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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Subpoenas are tools the government uses to compel a private entity to provide information. This isn’t that though, this is one private entity asking another private entity to just give them data. It’s not a legal case, and because of our non-existant privacy regulations in the US, Reddit is free to just hand over this information, or not if they want. No crime has to even be alleged, Reddit can just hand that information out.
Ok yes sorry I should have specified, what you're saying might apply to the US.
What I said applies to the EU.
Thing is, companies need to know beforehand if they are dealing with a user from US or EU because they don't wanna break laws when they have to deal with the court system anyway on stuff like this. So technically they could transmit information about US citizens, but in practice this is super tricky and risky.
Let's say you got an IP. Alright you can pinpoint The location. Problem: you don't know whether you just grabbed the target IP or an IP from a VPN or a proxy. There's ways to obscure this so you might not even be able to find out. Now if you turn this over, there's a small risk you just did a crime because they are spoofing their location. And if you just captured a VPN or proxy, you are now pursuing the wrong person and in EU law this won't go over well.
So in practice there's basically no way to do this and be sure you didn't make a mistake, and mistakes in law are risky and costly. No company would ever take such a risk.
Now I could go into detail about all the technical details on why things work like that but it would make this twice as long.
TL;DR in theory you are right for US users, in practice there's no way to tell and it gets risky pretty fast.
Also obligatory IANAL and always check in with a lawyer if you need specific legal advice.
That’s a really interesting point, has it been tested in court? The article is about US companies and US websites so I figured EU law was irrelevant, but I am curious to see if the EU can claim jurisdiction for actions foreign companies take outside the EU, regardless of if they have any official EU presence.
Well I can not give you a specific case for that, but it widely accepted that online actions against users from the EU that violate laws in the EU can get persued.
Do you remember seeing some US websites saying "we don't service EU users at the moment"? That's because they didn't want to get a lawyer so they can comply with the EU GDPR back then. I assume this is because they knew there was some precedent.
If you are keen on it I can go digging for case law though.
EDIT: Nevermind I literally only had to do one Google search and here's an official link: https://gdpr.eu/compliance-checklist-us-companies/
Note that one of the headings literally says "Why US companies must comply with the GDPR" and the answer is "because it is extra-territorial in scope".
On that page you linked, they say “So far, the EU’s reach has not been tested, but no doubt data protection authorities are exploring their options on a case-by-case basis.” So it hasn’t really been tested yet it seems. It’s true that there are extradition treaties and interpol that aid in cross-border prosecution, but that tends to be used primarily when the alleged crime happened in the prosecuting country’s jurisdiction, or the alleged crime is handled similarly in both countries. A GDPR violation by a US company wouldn’t be considered a crime at all in the US, so it’s entirely possible that they might decline to assist in prosecution.
Ok you wound me up now so I had a little scouring of the internet.
Yes, I can not find case law of extradition of US based companies through US entities.
What I can find is a couple of cases against bigger companies that also act in the realm of the EU. Google has been fined in the Netherlands for global violations if I understand correctly. Meta has been fined even a few times for global violations, enforced in Ireland.
So yes, technically enforcement in the US is not guaranteed, but they basically can't build up their company in the EU anymore unless they deal with it. It's not perfect, but violations can still suck for business expansion, and that is good. and then I do have to look into the new EU data privacy laws if they changed enforcement or anything else important.
That makes sense. Companies with no presence in the EU can likely skirt the rules, but any large company with an EU presence will be compelled to follow them.
Yeah
Also genuinely thank you for making me look into this. It's nice to know how it works:D
Glad we both leaned something :)