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Dropbox Moves Accounts Outside North America To Ireland 135

Posted by timothy from the which-is-technically-outside-of-north-america dept.
monkeyzoo writes: Similar to a previous announcement by Twitter, Dropbox has changed its Terms of Service for users outside of North America (USA/Canada/Mexico) such that services will now be provided out of Ireland. Will other companies follow this trend and leave the USA (and the jurisdiction of the NSA)? Note, the announcement states that North American users are not able to opt into the Irish Terms of Service.
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Dropbox Moves Accounts Outside North America To Ireland More

Dropbox Moves Accounts Outside North America To Ireland

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  • That's not a security move (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @06:53PM (#49650673)

    They're after the double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich.

    It's about money. Not "our valued customer's security" or other bullshit.

    • Well yeah, they need a gimmick. Just Madison Avenue, jumping on the bandwagon.

    • Re:That's not a security move (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Muros ( 1167213 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:08PM (#49650777)

      They're after the double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich.

      It's about money. Not "our valued customer's security" or other bullshit.

      They don't need servers here to funnel profits through the country, they can do that easily enough with dodgy licensing subsidiaries and some accounting sleight of hand in an office of 2 people.

      • That's not a security move

        It's also not outside the jurisdiction of the NSA.

        Recall that the NSA is a DoD sub-agency --- so is quite restriced from spying on US Citizens inside the US. However DoD intel agencies are much more free to spy on international -- in fact, it's their main job.

        It seems to me this moves it INSIDE the jurisdiction of the NSA.

        • Re:not outside the jurisdiction of the NSA (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09, 2015 @01:51AM (#49652115)

          This has nothing to do with the NSA (the NSA will get anything they want - legally or not, if you think otherwise you are pathetic).

          This has to do with the legal bounds of the American court. If the service provider is stationned outside America and has local TOS, then it is outside the jurisdiction of the court. You cannot demand information that can be used in American civil cases. The NSA information can not be used in those cases unless they can prove it is legally handed to them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rvw ( 755107 )

            This has nothing to do with the NSA (the NSA will get anything they want - legally or not, if you think otherwise you are pathetic).

            This has to do with the legal bounds of the American court. If the service provider is stationned outside America and has local TOS, then it is outside the jurisdiction of the court. You cannot demand information that can be used in American civil cases. The NSA information can not be used in those cases unless they can prove it is legally handed to them.

            If NSA information was illegally obtained, then they won't use it in court, but outside of court. If they have all files from a suspected dropbox user, it will reveal all kind of things about the user. Analyzing this will result in other leads, which can be used to get a normal court order.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jythie ( 914043 )
            We are focusing on NSA here, but forgetting the elephant in the room: domestic law enforcement. The FBI, much less various state and local police forces, do not have access to NSA type spying capabilities and instead use the courts to demand information. Moving to Ireland would cut those sources out.
        • Yeah, that's what I was thinking. My understanding is that the NSA officially claims not to collect information on US citizens when the data resides solely in the U.S. However, they do monitor data going in and out of the U.S., so if you're an American located in the U.S., then storing data outside of the U.S. seems to open you to monitoring.

          On the other hand, I also thought part of what Snowden released showed that they didn't exactly stick to their own rules, and they were collecting all kinds of data

    • Re:That's not a security move (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:12PM (#49650799) Homepage

      It's as much about PR as anything. Maybe it's actually about telling the NSA et al to piss off.

      But sooner or later, a nice government official will show up and say "now gimme".

      I'm no sure there really is a way to take data outside of jurisdictions now. Courts seem to think they aren't constrained in their decisions, any more ... and all the governments are trading the data.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 )

        I think you're right.

        at best, the data copying will happen on the sly and we will be 100% lied to about it.

        the world (everyone, this is about human nature) has a craving for spying. we love gossip and rumors and knowing the dirt on people. its a sad but true fact about human beings.

        given that, and given the fact that, once out of the bottle the genie is not going back - we now have to assume all data is being mined, stolen, taken, whatever word you want to use.

        politicians will say things. they will alway

      • The fact that north american customers don't get that choice probably indicates the US government has already ordered them to hand over all data. The fact that an American court has already ordered another company (MS) working in Ireland to hand over data indicates Ireland isn't far enough for security.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The fact that north american customers don't get that choice probably indicates the US government has already ordered them to hand over all data. The fact that an American court has already ordered another company (MS) working in Ireland to hand over data indicates Ireland isn't far enough for security.

          You're right Ireland is not the right country. Dropbox should bitch slap the US Government and move all data to Russia. Vladimir Putin would be only too happy to tell the US Government to bugger off.

      • It's as much about PR as anything. Maybe it's actually about telling the NSA et al to piss off.

        But sooner or later, a nice government official will show up and say "now gimme".

        I'm no sure there really is a way to take data outside of jurisdictions now. Courts seem to think they aren't constrained in their decisions, any more ... and all the governments are trading the data.

        It probably actually helps the NSA. European privacy laws still apply to the company's actions, but the NSA is completely freed from the laws (and constitution) that restrain it from spying on US citizens. The NSA actually does have some limits on how it spies on US Citizens.

        It sucks up pretty much every other signal on the planet.

      • Re:That's not a security move (Score:5, Informative)

        by hjf ( 703092 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @11:47PM (#49651833) Homepage

        Also it FUCKS user experience.
        Facebook is pulling the same retard move. I'm in Latin America. There are NO fiber links between Latin America and Europe, let alone Ireland. All my traffic is relayed to the US. What used to be a 200ms hop with a fat multi-Gbps link, is now over 1000ms with a much, MUCH smaller link.

        Facebook has become unusable. Load times are now in excess of 30 seconds. Packet loss seems awful. Images don't load, the page is botched from missing CSS bits.

        The NSA is still spying on me, but now I get a dial-up experience thanks to this crap.

        • your transit delays are based on multiple problem of not only the pipes
          A) Argentine traffic is somewhat capped and multiple companies are trying to Cache locally to keep bandwidth down
          B) peering is a huge issue withing all the countries of latin america, it's slightly off balance in general to USA
          C) cell phone tech is hindering this, more demand from latin america to learn about the world than the world wanting to learn about latin america ( traffic flow wise )

          all these issue are being fixed, just requires

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hjf ( 703092 )

            The problem with Latin America, actually, is the fact that no one wants to set up local servers here.

            For example, Netflix released their service here. Did they put a Netflix CDN box in every street corner like they did in the US? Of course not. They're just saturating the already busy international pipes.

            MaxCDN, one of the most well known CDN services, do they have servers in Latin America? From what I see: No, they don't. We rely on US servers. At least that's what I noticed when using the Bootstrap3 CDN,

            • Well that was well written...
              But more to the point.
              YouTube has a lot of it's own fiber, so it makes sense that the services for ad revenue balance out.

              Netflix ... hahaha you just made me laugh.... did you not read the nightmare ???
              I have weird views on this entire issue and I respect sides of it so let me vent it out.

              the business view is that comcast want's to make money ( and that is a legal mandate of a for profit business ). the subscription model they sell is known as a yield management model, maximize

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by hjf ( 703092 )

                Yes. The way I see it, Comcast, slimebags as they are, are right. Netflix expects everyone to keep up with their unreasonable bandwidth needs at their pace, which just won't happen.

                You have the USD thing backwards: You want to get USD out of the country at bank rate, but into the country at blue rate!

                I don't think Porsche is the one in your example. It's BMW. Porsche is part of VW and they don't have any issues importing, since they export a lot of cars to Brazil so they meet their export-import quota. BMW

                • Hi Again,
                  While yes out at black and in at blue, that's a huge spread and just tooo much of a legal nightmare ... so I would stick to blue. ....
                  No it's Porsche, My client set up the trade a few years back. ....

                  now if you want a mystery to research
                  look a the Iron Mountain fire in BA that happened I think about 18 months ago ...
                  hmmm does the state know that IM copy documents for it's clients in multiple locations LOL

    • Well, duh, they exist in the first place to make money. The real question is why this isn't a win-win for their customers anyway?

      • The real question is why this isn't a win-win for their customers anyway?

        It's not a win-win for customers unless the price goes down. It may be just a win if there's a reduced likelihood of NSA surveillance, but there's no guarantee of that.

        • It's not a win-win for customers unless the price goes down.

          Bull. The customers maintain the price, not the other way around. If they raise their prices some customers will leave. How many depends on the value of what they offer. They can't just raise their prices if their overhead goes up and it is unwise for them to lower them if the customers are happy. Lower operating costs, however, do nothing but help their customers, even if it's something as simple as it means DB's services are around longer.

    • Um no, they are ALREADY doing that.

      This just means they see the writing on the wall and want to put a little legitimate infrastructure there to secure the 'Irish Scam'.
      They see the writing on the wall as the EU moves in of this tax scam, and by using this nice excuse the US has handed to them,
      they will get a nice little PR boost also. Ireland gets to make cents-on-the-dollar money from other countries lost taxes.

      Of course if they actually wanted to secure anyones data, Ireland would not be the best place, b

    • Re: That's not a security move (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Dey always after me lucky charms!!!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by stephanruby ( 542433 )

      In other news, Amazon is renditioning its Cloud Drive servers to Guantanamo, because it's cheaper to comply with CIA/NSA requests from there (and it's technically not even a crime they said). And no-evil Google Drive is moving all its US cloud servers to Saudi Arabia, to save on air conditioning bills (the tax concessions they''ll be receiving are besides the point). It also helped in their decision that Saudi Arabia has a better track record than the Republic of Ireland on freedom of speech, where it come

  • Seems like NSA is trying to snoop on international data that's being stored in the USA, which is why they're setting up EU versions of worldwide web services. If America wants to read international data, they need to do so only in times of need.

    • Sure, this is a good thing if you're already in the EU. But how are you going to get your data from the US to the EU without the NSA capturing the entire stream? What good will this do for anyone on this side of the pond?

      • The EU DropBox user hits the Irish server and nobody tells the USA server about it....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hjf ( 703092 )

        And what benefit do I, as a Latin American, get from this?
        None. Zero. See submarine cable map to understand the implications for us (FAR higher latency: several SECONDS; and STILL GOING THROUGH US NETWORKS TO EUROPE).

  • Not what you think (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with taxes.

  • False sense of security? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:02PM (#49650729)

    It seems clear from the way that Juilian Assange is being fucked over by the UK and Sweden on behalf of the US, that the US gov already has their hand far enough up the arse of significant western countries to make them their puppet.

    What makes anyone seriously think that Irish won't also just bend over for the NSA as readily?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's more complex than that.

      The NSA hacks stuff, they don't use legal means to get at data. They can be defended against with technical measures. However, it isn't the NSA that Dropbox is worried about.

      Other government agencies do use the legal system. Microsoft us currently exploring the limits of their powers in court, but others have already learned from the arguments used. They have to set the system up in such a way that they can't comply with legal demands.

      Look at how Google and apple have set up encr

  • well... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zippo01 ( 688802 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:04PM (#49650735)
    This is only news if you think the NSA still couldn't easily gain access....
    • Moves abroad outside the North American

      sphere of influence

      are trendy, a great time to be hating America if you will.

      The NSA, after all, is undoubtedly helpless against the formidable Guinness consumers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bug1 ( 96678 )

      This is only news if you think the NSA still couldn't easily gain access....

      The question is how hard they have to work for it.

  • It's not the NSA they're fleeing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:07PM (#49650759)

    The NSA knows no boundaries and arguably has MORE reach outside the USA.
    Companies are fleeing the US courts, following the ruling that a company with offices in the USA (i.e. Microsoft) can be compelled to produce digital evidence stored outside the USA.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sshir ( 623215 )
      My understanding is that Microsoft is still fighting that one. Let's hope they will prevail.

  • NSA jurisdiction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:15PM (#49650823)

    and the jurisdiction of the NSA

    Actually, the rest of the world is the jurisdiction of the NSA. It's mission is to gather signals intelligence from foreign countries. If there is a jurisdiction that is off-limits to the NSA, its the US. That's why recently a US Appellate Court ruled that the NSA's wholesale spying on US citizens' phone communications is illegal. Besides, there's the British GCHQ that will be glad to spy on Dropbox and share what it gathers with the other Five-Eyes members.

    What this does for Dropbox is provide a tax haven for it, and to make it difficult for US law enforcement to serve warrants to produce evidence for Dropbox's users it suspects of criminal actions like pedophiles, copyright fraudsters, drug traffickers, etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      The "Five Eyes" is just one big circle-jerk. Canadians, GCHQ, etc. spy on Americans and share the intel with the NSA. The NSA spies on Canadians and shares the intel with CSIS. CSIS spies on the brits and shares the info with GCHQ.

      Don't fool yourself -- everyone gets spied on in the end. No exceptions.

    • According to the Snowden leaks, the NSA can and does intercept traffic that crosses the US border. Combined with the Dropbox move, this means that all Dropbox file accesses will now be fair game for the NSA.

  • I went Swiss (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I moved my personal server from EC2 to a Swiss host - Swiss data center, owned by a Swiss company.

    Amazon lost all of 25 USD a month :-)

  • I thought this was about taxes, since Ireland had that loophole for tech companies. I'm not sure what the deal is with north american users tho..

  • Just because the user and the server are not in the United States doesn't mean the traffic to the server isn't going through the United States.

  • Dropbox outside jurisdiction of the NSA? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Dropbox .. services will now be provided out of Ireland. Will other companies follow this trend and leave the USA (and the jurisdiction of the NSA)?"

    Not really, as most/every electronic cummunication out of Ireland is monitored in real time by NSAs best buddy - GCHQ.

  • but you can never leave. old song.

  • North americans (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday May 08, 2015 @08:19PM (#49651107)

    North Americans, that is, residents from Canada, USA and Mexico, cannot use the Irish service.

    The ban on people under Canada and Mexico juridiction is interesting. Either Canada and Mexico have agreements with the USA that enforce their citizen's snooping, or Dropbox does not want the transatlantic traffic increase.

    • Guess this is another reason to get a VPN that makes us not look like north americans. Always have to be in disguise when minding our business. pity.

  • That's cute they think Ireland is outside jurisdiction of the NSA.

  • Many countries are SIGINT partners with the NSA (see Fourteen Eye's etc). They share data. They almost all use vulnerable systems of the type the NSA can hit directly. Hence, data in Ireland isn't safe from the NSA by any means. It might also be used in mass collection that NSA gets to share. Der Spiegel has been reporting a lot of that sort of thing in Germany, for instance. The only well-connected, democracies listed in Snowden documents as resisting NSA cooperation were Iceland and Switzerland. Move your

  • There is almost nothing to trust about the service.

  • How does dropbox know where a user is from?

  • EU privacy laws are fairly painful for US companies to comply with. To do business with EU individuals, Personal Identifiable Information needs to be handled according to a set of rules - http://ec.europa.eu/justice/da... [europa.eu]

    It is often simpler for Amazon deployed companies to set up in the Ireland AWS zone.

    As others have mentioned, most foreign SIGINT/COMINT agencies can't gather intelligence domestically, so it lowers barriers. Ironically US companies that want to deal with EU customers may end up moving e

  • The simple solution is just not to store your stuff on someone else's servers. If you put it out there, someone else has access to it.

  • Note, the announcement states that North American users are not able to opt into the Irish Terms of Service.

    Moving servers doesn't address the real problem, even if NA could opt in to the Irish TOS.

    DropBox indexes every file that is synced through their service. They are reading and cataloging everything that users sync via DropBox. But don't take my word for it — their CEO said so a year or two ago.

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