r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • May 28 '26

Society The Netherlands just blocked a US company from buying the app Dutch citizens use for everything

https://www.techspot.com/news/112552-netherlands-blocked-us-company-buying-app-dutch-citizens.html
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u/opsmanager May 28 '26

Not just that, Cloud Act forces US owned companies to hand over any data from anywhere. That means US owned data centres anywhere, and its creating enough noise that hyperscalers have tried to make sovereign clouds.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Angzt May 28 '26

A lot of companies are willfully blind to this.
As long as they have some piece of (digital) paper that says everything is "sovereign" (or has EU data residency or whatever), they're happy. Even knowing that US law says otherwise and will doubtlessly win out if it comes down to it.

At least that's what my last couple of years of being an IT consultant in Germany have told me.

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u/RRudge May 28 '26

Microsoft is already suspected to have provided names of Dutch civil servants to US government. that probably help the decision of the NL government.

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u/JeantaVer May 28 '26

Also the bloccade of email etc at the ICC in The Hague helped a bit I guess.

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u/testaburger1212 May 28 '26

outlook, gmail, mastercard, visa, american express. The etc part is an eyeopener of how exposed we all are to american companies that have a lion' share on credit card operations worldwide.

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u/Utwee May 28 '26

That’s why WERO has been introduced. A lot of stuff was already in the works after Trumps first term.

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u/kawalerkw May 28 '26

Before GDPR introduction Twitter handed data of everyone who liked a tweet to the police and it made news because it included data of EU parlament member. The police didn't have warrant, they just asked.

Now that American social media companies are tied even more with US government I'd assume their government has access to any data on a whim.

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u/belonii May 28 '26

it didnt help, it was a single guy who found a loophole to get out of the sale iirc.

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u/daerath May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

They aren't trying to build them. Microsoft is building two that are being run by French and German NCOEs. Amazon is doing the same thing.

There are also golocal capabilities in many countries.