It kind felt like the ramifications of Snowden's leak were so wast that everyone just chose to forget about it.

IIUC Snowden sent complete trove to two publications only, and one of the computers containing the trove is destroyed through and through, disabling that publication for Snowden leaks.

Moreover, again as I understand, after a certain point the leaks are stopped, because the message was sent, and people now know the most important bits behind the curtain.

There's definitely a political game of pretending that the US clouds are somehow compatible with GDPR.

There were ruled incompatible every time, this was brought to the courts.

They are most likely compatible until a national security letter arrives. An American company then has to choose which law to comply with, and it's an easy choice.

That's what makes them incompatible.

But companies can be a lot shadier than we give them credit for. Like, remember that "wink payment" contract between Google and Israel? If Google knew what they were doing, they accepted the contract to do the illegal thing, so they'd sell their product and get money, but they were planning to simply not do the illegal thing, breaking the contract (the customer would never know and if they somehow did, you can't stop using a cloud on a dime) but not breaking any laws.

If Microsoft knows what they're doing, they'll accept contracts from EU customers that say "we will never give your data to US authorities", they break it immediately, don't tell the customer and the customer never finds out.

Alternatively, they can give the US government a bunch of nothing, in order to comply with the EU customer contract, and pretend this is all the data the customer had on their account. I doubt this will happen though.

Theres a difference between as an intelligence organisation having access to data, and "someone in power is angry because they watched a TV advert, I want to see what they know"

but, your over all picture is still, sadly correct.

For most of my life I also used to think there was a difference between the two. But now I realized they are actually just the same.

I understand the disillusionment. The gutting of the US machinery of state is disheartening to see.

it’s all just people at the end of the day.

Without oversight, abuse is inevitable.

You have two choices:

* Limit the damage that a person can do- IE; don’t aggregate everything in the hands of one person.

* Tonnes of oversight into who accesses the data and why.

In theory the US chooses the latter, but only for nationals and the snowden leaks were proving that this was basically just a rubber stamp and constantly was bypassed on technicalities..

.. outside of the US, there’s no legal framework to protect your data from US authorities, no matter who they are, at all.

They couldn’t be more different. One is doing it in secrecy and for a “reason”, to spy on someone. The other one will do it in public because he can and doesn’t like your name.

> One is doing it in secrecy and for a “reason”, to spy on someone.

When it's secret, how can you ever check? Even if it was just because the person on top or in the middle had a personal judge, they'll always say it was for legitimate spying purposes and no-one has any way to call them out.

Which of these is meant to represent the current regime in power in the U.S.?

does it matter if you are the one on the receiving end?