[governance] Fwd: PRISM - is it about the territorial location of data or its legal ownership

[Ian Peter]

I think one point here is whether any of the companies actually challenged in court any of the rulings or requests for data, and to my knowledge they did not. This suggests that either they were too scared of the government to challenge the rulings, or they were in political agreement with them.

In either case, their standing as responsible global corporations has suffered significantly and justifiably.

Ian Peter

From: parminder 
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 10:29 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org 
Subject: [governance] Fwd: PRISM - is it about the territorial location of data or its legal ownership



Hi All

There was some demand on the bestbits list that we still need to ask a lot of questions from the involved companies in terms of the recent PRISM plus disclosures. We are being too soft on them. I refuse to believe that everything they did was forced upon on them. Apart from the fact that there are news reports that US based tech companies regularly share data with US gov for different kinds of favours in return, or even simply motivated by nationalistic feeling, we should not forget that many of these companies have strong political agenda which are closely associated with that of the US gov.   You must all know about 'Google Ideas', its revolving doors with US gov's security apparatus, and its own aggressive regime change ideas. Facebook also is known to 'like' some things, say in MENA region, and not other things in the same region.....

Firstly, one would want to know whether the obligations to share data with US government extended only to such data that is actually located in, or flows, through, the US. Or, does it extend to all data within the legal control/ ownership of these companies wherever it may reside.  (I think, certainly hope, it must be the former, but still I want to be absolutely sure, and hear directly from these companies.)

Now, if the obligation was to share only such data that actually resided in servers inside the US, why did these companies, in face of what was obviously very broad and intrusive demands for sharing data about non US citizens, not simply locate much of such data outside the US. For instance, it could pick up the top 10 countries, the data of whose citizens was repeatedly sought by US authorities, and shift all their data to servers in other countries that made no such demand? Now, we know that many of the involved companies have set up near fictitious companies headquartered in strange places for the purpose of tax avoidance/ evasion. Why could they not do for the sake of protecting human rights, well, lets only say, the trust, of non US citizens/ consumers, what they so very efficiently did for enhancing their bottom-lines? 

Are there any such plan even now? While I can understand that there can be some laws to force a company to hold the data of citizens of a country within its border, there isnt any law which can force these companies to hold foreign data within a country's borders... Or would any such act perceived to be too unfriendly an act by the US gov?


I am sure others may have other questions to ask these companies.....

parminder 






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20130625/cddd7f57/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t