In an discussion thread in a BCS group on linkedin, I commented on the bind that US companies have in attempting to meet European Privacy Laws and the US requirement to co-operate with their law enforcement authorities. Some raised the issue of extra-territoriality as based on the location of the storage medium, I said,

The US jurisdictional claim is over the ownership of the storage media not its location. The EU’s jurisdictional claim is over ownership of the data. The current state of law means that it is not possible for US companies to obey the European duty of privacy and the US duties of disclosure.

I should add that the US legal system has some difficulty in accepting privacy as an inalienable right as well as accepting that it is universal; they believe the rights to privacy from government intrusion only belongs to its citizens. This is the inexorable logic of the republic.

ooOOOoo

The featured picture is CC BY-NC and at flickr by Andrew Tarrant in 2007. I have reduced it in size.

Both sides of the jurisdictional fence
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