It’s quite concerning when companies are banned without any real evidence actually being seen. I was just glancing through some of the history around the PRISM operation on Wikipedia where for example Facebook (and others) are explicitly mentioned as well as records of how many government requests they accede to for information.
From a global perspective I can see why Russia and others are demanding that data be stored in their own locations. It can be partly to remove that data from the control of a US based operation (although there is now the US CLOUD Act that nullifies that) or it could be for the other country to exert its control over obtaining the data themselves.
I’m wondering if the future is not going to then see many more social networks banned in other countries? Will a network like Facebook otherwise be split up into country nodes where each country has a say over users and data stored in their own country? I’m certainly hoping social networks go down a more decentralised and federated route as it is lessens the centralised power of a single country over global communications. Different countries have different cultures and laws, and these are not easily understood and appreciated by any foreign country.
The image is an excerpt from a set of PRISM slides that were liberated and published on the Internet – source “PRISM (surveillance program)’ on Wikipedia.
