US Senators Urge India To Soften Data Localization Stance (reuters.com) 136
Two U.S. senators have called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften India's stance on data localization, warning that measures requiring it represent "key trade barriers" between the two nations. From a report: In a letter to Modi dated Friday and seen by Reuters, U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner -- co-chairs of the Senate's India caucus that comprises over 30 senators -- urged India to instead adopt a "light touch" regulatory framework that would allow data to flow freely across borders. The letter comes as relations between Washington and New Delhi are strained over multiple issues, including an Indo-Russian defense contract, India's new tariffs on electronics and other items, and its moves to buy oil from Iran despite upcoming U.S. sanctions.
Global payments companies including Mastercard, Visa and American Express have been lobbying India's finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India to relax proposed rules that require all payment data on domestic transactions in India be stored inside the country by October 15. The letter is most likely a last-ditch effort after the RBI told officials at top payment firms this week that the central bank would implement, in full, its data localization directive without extending the deadline, or allowing data to be stored both offshore as well as locally -- a practice known as data mirroring. "We see this (data localization) as a fundamental issue to the further development of digital trade and one that is crucial to our economic partnership," the U.S. senators said in the letter that has not been previously reported.
Global payments companies including Mastercard, Visa and American Express have been lobbying India's finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India to relax proposed rules that require all payment data on domestic transactions in India be stored inside the country by October 15. The letter is most likely a last-ditch effort after the RBI told officials at top payment firms this week that the central bank would implement, in full, its data localization directive without extending the deadline, or allowing data to be stored both offshore as well as locally -- a practice known as data mirroring. "We see this (data localization) as a fundamental issue to the further development of digital trade and one that is crucial to our economic partnership," the U.S. senators said in the letter that has not been previously reported.
Kind of ironic... (Score:4, Insightful)
US Government once again trying to do the exact opposite of what you'd expect. Why is it other countries recognizes the threat of storing data about their own citizens outside their borders, EXCEPT the "5 eyes"? Could it be India ALSO wants to backdoor encryption which would at least in theory prohibit them from storing OUR data?
Which would also make it very difficult if not impossible for companies to outsource to India. That isn't such a bad idea.
Re: Kind of ironic... (Score:1)
Seriously, fuck this. I have a lot of problems with India, mostly because of their tolerance of rampant cheating in education and certifications and the resulting H1-B problems in the US...but this is an area they are spot on correct about.
More nations, including the US, need to be protective of their own borders, people, and national interests. These US senators are absolutely in the wrong here.
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More nations, including the US, need to be protective of their own borders, people, and national interests.
But unless those nations happen to be populated by black/brown people, doing this will get them branded as RACISS!!
Among the global population whites are a 14% minority. Yet only white nations need diversity. No hard evidence is ever submitted that diversity is a good thing. It is an article of faith. Those who question it are treated as heretics when they are merely asking for substantiation, something celebrated when any other claim is made. It covers many diverse cultures living together and how/w [blogspot.com]
Re: Kind of ironic... (Score:2)
How about minding one's own business? (Score:4, Insightful)
Two U.S. senators have called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften India's stance on data localization...
Question is, how about nations minding their own business?
Is that too much to ask?
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Two U.S. senators have called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften India's stance on data localization...
Question is, how about nations minding their own business?
Is that too much to ask?
India's data is India's data, it has *NOTHING* to do with USA.
India never tells how or what to do with USA's data. US should BUTT OUT of India's rights !!
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Did you even read the summary?
Global payments companies including Mastercard, Visa and American Express have been lobbying India's finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India to relax proposed rules that require all payment data on domestic transactions in India be stored inside the country by October 15.
That's what this is all about. They don't want to have to setup more infrastructure in India. They are trying to save money.
India's data is India's data
This is about money. Not India, specifically.
Re:How about minding one's own business? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about India demand reciprocity for FATCA [wikipedia.org] and just start auditing any US financial institutions suspected of holding suspected Indian citizens' financial records? Yes, it's about money. But it's also about foreign institutions and governments digging around in the records of its citizens.
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Indeed, after the US tried to get access to data held in the EU (Ireland specifically) because the parent company was based in the US (Microsoft) countries are tightening up their laws around this sort of thing.
Re: How about minding one's own business? (Score:1, Interesting)
Stupidity is thinking a bank wouldn't have an Indian record of a local deposit, and Indian record of a transfer out (optionally with a set of currency exchanges), an American record if a transfer in and finally an American record of a local withdrawal. It's called double entry book keeping and people who aren't stupid already expect banks to be doing something similar.
Re:How about minding one's own business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about minding one's own business? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, no, a countries economy is it's business, so they are trying to mind India's economic business, to exploit Indians and favour US corporations, so they are trying to mind someone eles's business against that countries citizens interests.
US tech companies are going to get kicked out of the rest of the world, because security letters out of a corrupt US government that compromise other countries digital security are entirely too easy. It does not help that moronic US government officials, keep pushing control on other countries against those countries citizens interests, keep demanding dominance, talk about first strikes from cyber warfare to nuclear strikes, routinely interfere with other countries politics in the most horrendous fashion and practically declare war on a made up instance of Russia's interference, yet routinely ignore the UKs, Israel's and even Saudi Arabia's interference (at least that one is coming to and end).
They are really lucky India politicians just no simply tell them to go fuck themselves publicly, after being fucked over by the UK purposefully splitting the country to create a civil war and keep them divided and weak and the US treating them obedient dogs, well, come to expect NO as the routine answer and yeah, everyone wants to buy Russian S400s to keep the US out because they now NATO supplied anti-air systems will not shot down US aircraft, there are some really interesting back doors in there to find and exploit. I mean, nothing would benefit Russian fighter sales, like US supplied aircraft falling out of the sky when their engines are turned off.
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No Petrodollar==No US Market (Score:2)
The gigantic US market is based on debt and that debt is cheap because everyone in the world has a lot of dollars and nothing to do with it but invest it in US. Why does everyone have so many dollars? Because they need dollars to buy oil so just to be safe they keep their reserves in dollars. If the Khasshogi incident leads to Saudi pricing oil in Yuan, say bye bye to the US market and then noone needs to listen to the US.
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Its not that US buys oil in dollars that is important or if whether US even buys oil. Its that other countries like India have to buy Oil in Dollars and hence they need to stockpile dollars and hence they buy up US debt at cheap rates. If India could pay for oil in Rupees they wouldnt be holding billions of US govt debt and then the US would have trouble raising funds to run a deficit and then would have trouble funding a 600 billion military and also New York would no longer be the ventral nervous system o
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Don't ask us, ask the senators.
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The Indians aren't stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Corruption vs democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, you can only buy senators and above.
In India you can buy any one.
True democracy.
Re:Corruption vs democracy (Score:4, Funny)
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Except what you forgot or more likely are too stupid to know is the wealth gap in India dwarfs the US so only the very rich have the money to bribe anyone.
In that respect the USA is just like India, only the bribes are larger. The difference is one of pay scale.
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Yeah it doesn't work in the US as we pay our cops too much. Need to get rid of the police unions if we want to have a decent pay 2 play police service.
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Are you under the impression that people in the US regularly pay fines for normal activities? Other than those who get frequent traffic or parking tickets, this is not the case. There are occasional (and generally modest) fees for paperwork, but otherwise my impression is most people rarely pay the government in any way other than taxes.
Re: Corruption vs democracy (Score:2)
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OK you have a point. I would categorize the problem of being black in a white neighborhood as a totally different issue than putting up with fines for ordinary behavior, and it's a really serious problem in this country IMO. Being a white man in a poor black area? Are the cops going to hassle you for that? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing and surely Fox News would make it the top story for weeks on end if it happens.
For the rest of it, it's a matter of not breaking the rules. Some people l
Re: Corruption vs democracy (Score:2)
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That sounds about right. Scandinavia comes to mind as well though I like a little more sunlight in winter.
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No, true capitalism.
I have no idea why people think democracy and capitalism go hand in hand. If anything, they're polar opposites.
You don't get out much do you? (Score:2)
And you'd be shocked how much power your State Attorney General and Corporate Commissioner have. They're definitely being bought. Hell, the Sherrif
In America our oligarchs buy out everybody above dog catcher. N
No corruption in US (Score:2)
Everything that is called corruption and illegal in India is called Lobbying and perfectly legal in USA. There are no criminals if nothing is a crime.
Trump... (Score:3, Informative)
They have learned India First...... as has much of the world.
They have also learned no deal is better than a bad deal.
Oh, they have learned that the USA treats is "friends" pretty much the same as it treats is enemies and that the USA will interfere with local elections, trade, etc , etc.
What If Card Issuers Stopped Serving India? (Score:1)
What would happen in the Indian economy if USA-based credit card issuers stopped honoring their cards issued to Indian citizens in that country?
Perhaps some local outcry to the Indian government, but I doubt that outcry would change things.
The Indian government might counter the likes of Mastercard and Visa with something like their own Rupee-Card that is good everywhere in India...and nowhere else.
Re: What If Card Issuers Stopped Serving India? (Score:1)
It's called Rupay and has been in place for more than 6 years now
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay
Re:India Would Suffer - Trade Would Be Impeded (Score:4, Insightful)
Same applies in reverse. There's a reason why India has been the stickler in all global negotiations on trade for last half a century. They don't need the world trade. Their economy is self-contained, able to consume what it produces because of its healthy demographics. Example of this is in the fact that even China was forced to sign up to medicine patenting and payment regimes, as China needs foreign market access, and that was one of the fields powerful enough to actually get China cut off.
India still hasn't. They told the world powers insisting they sign or else to get fucked. And they do to this day. Which is why the "fake medicines" are overwhelmingly produced in India, and most of them are about as good as genuine stuff, and there's nothing that patent holders can do about it in spite of massive efforts both on their own part, and on the part of their parent states.
India can afford to walk away from essentially any negotiation on trade should its interests dictate it does so even when threatened with massive economic sanctions. It's unique among all the major states in the world in this ability.
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To add , as a percentage of GDP foreign trade is minuscule in India. Most USD investments into India are NRIs investing back into India and that will not stop regardless of whether India has good relations with the world. Even if it was made illegal, Hawala offers a way.
On the other hand India has a trade deficit with almost all countries except the oil producing countries. India could close its borders and as long as it got enough remittances to cover its oil import bill the economy would keep chugging alo
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That is the function of healthy demographics. They have more young workers than old workers, which means that consumption part of the economy is able to consume everything that is produced without the need for external markets. At the same time, the older generations who have the money have plenty of investment opportunities in the same younger people, so foreign investment is equally irrelevant in most fields.
It's a microcosm of world economy on its own. No other large country is in the world has this, bec
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Why nowhere else? It's actually likely good in one more country than MC and Visa.
American imperialist chutzpah... (Score:2)
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If India takes back Satya Nadella we can talk about that.
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Not should, but has. Both parties are pushing for their own interests here, as they should.
There are two stages to this (Score:2)
First, we try the carrot:
" Two U.S. senators have called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften India's stance on data localization "
if that doesn't produce the expected result, the stick is used:
" That's a nice H-1B visa program many of your citizens are currently utilizing. Would be a shame if something happened to it. "
Want to take a guess which way India will go in the end ?
Re:There are two stages to this (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm somehow not surprised that as an American, you would get that exactly backwards. The end of that program would mean the best students India just spent time and money educating will no longer have the option of taking all that government-paid expertise and leaving India for the United States with it.
So yes, by all means threaten to cancel the H-1B program...then watch Indian officials laugh in your face and invite you to kiss their ass.
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For an incompetent man, he appears to be getting a lot of things done that were found to be undoable by his (assumedly) competent predecessors, in record time no less.
It's honestly getting pretty sad to watch just how badly Trump Derangement Syndrome warps people's view of observable reality. You can seriously dislike his platform. Hate it even. But you don't get to pretend that he's not accomplishing his goals, because he clearly is.
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His goal is to wind up kissing Narendra Modi's nether cheeks? A worthy aspiration for a US President!
I wish him every success.
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I suspect that being a professional, if India signed on to the various treaties it rejected in the past, he would.
That's why he's getting things done that others that came before him claimed to be impossible. His relationship with his electorate reminds me of how Korolev solved the closed circuit rocket engine problem in USSR's space program. Instead of all the old guard people who told him that is impossible, as has happened in US with the same issue, he went out of the rocket scientist community and broug
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Well, he must be a pretty good grifter, at least. He's certainly got you fooled.
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Just like he is a nazi, a rapist, will crash the economy if elected with his crazy ideas...
At some point, reasonable people conclude that when reality stands in stark opposition to their thought model, they are wrong and need to correct their thought model. People like you appear to be highly unreasonable, to the point of mental disorder. Hence, TDS.
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- nuclear N. Korea is still nuclear
More progress in two years than previous fifty. This claim shows the depth of your intellectual dishonesty. "He didn't fix the problem that was considered at worst ever stage two years ago, and impossible to solve in two years, he only made more progress than anyone before him".
>- almost-nuclear Iran is about to step on the gas pedal on that goal, now that Trump canceled the deal we had
Hasn't even begun focusing on it yet. The "deal we had" was essentially a deal that a
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It certainly looks that way. Now is when it gets complicated. The current administration likes to make threatening public statements about stuff like this. Unfortunately, this puts them in a rather unenviable position when the other side drops trou and offers up its bum for Uncle Sam to kiss. Because the only remaining alternative is lose - lose. On one hand, the administration could choose to suffer the kind of international humiliation that would hurt its chances in other trade negotiations. Or they
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I'm somehow not surprised that as an American, you would get that exactly backwards. The end of that program would mean the best students India just spent time and money educating will no longer have the option of taking all that government-paid expertise and leaving India for the United States with it.
So yes, by all means threaten to cancel the H-1B program...then watch Indian officials laugh in your face and invite you to kiss their ass.
It would probably be more effective to just implement a similar law in the US. What percentage of the Indian upper/middle class' positions are dependent upon outsourced high-tech jobs that would become illegal to outsource?
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The best thing that America can do is kill the H1B and grow the greencard visa with another 25K / year, but for tech ppl.
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That would actually make sense. Sadly, it's not do-able in this political climate.
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It will go: f**k you US, as H-1B visa holders don't pay taxes in India.
Oh .... you did not know that?
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They'll tell US to get fucked, again, just like they did so many times during last half a century?
Remember, India is the only major state in the world that still hasn't signed up to things like medical patents, which had so much force behind it when it was pushed, even China bent over, and that was when China didn't yet have catastrophic demographics of today.
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Remember, India is the only major state in the world that still hasn't signed up to things like
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [wikipedia.org].
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The NPT was a racist treaty. It was created right after India's first nuclear test in 1974 and specifically excluded India from NWS status. No way can we have the brown man have nukes.
If the NPT had banned nukes for all India would have been the first to sign.
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No H1B means that the work gets completely offshored and the houses Indians are buying in Silicon Valley get bought in Bangalore.
And the reason Indians use H1B so much is because of the major educated nations , only China and India are barred from the E3 visa. All other countries just use the E3 visa which has no quota limit or waiting periods.
USA treats India (supposedly a friedn) on par with China (supposedly an adversary).
Indians are not blind. They make sure to have alternates to USA like Russia and Ira
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You know that you're talking about the country with the world's largest biometric database of its citizens [theguardian.com], yes?
That's a bit like saying Facebook would defend itself against handing over data to the government. Yes, it's nice that they don't bend over, but mostly they don't out of pure self interest, not because they give a shit about you.
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From that article:
Private businesses or individuals have been banned from requesting an individualâ(TM)s Aadhaar details, meaning the 12-digit number cannot be a requirement for services such as opening a bank account or establishing a mobile phone connection.
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The justices also struck down a so-called "national security exception" that allowed investigative agencies to access a person's data without a warrant.
So, better than the USA. Or any of the Five Eyes members.
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I have to give you that...
Translation: keep the NSA balls deep in their data (Score:2)
This move by India will make it harder to pump all that information straight to the NSA's ginormous server farm in Utah. After the Snowden and Vault 7 leaks plus the revelation that the US was tapping Angela Merkle's personal cell phone, every country should be treating the US as the hostile foreign power that Russia has been accused of being.
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If you think Russia isn't trying to do at least as much, I have bridge on the Moon to sell you.
As for being allied, that's about alignment of interests first and foremost. And for the time being, US interests remain firmly aligned with those in Western countries. Trump's election didn't change that. The only thing that it changed in equation is the opportunity costs of the others, increasing them, while still keeping them well below the benefits.
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Yeah, you do "own" a bridge on the moon if you believe that baseless tautology. Russia's entire defense budget is a fraction of the last increase to Pentagon spending. They have an economy smaller than austerity-wrecked Spain. The United States has a thousand military bases around the world - can you name one of Russia's outside of Syria or Sevastopol? Little computer tech is made in Russia, and Russia had not
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You know, sometimes people tell me that Russian trolls aren't a thing.
Then I get someone like you, who is trying to pretend that things like budgets are the primary defining features, rather than results. When was the last time you remember US pulling something like Crimea? If anything, we know that Russians have capabilities that even US lacks, such as ability to enact bloodless coups. As we have seen with Ukraine, US led coup went bloody real fast.
And as for the rest, "illegal wars", etc irrelevant morali
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Lets talk about the outrage over the Saudis kidnapping the Lebanese PM. Who did they learn from? The US kidnapping the Panamian President.
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This is the second reply you make to me on this topic where you clearly don't read my original post.
Let me repeat it.
>And as for the rest, "illegal wars", etc irrelevant moralizing, vae victus.
Strong do what they can. Weak suffer what they must. Which is why Russia try to do what US does and more as to not have to suffer as weak do. And US does what it can to stay strong to achieve the same effect. Moralizing doesn't work in geopolitics because of its utter irrelevance. Which is why most people on the pl
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I agree the strong do what they wish and the fact that US prosperity is built on the largess of the Saudis (if Saudis sold oil in anything other than USD the whole US economy comes crashing down), the Saudis will do what they wish and the US will take it like a good boy.
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I've no idea why you think that "US prosperity is built on largess of the Saudis". US prosperity is built on the fact that it's the only major state in the world that doesn't have to invest significant amount of resources into border defence against peer competitors, coupled with the fact that it has more navigable interconnected rivers than entire rest of the world combined.
Or did you forget that US became a major power before Saudi Arabian oil was ever discovered?
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The US was a middling country till WW1 its primary export being crude oil. After WW1 and 2 US got a lead as the rest of the world was destroyed. Around the same time Saudi oil started coming online. The period of US being a Superpower has coincided with the period of Saudi-US alliance.
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You're utterly ignorant of history outside the talking points you copy pasted. Noted.
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Probably by the same sort of people that told you that Saddam really didn't have WMD's or planned 911. You know....people that aren't gullible fools. [youtube.com]
Budgets are a measure of capacity and intent. Stephen Hawking may have always wanted to be a professional boxer, but really wasn't in a position to be one. Putin could be evil J
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Thank you for successfully reinforcing my point above. I couldn't have done it better myself.
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Russia has nowhere near the scope of the US to be an asshole. The Ruble is not the international reserve currency so all trade goes through New York not Moscow hence the US has opportunity to spy on all world trade transactions. India is demanding that at least domestic trade transactions not be spied on by not having the data go through New York
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That's nice. How is this relevant to what I said?
Actually, India is being SMART (Score:2)
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IANAL, YMMV, So-called Conservative Politicians May Differ.