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by easyfrag 4486 days ago
I don't think Americans get how distrustful other nations are of American-based cloud providers. It is not a matter of Google's or any other providers' behaviour but of the US Government (warrant-less searches and the like). This lack of trust predates the current NSA-Snowden affair and goes back to the Patriot Act (IMHO).

Of course I can't speak for all nations or industries (or even companies) but in my part of the Canadian Health care sector it is simply unthinkable to use a US-based cloud provider for anything to do with patient data.
1 comments
fixermark 4486 days ago
As an American, I'll be a little surprised if that mistrust runs deeply in Britain, given how closely the Snowden disclosures revealed GCHQ and the NSA to be working. If the NSA had a vested interest in getting health records on a British citizen, I doubt it'd be difficult to get the British government to send them over. You know, to fight terrorism.

Of course, people aren't strictly rational actors, so I suppose one could hold the cognitive dissonance that one's private data is safer from the NSA physically stored in Europe than it is in the US.

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Silhouette 4486 days ago
As an American, I'll be a little surprised if that mistrust runs deeply in Britain

Why? I don't approve of the NSA behaviour, and I don't approve of the GCHQ behaviour in conducting mass surveillance either. The fact that the latter is theoretically done by my government for my country's benefit doesn't make me think any better of the spy agencies or those in government whose laws and tax money allow it.

I would rather take my chances with the terrorists than put up with all the nonsense done in the name of fighting them today. Not only do I think that as a practical matter the nonsense is far more likely to harm me or those I care about, and not only do I strongly disapprove of all the time, money, media attention and other resources I consider wasted on most so-called anti-terror measures when much more deserving causes could have used those resources better, I also think the current culture of rampant paranoia and fear-mongering is helping the terrorists to win anyway.

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TazeTSchnitzel 4485 days ago
Whatever the UK Government thinks, EU and UK Data Protection law should make this illegal.
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