Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
And if the data was created in China, to go with the account owner who is Chinese and lives in China, and is accessible by Google's servers in China (despite being saved to disk in the US), using their Chinese department of Conforming To Weird Things Like Laws, I fail to see what the problem is.
What US law stops Chinese employees of Google from accessing Chinese data from their Chinese domains (but powered by and permanently cached in their US machines), using Chinese computers connected to the Google Machine, in order to give it to the Chinese government, conforming to Chinese law, in order to aid a Chinese prosecution?
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The easiest analogy might be if the data in question were medical history protected by HIPAA regulations. Something required by Chinese law, but prohibited by US law. And that appears to be what the situation is with Microsoft and Ireland, or so Microsoft says. It is a very unresolved issue, and one that threatens to have a big effect (almost certainly negative, no matter how it turns out) on international businesses.