bjoernvold.com

Microsoft has been trying to create the impression that they have been bravely fighting off the US government against "overseas" warrants. They claim that the US government cannot claim e-mails and other data that are held on overseas servers - like in Irland. With a growing suspicion among their overseas customers they are loosing a lot of money over this.

The problem they have is that the US courts, like the US government, do not seem to agree with this point of view so far:

The battle, which began in December when a magistrate judge in New York issued the warrant, also raises significant economic and diplomatic issues for U.S. companies that store mounds of data for others as part of the burgeoning cloud computing industry, which has been battered in the wake of revelations about its cooperation with U.S. spy agencies conducting broad surveillance.

Microsoft does have arguments in compliance with the European point of view:

Congress has not authorized the issuance of warrants that reach outside U.S. territory,” Microsoft lawyers wrote in a brief filed Friday. “The government cannot seek and a court cannot issue a warrant allowing federal agents to break down the doors of Microsoft’s Dublin facility

In any case; that is what they have to say if they want to continue making money in Europe - they will have to prove it too, if they want to regain the trust of European customers.

And that is almost an impossible task because nobody believes that an American company can go against an American government.
If Washington insists then Microsoft must follow American law even if it means loosing every foreign customer in the world - or get out of America and become a "foreign" company.

This is a gloomy perspective and now Apple and Cisco have joined forces with Microsoft to avoid financial disaster and written a letter to the US government.

The US government has already answered and claim that is is almost absurd that Microsoft does not comply with US court orders simply because they have chosen to save some data overseas.

So it looks like business in Europe is going to be slow.

Many foreigners can read and they can also act to protect their citizens against unlawful spying - according to European law.
As it is; that US court warrant is actually illegal in Europe, including Ireland.

What this means for European customers?
Well for one:
Don't buy any smartphones with fingerprint login .- those fingerprints will be saved on American servers faster than you can spell Edward Snowden.
And don't trust any "cloud", especially not those ran by American companies.

Any nation and the US in particular, need to have an open discussion and let the people (not the secret courts, and not in the back room) decide where they want to be in this scale:

MS and Cisco are big clients of the US Gov. Most of daily operations are made with some sort of an MS box on Cisco driven networks. So is if you do not want to play ball, I am going where it hurts the most, the wallet.

Not sure about Apple, they might certified the phones and tablets to be used on the networks.

Money is the world's engine

Clearly the money issue is very motivating therefore having the US government as a customer is highly motivating.
The flip side is that it is motivating to have France, Germany, the UK (no big danger of loosing gov customers - but private ones) and Italy as customers too - and the thought of loosing them is discouraging.

That market is way bigger than the US.

Germany and France are speaking of an European Internet only because their US partner has proven that he cannot be trusted.

I would like to see the reactions in the US if The Germans and the French had tapped Obama's phone.
As Merkel stated: "That is simply not done among friends"

I don't think the US gov had analyzed this thoroughly before they started that scandalous surveillance.
US corporations are going to suffer big time from this.

I always wonder why IPX kind of dropped from the face of the planet.

Cisco routers can handle IPX packet (learned it in the Cisco Net Academy many moons ago) and it can be possible to ride 2 different networks.

One in IPX and one in TCP/IP

Both are transparent from each other because a signal is just a signal but the nodes are dialed in to listen to one protocol.
Or let us say, a room full of people speaking in different languages and only the ones with the trained ear that speaks and understand more than 1 language can communicate.

Perhaps, as we speak might be in place at this moment and that is one reason ICANN gave it up.

Yes Cisco is on the tainted hardware list

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3212

I forgot about that thread.

Cisco Routers has to be locked up (physically/access controlled); they are pretty easy to hack on them if you have one in front of you.
Doing through the Network is tougher; unless you have a built-in backdoor (wink-wink-nudge-nudge )