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by mminer237 1591 days ago
That wouldn't solve anything. The EU treats all US services as being in the US, regardless of where the physical servers are, as Facebook is still subject to the US subpeonas and they are legally required to give data to the US even if it's on a European server.

You are right that the same logic would make any American communication website illegal. I think the end goal for the EU here is to require all communication platforms used by EU citizens to be entirely run by the EU.
2 comments
barbazoo 1591 days ago
> regardless of where the physical servers are, as Facebook is still subject to the US subpeonas and they are legally required to give data to the US even if it's on a European server

Is that so? I'd like to know more about this then, I don't see how that would be practical at all then.

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roywiggins 1591 days ago
This is explicitly authorized by the CLOUD Act:

> Principally, it asserts that U.S. data and communication companies must provide stored data for a customer or subscriber on any server they own and operate when requested by warrant, but provides mechanisms for the companies or the courts to reject or challenge these if they believe the request violates the privacy rights of the foreign country the data is stored in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act.

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barbazoo 1591 days ago
> when requested by warrant

I think that's the difference. Facebook could be forced to keep all PII in the EU for the purpose of protecting peoples data from unlawful (EU) use but still have to surrender it to US law enforcement. Would that violate the EU law?

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philistine 1591 days ago
It does. A US warrant is incompatible with the EU privacy garanties.
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dkarl 1591 days ago
> I think the end goal for the EU here is to require all communication platforms used by EU citizens to be entirely run by the EU.

I think their end goal is regulatory convergence. They don't want companies to be able to trivially circumvent laws protecting their citizens simply by operating in a different jurisdiction, which is to say, if you want to play by different rules, barriers are inevitable, or else the rules are meaningless. Over the long run, the hope is that people can converge on similar enough rules that the barriers become unnecessary.

For example, suppose a country passes an air quality law that forces companies to reduce emissions from factories. They might suspect that instead of updating their factories, companies might sell their manufacturing equipment to new companies that mysteriously pop up right across the border and happily sell finished goods back across the border. Anticipating that, the country would want to do something to prevent it. The measures they come up with might be onerous and inefficient in the short run, but in the long run, the two countries would be motivated to converge on regulatory regimes that were mutually acceptable.

(not intending to endorse or criticize this idea, just giving my best understanding of how countries approach questions like this)

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