The retaliation against individual government members is a new thing. This got started against Russia, where various individuals were sanctioned for financial crimes and then more recently over the war in Ukraine. But it's not something that historically one government has done to another in the past, pressure individual lawmakers over their votes.
It is however a massive alarm that the UK cannot afford to use US cloud services for anything governmental, and especially should not be signing any contracts with Palantir. Perhaps revoking the Palantir one should be used as leverage here? Or do we just admit to being a sort of damp version of Puerto Rico, not a state but subject to US governance?
Then there's the F35s, the ""independent"" (not) nuclear deterrent, and so on.
We really are in a weird state of dependency with the US regarding deterrence - missiles sourced from US stocks, UK nuclear material built into warheads using a US design.
I wonder if there is a block in the missiles to stop them being used against the US?
Edit: I don't think there is any dependency on the US once a UK Trident sub is at sea - for the simple reason there no external dependencies (no codes or anything) - the crews have all they need to launch.
Also what has changed is that European countries came up with extraterritorial laws and started to fine the US companies and want to have saying how they run their business. GDPR was the first step, and was still reasonable, but now there are several censorship laws. Most notable UK and Italy, where the latter wants to nuke anything they say from global DNS in 15 minutes without due process.
Extraterritorial? Those companies are doing business in the EU, it's exactly the same in any country on Earth: if you want to do business in their territory there are local laws to follow.
What happens is that European companies buy services that are produced in the US, not in Europe. The European countries are free to ban and fine companies buying those services like Russia does. Italy, for example, can start by fining companies using Cloudflare, IP blocking Cloudflare and face the political consequences of it. But they don't want politicalconsequences which is the source of the friction. An Italian would be really pissed off for politicians if someone shows up their house and takes away computer because of watching football illegally.
Doesn't matter where they are produced, it matters where they are sold.
They are sold in the EU, they need to follow the laws for the market where they are sold. I can't go to the US, produce a death trap of a car, and sell it in the US because it goes against US laws; I could produce the same car in the US, not sell it in the US, and be fine if I find a market where I can export it to, it's stupid but not against the law.
US companies want to sell to Europeans, they could choose to not do business here and wouldn't face any repercussions if breaking EU law. Since they do like the money from a very rich bloc of countries they do business in the EU and need to follow its laws.
It's very very simple, I don't know why you are trying to complicate a rule (or worse, victimise companies) that exists anywhere in the world. If I want to sell something in the USA I need to follow USA's laws regarding that, if I don't then I can't do business there.
Internet is a global service. If a european connects to my server in the US where was the service sold? American companies can easily argue the sale was made at the server in the US. European countries would of course disagree, but that doesnt actually mean anything because the company doesnt have any assets in the europe and then it's just a political battle of american government vs european governments.
> If a european connects to my server in the US where was the service sold?
Did you sell something? If you sold something, it's in Europe.
> American companies can easily argue the sale was made at the server in the US.
No, they can't, the server's physical location has nothing to do with the delivery of the sale.
> European countries would of course disagree, but that doesnt actually mean anything because the company doesnt have any assets in the europe and then it's just a political battle of american government vs european governments.
If there are no assets or representation in Europe then there's nothing the justice system can directly affect, so of course it becomes a political matter between governments to enforce it in case the importing country determines the product is doing illegal stuff, that's not a secret and it's how it's worked for a long time.
The internet being global doesn't mean it's lawless, no idea why people still believe that.
Fairly sure the US started this process with things like the PokerStars case, the MegaUpload raid, heck even further back Dmitry Skylarov's PDF reader. Not to mention the secondary sanctions on Cuba and the complex rules about providing financial services to overseas Americans.
I'm also fairly sure that the Italian requirement only applies to blocking Italian DNS access.
The NatWest Three - UK nationals, working in the UK, for a UK company. "Defrauded" their UK employer and were convicted by a US court and jailed in the US for the crime.
The only link that made them liable for US extradition was "wire fraud" relating to a message transmitted in the US. Exactly the sort of extraterritorial law that the US are complaining about when it happens to them.
> The authority set the multi-million euro fine with the resolution now published based on one percent of Cloudflare's global annual revenue. It justifies this calculation with the company's cross-border structure: Since Cloudflare's infrastructure is globally oriented and enables the circumvention of local blocks, the sanction must also have a corresponding "deterrent effect" and go beyond the national framework.
It is however a massive alarm that the UK cannot afford to use US cloud services for anything governmental, and especially should not be signing any contracts with Palantir. Perhaps revoking the Palantir one should be used as leverage here? Or do we just admit to being a sort of damp version of Puerto Rico, not a state but subject to US governance?
Then there's the F35s, the ""independent"" (not) nuclear deterrent, and so on.