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US Supreme Court Just Blew Up EU-US Data Transfers

263 points by tomwas54 3mo ago

epsteingpt 3mo ago
[flagged]
- josephg 3mo ago
  > If the EU takes the DPA 'independence' seriously, they will end up marginalized in the tech space. If NVIDIA can't sell GPUs to China, will that marginalise chinese technology? Or will it help supercharge a local industry? It might do both - hobbling chinese AI in the short term, but helping chinese competitors emerge in the medium to long term. US tariffs are the same. They might "marginalise" the US economy. But maybe they'll revitalise the US manufacturing industry too? We'll see! The EU has a tremendous number of smart software engineers. They're more than capable of recreating the US technology stack locally. Especially with the benefit of hindsight, and with access to opensource software. In the long run, I wouldn't be surprised if Europe ended up richer by building their own tech stack "in house" instead of outsourcing to US hyperscalers.
  - epsteingpt 3mo ago
    Thanks for engaging. People weaponizing the downvote here without good faith discussion is disappointing but expected on HN recently. It's OK, you can take my HN points. > The EU has a tremendous number of smart software engineers. Yes. > They're more than capable of recreating the US tech stack locally. No. Where are the dozens of European tech winners? Seriously. They have the best education system in the world, strong social safety nets, cheap healthcare, and great lifestyles. Why have they not created innovative technologies that turn into worldbeating companies? It's worth seriously asking this question. Many serious tech companies ultimately move to the U.S. because of capital availability but this should be addressable no? EU has big banks and pools of capital? The ball has been there to take for 30-40 years. Europe has not consistently manufactured winners in the tech space. > Opensource Let's see. We hope. But this doesn't seem to have been a good strategy in Web 1 or Web 2 besides a couple of notable exceptions. But notable exceptions don't power an economy. > Europe ends up richer I don't see how. This is the problem. They cannot build. They don't have the raw materials. The land. The labor supply. The power. This is getting closer to the root cause. Have spent many years in Europe. Rooting for them. Just not sure they will figure it out.
    - josephg 3mo ago
      > Where are the dozens of European tech winners? Seriously. They have the best education system in the world, strong social safety nets, cheap healthcare, and great lifestyles. Why have they not created innovative technologies that turn into worldbeating companies? This is a great question. I'm Australian, and I ask myself the same question constantly here in Aus. The engineers I graduated with in Sydney are easily as good as the engineers I worked with in the Bay Area. But where are all the startups? Having worked in Aus and SF, I think the two big elements are culture and finance. We don't have a culture in Aus of risktaking and entrepreneurship. People just seem less interested here in changing the world by starting a tech company. If you do start a business, you're kind of on your own. There isn't a community of people who've done it before who can guide you. And there isn't the same sort of venture capital here. Lenders only want to make sure bets. There's money for low risk, low yield lending. But there are barely any funds for high risk, high yield. The successful tech startups I know in australia bootstrapped themselves (Fastmail, Atlassian). As far as I can tell, Europe has the same problems. Europe has capital, but I don't think that capital it looking to make angel investments. But maybe cutting ties with the US tech scene would help change that? So long as Google Docs works well, nobody is clamouring to make or fund a competitor. But take google docs away, and suddenly there's a clear need and a chance to make a lot of money. That could spur innovation.
      - epsteingpt 3mo ago
        Possibly. They've tried it with cars (previously the 'pinnacle' of human tech and engineering) and they've basically lost the game, which they led. Agree with your assessments on culture and finance though. Thanks for the comment.
    - fdw 3mo ago
      > Where are the dozens of European tech winners? Seriously. They have the best education system in the world, strong social safety nets, cheap healthcare, and great lifestyles. Why have they not created innovative technologies that turn into worldbeating companies? Maybe that is because there are US companies competing in the same space that are not held to the same regulations because of treaties like this one. It's hard to build a competitor to AWS, not just technically (although it very much is), but also business-wise - who would choose the unproven startup if you can go with the accepted best practise? By forcing US companies to equal footing, you give European startups more of chance. (Which is a Chinese playbook, too.)
- gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
  > Meanwhile, the EU decides that its most important issue is adjudicating whether a Supreme Court ruling will prevent its citizens from using Instagram. The EU hasn't decided or prioritized anything here yet. NOYB has decided that this issue is important, but they're a non-profit organization that is completely unrelated to any government. NOYB will eventually take this issue to the EU courts, but the courts are independent of the other branches of government, and are required to adjudicate any valid complaint, so regardless of what their ruling is, you can't really attribute that to "the EU" either.
  - epsteingpt 3mo ago
    Obviously a caricature, but you must engage with the substance of the underlying issue. If you have watched the EU's approach to U.S. tech cos (DMA, DPA) you can see a trend of increased regulation; to where it's not worth sometimes to release apps on the App Store initially to the EU due to GDPR and DMA restrictions. Appreciate it if you take the technical bite out of the comment and engage in good faith here. The regulators have repeatedly shown their willingness to look at the pure letter of the law and levy multibillion dollar fines. Maybe the tech cos deserve it. But what's at hand here is where the investment of time and energy is going in the bloc. My other comments address why this feels like an issue. And the hilarious, (IMO) bad faith downvoting suggests the comment actually stings. We must ask why.
    - watwut 3mo ago
      If GDPR is an issue, you are planning to abuse peoples data. DMA has nothing to do with small apps.
      - epsteingpt 3mo ago
        You are right - it's the DSA that makes you publish your contact information publicly if you're a trader.
    - gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
      > If you have watched the EU's approach to U.S. tech cos (DMA, DPA) you can see a trend of increased regulation Sure, no dispute here—I agree that in general, the EU has recently being making it more difficult for large American tech companies to do business in Europe. But I don't think that that applies at all in this specific case. The EU has already been sued twice over US–EU data-sharing agreements, and both times, they fought it all the way to their supreme court, and after they lost, they quickly made new agreements that were essentially equivalent to the old ones. So the EU repeatedly gone to a lot of effort to allow US–EU data-sharing, which suggests that their priorities are the exact opposite of forbidding this. > And the hilarious, (IMO) bad faith downvoting suggests the comment actually stings. We must ask why. I can't speak for the others, but I personally downvoted your top-level comment because the sentence that I quoted was factually incorrect. I don't agree with your other points, but they seem like valid opinions, so I wouldn't have downvoted for those alone. (And FWIW, I'm Canadian, so I have no vested interests in either side here)
- claw-el 3mo ago
  Not saying if I agree with noyb or not, but I don’t think noyb = EU.
  - epsteingpt 3mo ago
    His reading of the letter of the law is probably right. Enforcement is a big question, but they'll hold their judgment given how mad they are generically at U.S. Tech cos. Source: worked with EU regulators on privacy.
- bestouff 3mo ago
  No more sharing of EU personal data with the US ? Not a bad thing.
- croes 3mo ago
  > Youth unemployment is tragically high across nearly the entire bloc. Look at what happens to countries with high youth unemployment. DPA is exactly the USP where EU companies can beat US companies. So your point is the EU should kill European jobs in favor of Instagram. BTW the best available and align markets are the reason for this https://abcnews.com/US/wisconsin-man-dies-after-inhaler-cost-jumps-500/story?id=118422131 https://abcnews.com/US/wisconsin-man-dies-after-inhaler-cost...
  - epsteingpt 3mo ago
    Mate if you're going to cherry pick about "markets and alignment" -> More people have died in the EU from heat waves due to lack of air conditioning than gun violence in the US. Ratio is worse if you remove suicide gun death. Societal choices do have consequences! The EU doesn't have to kill jobs. The companies are doing that on their own because they cannot compete. Take a look at what is happening in Germany. The whole point is the EU should be more competitive. It would be great if they could create jobs instead of giving them to Instagram. That's what everyone wants. No one wants to live in the 9/9/6 grind hellscape. But you cannot regulate the world there. EU has tried. It has not worked. This is only a clear-eyed assessment.
    - croes 3mo ago
      You need the full picture. Heat is more lethal the older you get. Guess who has the higher life expectancy and more old people who can die of heat. On top of that come non-unjusted work ethics especially in countries like Germany where non working hours on the hottest hours is still seen as lazy (like the southern Europeans are often seen) > Take a look at what is happening in Germany. It’s called resting on one's laurels. They still try to save ICE cars and fight renewable energy sources. It’s a shame given that Germany once was leading in solar energy. They can compete but they think they could turn back the wheel of time and could stay on previous technology. > But you cannot regulate the world there. EU has tried. It has not worked. You don’t need the regulate the world. Capitalism follows every regulation if the market is big enough and the EU still is big enough. They just aren’t consistent enough in enforcing it because of lobbying of shortsighted companies.
atoav 3mo ago
As a European citizen I do not trust entities located in the US to not abuse my private data ever since the patriot act. If it was me that deal would have never came to be. If some EU entity decides to use Microsoft 365 can Microsoft guarantee that it won't give access to one US government agency or another? It really can't. Because if that EU entity wants to act in accordance with EU law, this matters. This is what that deal was for. Basically the EU saying "it is okay" although it never really was okay. IMO we in the EU need to finally start doing our own stuff that adheres to our own laws and isn't subject to the whims of a mad king. Public Money, Public Code.
- rixed 3mo ago
  Who do you want to abuse your private data then? Some administration closer to home? It's well overdue to take seriously and put all our efforts behind the many (various but little known) local-first initiatives. See for instance: https://elfaconsortium.eu/ https://elfaconsortium.eu/ It's a race against time.
  - frereubu 3mo ago
    > Who do you want to abuse your private data then? Some administration closer to home? This is a very bad-faith question. If you want people to take you seriously, at least give them the respect of trying to argue with a strong, good-faith interpretation of what they're saying.
    - rixed 3mo ago
      Irony is not bad faith.
- nickslaughter02 3mo ago
  > As a European citizen I do not trust entities located in the US to not abuse my private data ever since the patriot act. EU is working on mandating scans of all your private encrypted messages right now. EU data protection is marketing for the gullible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707719
Chu4eeno 3mo ago
I wonder how many billions in lobbying money Schrems has cost various big companies. The treaties and deals he has managed to torpedo by forcing courts to uphold privacy laws is insane (and impressive).
jhanschoo 3mo ago
For the skimmer/TL;DR'er, note that this article is by an advocacy group presenting their analysis of a situation, and then advocating and taking action on it: "Next Steps: Commission must repeal EU-US deal. noyb ..." It is not reporting on an opinion of a representative or proxy of the European Commission.
- eesmith 3mo ago
  For the skimmer, the advocacy group was founded by Maximilian Schrems, whose legal cases first got the European Court of Justice to overturn the International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles (which described how a US company could legally store private data on EU citizens), and then got the ECJ to overturn EU–US Privacy Shield, which replaced the Safe Harbor principles. These decisions are known as Schrems I and Schrems II after the founder of this advocacy group. The newest version of that data transfer framework is called the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework. The European Commission deemed it sufficient, in no small part because they considered it (and more specifically the Data Protection Review Court, an extrajudicial executive branch tribunal) sufficiently independent of the president. However, in January 2025, Trump fired the Democrat members of the review court, leaving it unable to reach quorum to make decisions, which highlighted it wasn't all that independent. Now it's clearly not independent. I don't see how a Schrems III is not in the works.
  - maratc 3mo ago
    You could both be right: Shrems III could be in the works, and TLA could be presenting their legal analysis as an established fact. In other words, (a) no, the "US Supreme Court" didn't "Just Bl[ow] Up EU-US Data Transfers" – there's nothing in the decision even remotely addressing the transfers (nor the EU!) – but (b) the situation might progress in that direction (or it might not.)
    - eesmith 3mo ago
      I think "noyb will also file a lawsuit in the coming weeks", from the person/group who brought us Shrems I and Shrems II, counts enough as "Shrems III could be in the works". Don't you? The linked article does not present their legal analysis and call for action as established fact.
xiphias2 3mo ago
EU needs to decide if it wants to do data processing or not. If it’s a yes, it needs datacenters and get a lot more energy. If no, it needs to transfer data to US for training/inferencing on it.
- joe_mamba 3mo ago
  >If it’s a yes, it needs datacenters and get a lot more energy. It can outsource its data centers abroad too like it did with its manufacturing industry.
- ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
  or wait for the bubble to burst and come out on top.
  - drstewart 3mo ago
    This. The US is playing the right move with solar panels, wait for the bubble to burst and then swoop in. Let China take the early losses.
    - hahahaa 3mo ago
      Lol that is like saying let's wait AI out, not build fabs, TMSC will sell em cheap in 2030!
  - noosphr 3mo ago
    The internet is a fad and will pass any day now.
    - general1465 3mo ago
      Current AI companies with trillion USD valuations, models which costed them billions USD to train and now have total addressable market few hundred approved entities are very close to being a fad.
    - ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
amarant 3mo ago
Doing business with the US is just impossible these days. If this trend continues any further the US is gonna end up a piranha state with no allies and no business partners. I'm really not sure what consequences that'll have for the rest of the world, but it looks like we're about to find out
- recursive-call 3mo ago
  pariah: outcast, disliked piranha: carnivorous fish
  - Etheryte 3mo ago
    Also piranha: Brazilian Portugese slang for hooker.
    - roysting 3mo ago
      Accidental accuracy
    - rapidaneurism 3mo ago
      Do they mob potential Johns?
  - rusk 3mo ago
    Sounds right
  - mistersquid 3mo ago
    > piranha: carnivorous fish Nice callout. Neither here nor there, but many (most?) fish are carnivorous.
    - coderbants 3mo ago
      Name checks out.
    - nicoburns 3mo ago
seydor 3mo ago
The EU keeps trying to manifest the missing european data infrastructure via data regulation instead of outright bans and limits on american companies, the way China did it.
- joe_mamba 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- jimbob45 3mo ago
  Ban, limits, and regulation won’t solve a country with too many worker protections. The EU simply can’t compete in the modern globalized world.
  - hgtt664868 3mo ago
    slashing worker protections would do what exactly?
    - eecc 3mo ago
      free the "animal spirits"? /s
    - CalRobert 3mo ago
      Tbf it could reduce hiring friction and make it easier to take a chance on a riskier hire. Also makes it easier for workers to change jobs, notice periods here can be outright insane (3 months in some cases) and even as an employee I hated them.
      - someonebaggy 3mo ago
        Is a 6 month probationary period not good enough to take a chance?
        CalRobert 3mo ago
        Longest I’ve seen in NL is 2 months, and it’s usually one. It’s common to string multiple “temporary” contracts together though. It still increases switching cost. As a worker with a permanent contract I have to weigh new opportunities against losing that. And it has real impacts! Getting a mortgage is harder on a temp contract (doable in NL, basically impossible in Ireland)
nickslaughter02 3mo ago
Europa, the official web portal of the tech sovereign European Union, will have to change their CDN provider (Amazon's CloudFront). https://europa.eu https://europa.eu
- cesaref 3mo ago
  Unless that site collects personal information, it's fine isn't it? This isn't about where stuff is hosted, it's about privacy.
  - AndroTux 3mo ago
    IPs are personal information afaik
    - throwwwll 3mo ago
      Yes, they are
    - cesaref 3mo ago
      Ah, of course. Interesting.
    - dspillett 3mo ago
      That has gone back and forth numerous times over the decades, particularly in legal cases concerning unlicensed content sharing. I think the consensus ATM is that they generally aren't on their own, largely because most network access is through shared NAT arrangements. At most an IP address (definitely v4, v6 depending on your arrangement) identifies a household or office, not an individual, and “it seems someone hacked the wireless, or one of my smart devices, or a rouge plugin turned me into a residential proxy, etc.” muddies the water further, often an IP address identifies nothing more than which mobile data provider or VPN provider the user was connected through. As a simple for instance: No one warns when all that is collected is the calling hosts' apparent IP address in their web server or other service logs. Only once entries with record of the address are explicitly linked to other PII (i.e. if URLs contain PII like names, addresses, etc, so those are logged alongside the calling address) is it an issue - and even then the recording of that information in the wrong places is the problem (in the HTTP logs example, what is that data about the user even doing existing in URIs?) not the calling IP address.
manueltgomes 3mo ago
Switching to EU companies is often the solution, but also we're in a tricky position in Europe since alternatives exist but can't compete with US. So finding European alternatives is possible but hard. Also EU is doing its job enforcing privacy and anti-competition laws but then American companies just say "feature not available in EU" (like Apple is doing more and more for example), making things even harder to switch. Like nick mentioned, even EU official sites use CloudFront so it's a tricky process.
- shevy-java 3mo ago
  This is even worse. For instance, in a medical university, we recently were told we need a smartphone and install an app from Google store (!!!), in order to read emails sent out by officials at the medical university. I protested to that but they had a deal already with the private company and their signature meant they had to keep on being addicted to that private company, so now I am locked out of receiving emails since for redirect you also need to have that app installed once. I don't have a smartphone though and I find it outrageous that people are forced to install it AND forced to use Google Store, for publicly funded (!!!) universities here in central Europe. Some lobbyists are currently getting very rich. I call it theft of taxpayer's money though.
  - dgellow 3mo ago
    What country? Which university?
  - tempfile 3mo ago
    I don't know where you are, and I'm not an expert, but a job requiring specific technology typically means it is your employer's responsibility to provide that technology. So if they signed a contract that mandates you have a smartphone, you can use your own if you like, but I think they are legally required to provide you with one if you choose not to buy one. In fact in most cases, I think they should prefer that (since the security of your personal device is very much none of their business). I think this is kind of a ticking time bomb with a lot of companies depending on personal devices for 2FA.
shevy-java 3mo ago
So the US Supreme Court is doing here more and better for EU citizens (!!!) than the EU commission and EU courts are. Because the EU officials constantly keep on lying to EU citizens how our data is safe in the USA, which it clearly is not, even aside from Trump's brown shirts, the ICE snipers that have already killed US citizens in shootings. The world is a very strange place, but one good thing is that Trump's criminal gangster organisation has not undermined the whole US court system yet. And he is now too old and too demented to do so, so they will rally behind hugely uncharismatic losers such as eyeliner-boy "can't stop it with my make-up" Vance or "I change my opinion all the time" Mr. Rubio. A big loser team.
- jeroenhd 3mo ago
  The US supreme court is correcting the lies the American government made when they assured the EU and its citizens that they can be trusted with their data. It's not just the EU lying, both sides are awful at this. I don't know why the EU wants to trust the USA so bad, it's clearly unwise. It makes sense, because banning EU companies from using AWS/GCP/etc. would bankrupt the EU into a recession, but the way they're going about these things is very annoying. That said, if the USA would actually keep its promises and adopt legislation that solves the reasons why the EU cannot give out a decent competency decision, the problem would go away entirely. The Biden administration set up a precarious body within the government to resolve the issue rather than go through the normal lawmaking process, probably because it wouldn't go through.
  - dgellow 3mo ago
    > I don't know why the EU wants to trust the USA so bad, it's clearly unwise We are too afraid of change and having to take responsibilities. Delegating to the US worked for decades, and it’s very hard to accept that we’ve done a mistake and need to take some risks ourselves. I feel it’s the same issue we have at European countries level. But also, the EU is still a patchwork of entities that do not have a common vision of what the future should be. Hopefully losing our largest ally will push towards a closer, more federalist union. There is still so much work to do to unify the single market. I’m watching closely what is going on with the 28th regime[0] for that purpose 0: https://the28thregime.eu/ https://the28thregime.eu/
protectifyai 3mo ago
[flagged]
aristofun 3mo ago
Can someone explain me like im 10 - what exactly is the root problem here? Why all these dances (and wasted taxpayers money) with data living here or there? Isnt it (in general) just another unnecessary pain for good guys while relatively easy solvable issue for bad guys? What do I miss? Genuine question.
rayiner 3mo ago
I find it hilarious that the potential effect on EU law didn’t factor into the arguments in this case on either side. I’m not sure anybody involved even knew that the EU relied on FTC independence. Not that it’s relevant to the legal question.

263 points by tomwas54 3mo ago

epsteingpt 3mo ago

[flagged]

josephg 3mo ago
> If the EU takes the DPA 'independence' seriously, they will end up marginalized in the tech space. If NVIDIA can't sell GPUs to China, will that marginalise chinese technology? Or will it help supercharge a local industry? It might do both - hobbling chinese AI in the short term, but helping chinese competitors emerge in the medium to long term. US tariffs are the same. They might "marginalise" the US economy. But maybe they'll revitalise the US manufacturing industry too? We'll see! The EU has a tremendous number of smart software engineers. They're more than capable of recreating the US technology stack locally. Especially with the benefit of hindsight, and with access to opensource software. In the long run, I wouldn't be surprised if Europe ended up richer by building their own tech stack "in house" instead of outsourcing to US hyperscalers.
- epsteingpt 3mo ago
  Thanks for engaging. People weaponizing the downvote here without good faith discussion is disappointing but expected on HN recently. It's OK, you can take my HN points. > The EU has a tremendous number of smart software engineers. Yes. > They're more than capable of recreating the US tech stack locally. No. Where are the dozens of European tech winners? Seriously. They have the best education system in the world, strong social safety nets, cheap healthcare, and great lifestyles. Why have they not created innovative technologies that turn into worldbeating companies? It's worth seriously asking this question. Many serious tech companies ultimately move to the U.S. because of capital availability but this should be addressable no? EU has big banks and pools of capital? The ball has been there to take for 30-40 years. Europe has not consistently manufactured winners in the tech space. > Opensource Let's see. We hope. But this doesn't seem to have been a good strategy in Web 1 or Web 2 besides a couple of notable exceptions. But notable exceptions don't power an economy. > Europe ends up richer I don't see how. This is the problem. They cannot build. They don't have the raw materials. The land. The labor supply. The power. This is getting closer to the root cause. Have spent many years in Europe. Rooting for them. Just not sure they will figure it out.
  - josephg 3mo ago
    > Where are the dozens of European tech winners? Seriously. They have the best education system in the world, strong social safety nets, cheap healthcare, and great lifestyles. Why have they not created innovative technologies that turn into worldbeating companies? This is a great question. I'm Australian, and I ask myself the same question constantly here in Aus. The engineers I graduated with in Sydney are easily as good as the engineers I worked with in the Bay Area. But where are all the startups? Having worked in Aus and SF, I think the two big elements are culture and finance. We don't have a culture in Aus of risktaking and entrepreneurship. People just seem less interested here in changing the world by starting a tech company. If you do start a business, you're kind of on your own. There isn't a community of people who've done it before who can guide you. And there isn't the same sort of venture capital here. Lenders only want to make sure bets. There's money for low risk, low yield lending. But there are barely any funds for high risk, high yield. The successful tech startups I know in australia bootstrapped themselves (Fastmail, Atlassian). As far as I can tell, Europe has the same problems. Europe has capital, but I don't think that capital it looking to make angel investments. But maybe cutting ties with the US tech scene would help change that? So long as Google Docs works well, nobody is clamouring to make or fund a competitor. But take google docs away, and suddenly there's a clear need and a chance to make a lot of money. That could spur innovation.
    - epsteingpt 3mo ago
      Possibly. They've tried it with cars (previously the 'pinnacle' of human tech and engineering) and they've basically lost the game, which they led. Agree with your assessments on culture and finance though. Thanks for the comment.
  - fdw 3mo ago
    > Where are the dozens of European tech winners? Seriously. They have the best education system in the world, strong social safety nets, cheap healthcare, and great lifestyles. Why have they not created innovative technologies that turn into worldbeating companies? Maybe that is because there are US companies competing in the same space that are not held to the same regulations because of treaties like this one. It's hard to build a competitor to AWS, not just technically (although it very much is), but also business-wise - who would choose the unproven startup if you can go with the accepted best practise? By forcing US companies to equal footing, you give European startups more of chance. (Which is a Chinese playbook, too.)
gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
> Meanwhile, the EU decides that its most important issue is adjudicating whether a Supreme Court ruling will prevent its citizens from using Instagram. The EU hasn't decided or prioritized anything here yet. NOYB has decided that this issue is important, but they're a non-profit organization that is completely unrelated to any government. NOYB will eventually take this issue to the EU courts, but the courts are independent of the other branches of government, and are required to adjudicate any valid complaint, so regardless of what their ruling is, you can't really attribute that to "the EU" either.
- epsteingpt 3mo ago
  Obviously a caricature, but you must engage with the substance of the underlying issue. If you have watched the EU's approach to U.S. tech cos (DMA, DPA) you can see a trend of increased regulation; to where it's not worth sometimes to release apps on the App Store initially to the EU due to GDPR and DMA restrictions. Appreciate it if you take the technical bite out of the comment and engage in good faith here. The regulators have repeatedly shown their willingness to look at the pure letter of the law and levy multibillion dollar fines. Maybe the tech cos deserve it. But what's at hand here is where the investment of time and energy is going in the bloc. My other comments address why this feels like an issue. And the hilarious, (IMO) bad faith downvoting suggests the comment actually stings. We must ask why.
  - watwut 3mo ago
    If GDPR is an issue, you are planning to abuse peoples data. DMA has nothing to do with small apps.
    - epsteingpt 3mo ago
      You are right - it's the DSA that makes you publish your contact information publicly if you're a trader.
  - gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
    > If you have watched the EU's approach to U.S. tech cos (DMA, DPA) you can see a trend of increased regulation Sure, no dispute here—I agree that in general, the EU has recently being making it more difficult for large American tech companies to do business in Europe. But I don't think that that applies at all in this specific case. The EU has already been sued twice over US–EU data-sharing agreements, and both times, they fought it all the way to their supreme court, and after they lost, they quickly made new agreements that were essentially equivalent to the old ones. So the EU repeatedly gone to a lot of effort to allow US–EU data-sharing, which suggests that their priorities are the exact opposite of forbidding this. > And the hilarious, (IMO) bad faith downvoting suggests the comment actually stings. We must ask why. I can't speak for the others, but I personally downvoted your top-level comment because the sentence that I quoted was factually incorrect. I don't agree with your other points, but they seem like valid opinions, so I wouldn't have downvoted for those alone. (And FWIW, I'm Canadian, so I have no vested interests in either side here)
claw-el 3mo ago
Not saying if I agree with noyb or not, but I don’t think noyb = EU.
- epsteingpt 3mo ago
  His reading of the letter of the law is probably right. Enforcement is a big question, but they'll hold their judgment given how mad they are generically at U.S. Tech cos. Source: worked with EU regulators on privacy.
bestouff 3mo ago
No more sharing of EU personal data with the US ? Not a bad thing.
croes 3mo ago
> Youth unemployment is tragically high across nearly the entire bloc. Look at what happens to countries with high youth unemployment. DPA is exactly the USP where EU companies can beat US companies. So your point is the EU should kill European jobs in favor of Instagram. BTW the best available and align markets are the reason for this https://abcnews.com/US/wisconsin-man-dies-after-inhaler-cost-jumps-500/story?id=118422131 https://abcnews.com/US/wisconsin-man-dies-after-inhaler-cost...
- epsteingpt 3mo ago
  Mate if you're going to cherry pick about "markets and alignment" -> More people have died in the EU from heat waves due to lack of air conditioning than gun violence in the US. Ratio is worse if you remove suicide gun death. Societal choices do have consequences! The EU doesn't have to kill jobs. The companies are doing that on their own because they cannot compete. Take a look at what is happening in Germany. The whole point is the EU should be more competitive. It would be great if they could create jobs instead of giving them to Instagram. That's what everyone wants. No one wants to live in the 9/9/6 grind hellscape. But you cannot regulate the world there. EU has tried. It has not worked. This is only a clear-eyed assessment.
  - croes 3mo ago
    You need the full picture. Heat is more lethal the older you get. Guess who has the higher life expectancy and more old people who can die of heat. On top of that come non-unjusted work ethics especially in countries like Germany where non working hours on the hottest hours is still seen as lazy (like the southern Europeans are often seen) > Take a look at what is happening in Germany. It’s called resting on one's laurels. They still try to save ICE cars and fight renewable energy sources. It’s a shame given that Germany once was leading in solar energy. They can compete but they think they could turn back the wheel of time and could stay on previous technology. > But you cannot regulate the world there. EU has tried. It has not worked. You don’t need the regulate the world. Capitalism follows every regulation if the market is big enough and the EU still is big enough. They just aren’t consistent enough in enforcing it because of lobbying of shortsighted companies.

atoav 3mo ago

As a European citizen I do not trust entities located in the US to not abuse my private data ever since the patriot act. If it was me that deal would have never came to be. If some EU entity decides to use Microsoft 365 can Microsoft guarantee that it won't give access to one US government agency or another? It really can't. Because if that EU entity wants to act in accordance with EU law, this matters. This is what that deal was for. Basically the EU saying "it is okay" although it never really was okay. IMO we in the EU need to finally start doing our own stuff that adheres to our own laws and isn't subject to the whims of a mad king. Public Money, Public Code.

rixed 3mo ago
Who do you want to abuse your private data then? Some administration closer to home? It's well overdue to take seriously and put all our efforts behind the many (various but little known) local-first initiatives. See for instance: https://elfaconsortium.eu/ https://elfaconsortium.eu/ It's a race against time.
- frereubu 3mo ago
  > Who do you want to abuse your private data then? Some administration closer to home? This is a very bad-faith question. If you want people to take you seriously, at least give them the respect of trying to argue with a strong, good-faith interpretation of what they're saying.
  - rixed 3mo ago
    Irony is not bad faith.
nickslaughter02 3mo ago
> As a European citizen I do not trust entities located in the US to not abuse my private data ever since the patriot act. EU is working on mandating scans of all your private encrypted messages right now. EU data protection is marketing for the gullible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707719

Chu4eeno 3mo ago

I wonder how many billions in lobbying money Schrems has cost various big companies. The treaties and deals he has managed to torpedo by forcing courts to uphold privacy laws is insane (and impressive).

jhanschoo 3mo ago

For the skimmer/TL;DR'er, note that this article is by an advocacy group presenting their analysis of a situation, and then advocating and taking action on it: "Next Steps: Commission must repeal EU-US deal. noyb ..." It is not reporting on an opinion of a representative or proxy of the European Commission.

eesmith 3mo ago
For the skimmer, the advocacy group was founded by Maximilian Schrems, whose legal cases first got the European Court of Justice to overturn the International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles (which described how a US company could legally store private data on EU citizens), and then got the ECJ to overturn EU–US Privacy Shield, which replaced the Safe Harbor principles. These decisions are known as Schrems I and Schrems II after the founder of this advocacy group. The newest version of that data transfer framework is called the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework. The European Commission deemed it sufficient, in no small part because they considered it (and more specifically the Data Protection Review Court, an extrajudicial executive branch tribunal) sufficiently independent of the president. However, in January 2025, Trump fired the Democrat members of the review court, leaving it unable to reach quorum to make decisions, which highlighted it wasn't all that independent. Now it's clearly not independent. I don't see how a Schrems III is not in the works.
- maratc 3mo ago
  You could both be right: Shrems III could be in the works, and TLA could be presenting their legal analysis as an established fact. In other words, (a) no, the "US Supreme Court" didn't "Just Bl[ow] Up EU-US Data Transfers" – there's nothing in the decision even remotely addressing the transfers (nor the EU!) – but (b) the situation might progress in that direction (or it might not.)
  - eesmith 3mo ago
    I think "noyb will also file a lawsuit in the coming weeks", from the person/group who brought us Shrems I and Shrems II, counts enough as "Shrems III could be in the works". Don't you? The linked article does not present their legal analysis and call for action as established fact.

xiphias2 3mo ago

EU needs to decide if it wants to do data processing or not. If it’s a yes, it needs datacenters and get a lot more energy. If no, it needs to transfer data to US for training/inferencing on it.

joe_mamba 3mo ago
>If it’s a yes, it needs datacenters and get a lot more energy. It can outsource its data centers abroad too like it did with its manufacturing industry.
ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
or wait for the bubble to burst and come out on top.
- drstewart 3mo ago
  This. The US is playing the right move with solar panels, wait for the bubble to burst and then swoop in. Let China take the early losses.
  - hahahaa 3mo ago
    Lol that is like saying let's wait AI out, not build fabs, TMSC will sell em cheap in 2030!
- noosphr 3mo ago
  The internet is a fad and will pass any day now.
  - general1465 3mo ago
    Current AI companies with trillion USD valuations, models which costed them billions USD to train and now have total addressable market few hundred approved entities are very close to being a fad.
  - ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago

amarant 3mo ago

Doing business with the US is just impossible these days. If this trend continues any further the US is gonna end up a piranha state with no allies and no business partners. I'm really not sure what consequences that'll have for the rest of the world, but it looks like we're about to find out

recursive-call 3mo ago
pariah: outcast, disliked piranha: carnivorous fish
- Etheryte 3mo ago
  Also piranha: Brazilian Portugese slang for hooker.
  - roysting 3mo ago
    Accidental accuracy
  - rapidaneurism 3mo ago
    Do they mob potential Johns?
- rusk 3mo ago
  Sounds right
- mistersquid 3mo ago
  > piranha: carnivorous fish Nice callout. Neither here nor there, but many (most?) fish are carnivorous.
  - coderbants 3mo ago
    Name checks out.
  - nicoburns 3mo ago

seydor 3mo ago

The EU keeps trying to manifest the missing european data infrastructure via data regulation instead of outright bans and limits on american companies, the way China did it.

joe_mamba 3mo ago
[flagged]
jimbob45 3mo ago
Ban, limits, and regulation won’t solve a country with too many worker protections. The EU simply can’t compete in the modern globalized world.
- hgtt664868 3mo ago
  slashing worker protections would do what exactly?
  - eecc 3mo ago
    free the "animal spirits"? /s
  - CalRobert 3mo ago
    Tbf it could reduce hiring friction and make it easier to take a chance on a riskier hire. Also makes it easier for workers to change jobs, notice periods here can be outright insane (3 months in some cases) and even as an employee I hated them.
    - someonebaggy 3mo ago
      Is a 6 month probationary period not good enough to take a chance?
      - CalRobert 3mo ago
        Longest I’ve seen in NL is 2 months, and it’s usually one. It’s common to string multiple “temporary” contracts together though. It still increases switching cost. As a worker with a permanent contract I have to weigh new opportunities against losing that. And it has real impacts! Getting a mortgage is harder on a temp contract (doable in NL, basically impossible in Ireland)

nickslaughter02 3mo ago

Europa, the official web portal of the tech sovereign European Union, will have to change their CDN provider (Amazon's CloudFront). https://europa.eu https://europa.eu

cesaref 3mo ago
Unless that site collects personal information, it's fine isn't it? This isn't about where stuff is hosted, it's about privacy.
- AndroTux 3mo ago
  IPs are personal information afaik
  - throwwwll 3mo ago
    Yes, they are
  - cesaref 3mo ago
    Ah, of course. Interesting.
  - dspillett 3mo ago
    That has gone back and forth numerous times over the decades, particularly in legal cases concerning unlicensed content sharing. I think the consensus ATM is that they generally aren't on their own, largely because most network access is through shared NAT arrangements. At most an IP address (definitely v4, v6 depending on your arrangement) identifies a household or office, not an individual, and “it seems someone hacked the wireless, or one of my smart devices, or a rouge plugin turned me into a residential proxy, etc.” muddies the water further, often an IP address identifies nothing more than which mobile data provider or VPN provider the user was connected through. As a simple for instance: No one warns when all that is collected is the calling hosts' apparent IP address in their web server or other service logs. Only once entries with record of the address are explicitly linked to other PII (i.e. if URLs contain PII like names, addresses, etc, so those are logged alongside the calling address) is it an issue - and even then the recording of that information in the wrong places is the problem (in the HTTP logs example, what is that data about the user even doing existing in URIs?) not the calling IP address.

manueltgomes 3mo ago

Switching to EU companies is often the solution, but also we're in a tricky position in Europe since alternatives exist but can't compete with US. So finding European alternatives is possible but hard. Also EU is doing its job enforcing privacy and anti-competition laws but then American companies just say "feature not available in EU" (like Apple is doing more and more for example), making things even harder to switch. Like nick mentioned, even EU official sites use CloudFront so it's a tricky process.

shevy-java 3mo ago
This is even worse. For instance, in a medical university, we recently were told we need a smartphone and install an app from Google store (!!!), in order to read emails sent out by officials at the medical university. I protested to that but they had a deal already with the private company and their signature meant they had to keep on being addicted to that private company, so now I am locked out of receiving emails since for redirect you also need to have that app installed once. I don't have a smartphone though and I find it outrageous that people are forced to install it AND forced to use Google Store, for publicly funded (!!!) universities here in central Europe. Some lobbyists are currently getting very rich. I call it theft of taxpayer's money though.
- dgellow 3mo ago
  What country? Which university?
- tempfile 3mo ago
  I don't know where you are, and I'm not an expert, but a job requiring specific technology typically means it is your employer's responsibility to provide that technology. So if they signed a contract that mandates you have a smartphone, you can use your own if you like, but I think they are legally required to provide you with one if you choose not to buy one. In fact in most cases, I think they should prefer that (since the security of your personal device is very much none of their business). I think this is kind of a ticking time bomb with a lot of companies depending on personal devices for 2FA.

shevy-java 3mo ago

So the US Supreme Court is doing here more and better for EU citizens (!!!) than the EU commission and EU courts are. Because the EU officials constantly keep on lying to EU citizens how our data is safe in the USA, which it clearly is not, even aside from Trump's brown shirts, the ICE snipers that have already killed US citizens in shootings. The world is a very strange place, but one good thing is that Trump's criminal gangster organisation has not undermined the whole US court system yet. And he is now too old and too demented to do so, so they will rally behind hugely uncharismatic losers such as eyeliner-boy "can't stop it with my make-up" Vance or "I change my opinion all the time" Mr. Rubio. A big loser team.

jeroenhd 3mo ago
The US supreme court is correcting the lies the American government made when they assured the EU and its citizens that they can be trusted with their data. It's not just the EU lying, both sides are awful at this. I don't know why the EU wants to trust the USA so bad, it's clearly unwise. It makes sense, because banning EU companies from using AWS/GCP/etc. would bankrupt the EU into a recession, but the way they're going about these things is very annoying. That said, if the USA would actually keep its promises and adopt legislation that solves the reasons why the EU cannot give out a decent competency decision, the problem would go away entirely. The Biden administration set up a precarious body within the government to resolve the issue rather than go through the normal lawmaking process, probably because it wouldn't go through.
- dgellow 3mo ago
  > I don't know why the EU wants to trust the USA so bad, it's clearly unwise We are too afraid of change and having to take responsibilities. Delegating to the US worked for decades, and it’s very hard to accept that we’ve done a mistake and need to take some risks ourselves. I feel it’s the same issue we have at European countries level. But also, the EU is still a patchwork of entities that do not have a common vision of what the future should be. Hopefully losing our largest ally will push towards a closer, more federalist union. There is still so much work to do to unify the single market. I’m watching closely what is going on with the 28th regime[0] for that purpose 0: https://the28thregime.eu/ https://the28thregime.eu/

protectifyai 3mo ago

[flagged]

aristofun 3mo ago

Can someone explain me like im 10 - what exactly is the root problem here? Why all these dances (and wasted taxpayers money) with data living here or there? Isnt it (in general) just another unnecessary pain for good guys while relatively easy solvable issue for bad guys? What do I miss? Genuine question.

rayiner 3mo ago

I find it hilarious that the potential effect on EU law didn’t factor into the arguments in this case on either side. I’m not sure anybody involved even knew that the EU relied on FTC independence. Not that it’s relevant to the legal question.