Data Sovereignty is being negotiated in TTIP and TISA treaties, <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/sections/infosociety/dont-forget-big-data-ttip-and-tisa-314487" rel="nofollow">http://www.euractiv.com/sections/infosociety/dont-forget-big...</a><p><i>"It is crystal clear what corporations want in the Transatlantic trade agreement (TTIP) and the other treaties being negotiated: a commitment to allow cross border data flows and data-processing across all services sectors, including financial services, without any limitations. They consider requirements to use local network infrastructure or local servers as discriminatory, with potentially adverse effects on trade."</i><p>From 2014, <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/wikileaks-leak-shows-data-sovereignty-threat/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/article/wikileaks-leak-shows-data-sover...</a><p><i>"50 countries including Australia and the US may be signing away rights to ensure sensitive customer data remains in its country of origin."</i>
This is a major thing for us. We've got half a ton of stuff on AWS which is being moved back to physical kit at the moment. Turns out the cloud is a geopolitical risk and being in finance in Europe, our data protection regulations and compliance obligations are pretty heavy.<p>Incidentally it's working out much cheaper, simpler with less API lock in than AWS was as our workloads are fairly predictable and we make a lot of money off it.
This is an interesting legal issue, but I doubt it will have any practical effect on the NSA's future access to data.<p>As long as the NSA is collaborating with GCHQ, it doesn't need to transfer anything outside of the EU. If anything, the intercepts provided by the UK government are subject to fewer safeguards than those gathered in domestic surveillance programs.
The title of the article does not represent correctly the size of the issue. It's not just tech companies, it's every company leveraging Safe Harbor agreement, which potentially covers almost every US-based company with EU subsidiaries.
The thing that concerns me is the possible implications this may have on the ability of US based companies to operate saas services for customers in Europe. Following this to its logical conclusion, it could create two seperate internets, where one services the US and the other Europe stifling innovation and limiting adoption of new technologies.<p>We already have to deal with the walled garden of China, are we seeing the beginnings of something similar with Europe?
> The Advocate General Bot agreed with Schrems that the EU-US Safe Harbour system did not meet the requirements of the Data Protection Directive<p>Wonder if she's based on Hubot, or something else entirely.