on other countries. To begin with, it can start by creating laws and regulations like the GDPR (or better) and move on to breaking up the monopolies of BigTech.

Gwypaas• 4 years ago

Simply the CLOUD Act [1] which is incompatible with GDPR. No problem transferring to a third country [2] as long as you can uphold GDPR.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

[2] https://www.imy.se/en/organisations/data-protection/this-app...

light_hue_12• 4 years ago

The US parent company was given access to the EU data. That's the problem here.

A included clauses in the offer that stated, among other things, that it will not access, use, or disclose customer data to any third party, except as necessary to maintain or provide the Services, or as necessary to comply with the law or a valid and binding order of a governmental body.

Of course giving a US company control over EU data at a whim means that it's a transfer to the US. The court made the only reasonable decision.

blocked_again4• 4 years ago

I think this kind of affirms the general opinion that Germany and many traditionally powerful European countries is doing poorly when it comes to modern tech. What went wrong with Germany and Europe? They used to be the front runners in tech once upon a time.

lizardactivist4• 4 years ago

"European countries doing poorly when it comes to modern tech" has never been an opinion.

You're confused, and your petty vindictiveness is unmotivated. The EU as a space of commerce is not yours to do with as you wish. You have to follow rules and regulations just like our own companies have to. And if your country had not been engaging in espionage and sabotage then there would never have been a need for these "unfair" and "underhanded tactics".

sershe• 4 years ago

You have to follow rules and regulations just like our own companies have to

Which companies? Seriously though. Is there a reason the biggest EU software companies are the likes of SAP and Capgemini, or niche players like Spotify?

I mean, I'm not talking about the USA or China, even Russia has a more impressive tech sector.

Could it have something to do with various regulations?

throwaway4good5• 4 years ago

The surveillance capitalism model is a non-starter in the EU.

johannes1234321• 4 years ago

Maybe it's just, that the European law makers understand the risk of being are to transfer sensitive persona data into other legislations, and that a local registered company doesn't mean there are technical bounds.

TheLoafOfBread• 4 years ago

LOL, they never were. Germans are conservative. Try to pay by card in a shop/restaurant outside bigger German city. Either not possible, cash only, or you can use some local EC card, which only Germans are using. Rest of EU is using Visa / Master card.

simion3143• 4 years ago

But when is about TikTok I see most americans have completely different values, no sorry americans are consistent, only US citizens deserve rights, the rest can be spied on, tortured,killed etc. Give EU citizens same privacy rights and there so no need to start an economic war because some NSA fat and lazy agent does not want to prepare a file to request a warrant. If you are at it, maybe is tiem to let US citizens that killed people(like in car crashes abroad) to get their fair trial and punishment too.

We have rights too, you are not more special and deserve more basic human rights because citizenship.

blocked_again4• 4 years ago

You do know that nobody in US is forcing you to use this site or any other US companies for that matter. You are doing it with your own free fill.

Also, remember the time when Germany decided to go after their own people? How does laws like this help when it comes to situations like that?

dang10• 4 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar, let alone nationalistic flamewar. It's exactly what we don't want here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines in other threads too. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop.

throwaway4good5• 4 years ago

Hey America - stop spying on our our citizens or we will stop buying your tech.

Seriously.

We talk about this cloud stuff like it is rocket science. It is not. It is a box in a basement. We are capable of doing that ourselves.

And no. It ain’t cool for NSA to sniff around some German governmental software, even though you are the good guys and on our side.

jaywalk3• 4 years ago

We are capable of doing that ourselves.

Then do it.

kreeben4• 4 years ago

You typed that silly reply on an operating system created by a European. You don't think we can host the shit out of that OS in Europe? I think you're just butt hurt because someone said something bad about the greatest country in the whole world that you know of.

dang10• 4 years ago

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Especially not tedious and dumb nationalistic flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

eli3• 4 years ago

Isn't it easier for the NSA to spy on foreign companies than US companies? There are restrictions on how they can operate on US soil.

qeternity2• 4 years ago

Yes. I've never understood this whole "don't host in the US or the NSA will spy on you"...uh, that might be true, but at least on paper there are protections.

An EU subsidiary of a US company is fully legal fair game for every 3 letter agency.

AnonMO6• 4 years ago

Says the person using hacker news whichs legal notice has no mention of adhering to gdpr. stop threatening and do it simple and effective.

https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/

mattashii• 4 years ago

But you do not need to mention the GDPR to comply with the GDPR.

throwaway4good5• 4 years ago

I am all for a free and open internet. If you want to connect to a computer in Russia or United States, that is ok, think about what happens to your data, if you care about that, or don't.

But here we are talking about whether the German government should use hosting centers, for their governmental software, they know are accesible to US intelligence services.

The answer to that is: Of course not.

dang10• 4 years ago

Please don't start nationalistic flamewars on HN. This one was particularly hellish and particularly dumb.

It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

testaccountfor5• 4 years ago

Critcism of US spying is not "starting a flame war".

Please refrain from interfering with healthy discussion.

moretestaccoun• 4 years ago

Why is this thread flagged? It looks like one mod is abusing her power.

lizardactivist4• 4 years ago

Keep rocking.

I have no beef with US companies doing business here as such, but as long as they're supporting espionage and sabotage by handing crucial data to the NSA and CIA they should simply not be allowed to operate here.

throwaway4good5• 4 years ago

This is EU law. That is why you are seeing similar court rulings / administrative rules coming out of Denmark, France, Italy ...

rad_gruchalski2• 4 years ago

For public services, as in government public. From the page:

The case concerns a decision by the Vergabekammer Baden-Württemberg ("Procurement chamber Baden-Wuerttemberg"), the administrative authority that reviews the public procurement procedures.

On 3.11.2021, a public authority issued a Europe-wide invitation to tender for the procurement of software for digital management via an open procedure. The award criteria contained, among other things, requirements for data protection and IT security. The public authority received offers from company A and company B.

blocked_again4• 4 years ago

Simple question. Who do you trust your data with?

1. A company in your own country which got marketshare mostly because of legal reasons and government interference.

2. A company which got marketshare by building products that people loved all over the world, has the smartest people working for them and have generated more value than the vast majority of the companies that existed previously in the world combined.

Jensson• 4 years ago

1. A foreign government with a tendency to imprison and torture foreign citizens without any process.

2. Your own government that is held accountable to local laws.

htkibar4• 4 years ago

I'd agree with the implication here, if it weren't for the fact that the company on #2 would be _legally compelled to spy on me or my countrymen at the whim of 3 letter agencies_.

That rubs some people, such as I, the wrong way. I wonder why :)

tzs• 4 years ago

It is not clear to me from that what the relationships are between company A, the EU subsidiary (which I'll call S), and the US cloud provider (which I'll call C).

1. Would A be dealing directly with S, or is A dealing with C which is using S to store A's data.

2. Is S incorporated in the EU?

3. Does C have access to data stored in S, other than data that C itself put there using the APIs that S makes available to all its storage customers?

rubito5• 4 years ago

Telekom and Microsoft partnered together a long time ago to fix this problem but it turns out in european public comunal and state procurement projects that cloud offerings play a very insignificant role since its largely all on-prem IT projects and so that partnership was closed.

I'm just writing this because a lot of comments are getting the wrong idea from this and causing some weird mix of hysteria and europhoby. In the grand scheme of things, there is no money lost for Azure and AWS, the potential of the once in a full moon cloud projects from public european institutions wouldn't even amount to something that would be described as pocket chance.

dang10• 4 years ago

All: the hellish and puerile flamewar that many of you stooped to in this thread is exactly what HN is not for. We ban accounts that post like this, so please don't post like this.

What an embarrassment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I suppose I'd better add that this isn't about which side you're on. It's just about having an international forum that doesn't suck and doesn't destroy itself. All of you flaming each other in this thread have made HN suck (in this neighborhood) and contributed to destroying it.

No more of this, please. You can make your substantive points without any of that. If you can't, please don't post until you can.

alaricus• 4 years ago

There was no flame war in this thread. But there is clear evidence of abuse and harassment by a mod. I'm flagging dang's post in the hope that a real moderator will look at it.

What an embarrassment indeed. Hackernews deserves better moderation.

dang10• 4 years ago

Certainly, people can and do have different ideas of what counts as a flamewar. In that sense it's just a difference of opinion and that's fine. However, we're trying for HN to be a particular kind of web forum. The principles of what we're trying for are expressed at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Many comments in this thread broke those principles quite badly.

Usage of EU subsidiaries of US cloud providers deemed unlawful by German court

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