Foreign from a USA perspective, read the context.

Is is odd. Microsoft's literature couldn't be more clear about how Azure is organized and their privacy statements couldn't be more clear that all of Azure is subject to US court order. I can't explain how the EU keeps certifying a system which even Microsoft when forced to speak publicly says is structurally incapable of enforcing EU privacy mandates in and of itself.

Now I'm starting to think that EU /.ers may not understand EU law as it is currently practiced / enforced. For example they might just have a theoretical understanding of the law with some practical errors. That might come from EU politicians are talking out of both sides of their mouth. Telling EU voters that they are enforcing strong protections while telling companies not to worry.

The other possibility is that services like CloudLink (VM end to end encryption among other things) exist in Azure and thus Azure can be made compliant on a VM basis. That gets Azure certified and then Europeans run it without those services.

I don't know. What I do know is that what most European /.ers would need to enforce the level of protections they want is European hosting companies with no locations in the USA.

Why do you insist on comparing devices with wildly different heat, power and size budgets as if they are somehow the same thing?

Because that was the point in question. Take it up with GP.

Very interesting. Good analysis. That's way below what I had 5 years ago and I owned the cheapest laptop of my life then but your argument is reasonable.

Actually more accurate is:

Microsoft USA has control and access over the data.
Microsoft Ireland performs local contract services and acts as regional channel including contract wrapping for Microsoft USA.

At some point when you realize that libertarians don't know everything an begin to look at how societies regulate their production holistically it will make more sense.

The iPhone 6 isn't close to what you had on a 5 year laptop. 5 years ago: 4g ram, 256g HD, somewhere on the order of 10x the video speeds was standard in a PoS laptop.

Illegal for whom? If the server is connect to other servers abroad and the people abroad are the ones handing it over then no law in that country has been broken by the global cloud provider. The law might have been said to be broken when it was uploaded to the global cloud provider since that was when it was "handed over". So essentially that law would mandate regional or national clouds for whatever data you wanted to protect. Which isn't a bad thing. Except that everyone wants global information services.

A not bad outcome would be that Europeans use European only clouds for their private data and have their own services.

We already have those protections in the Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is about situations where a warrant was issued based on probable cause.

Stop the war on drugs,

We are experimenting in a limited way with marijuana legalization. We'll see how it goes.

simplify the tax code

Harder said then done. The USA doesn't like lots of government direct investment in the economy so all sorts of adjustments have to occur via. taxes. When designing a tax code pick any 2: simple, meet societal objectives (fair), avoids widespread crony capitalism (honest).

Azure isn't foreign. The system, including the one in Ireland is run by a Washington state corporation. It is a fallacy that MOIL has total control.

I think it's fair to say the corporations are at least as worried about losing share in foreign markets, as with the preservation of our personal freedoms.
That said, we are mired in a controversy where corporations and citizens find their collective best interest on the same side.

Once it becomes USA government vs. EU Microsoft et al. doesn't have the same crazy situation that could exist if a USA warrant makes it a felony for Microsoft to not hand over data while EU privacy protections make it a crime to hand over that data. So I don't think everyone is on the same side. I think the corporations just want to be out of the middle of this spat between the USA and EU regarding conflicting laws.

Sure they would rather not lose marketshare to EU only providers. But EU only providers remember have no constitutional protections they are subject to having the CIA, NSA... collect whatever they want however they want without any warrants.

Under the current law your friends account in Albania is subject to US warrant regardless of what you do because Google operates in the USA. The new law means there has to be some US citizen or corp using the data for Google to be subject to the warrant. It is a slight tightening.

Would a customer, then, be more likely to buy a service from a Non-US service provider, as the privacy laws in the US are so porous?

Yes. If you want to violate USA law you should be using non-US providers to do it.

They have not as of yet implemented anything. I'm going to assume Microsoft's council is knowledgeable on this and they don't see the problem the European /.ers keep pointing to.

That's not a comparable situation. The comparable situation would be something like the Russian government regulating Radius. And that is appropriate.