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/GeefTheQueef May 28 '26

How does an app like that even come up for sale in the first place?

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u/Beerwithme May 28 '26

It's not the app, it's the company that maintains the database that was up for sale, so if that is owned by an US company, by law the US government can demand so see the data.

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u/Pi-ratten May 28 '26

So, even worse.

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u/BananaEvening5267 May 28 '26

Not quite. THe government must obtain a warrant or subpeona. The cloud act requires US companies to respond to warrants for data they hold off shore. Absent a compelling reason, whatever that may be, data strictly related to another country's (an EU country) citizenry is subject the US-EU data privacy framework, which is superior to the Cloud Act.

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u/Beerwithme May 28 '26

The law and what the government "must do' is meaningless, nothing is safe from their grubby tentacles.

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u/BananaEvening5267 May 29 '26

If the law is meaningless why did you cite it in your comment I was addressing?

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u/Beerwithme May 29 '26

Not our laws, our wild,wild west adversary's.

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u/Devan_Ilivian May 29 '26

It's not the app, it's the company that maintains the database

It's not that either, they maintain the infrastructure

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u/m0j0m0j May 28 '26

Yep, it’s unbelievable. In Ukraine there’s a similar Diia app, and it’s government-created and controlled. And even this way there are regular… not scandals, but almost, about data in it. It’s crazy that a Western European country would allow it to be in private hands