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back to article THE GERMANS ARE CLOUDING: New AWS cloud region spotted

Amazon looks set to open a data center in Germany, allowing European developers to access Bezos & Co's rentable computer tech with lower latencies. Evidence first gathered by a manager at a Berlin-based startup and subsequently verified by El Reg indicates that Amazon's next cloud computing data center may be in Frankfurt, …

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  1. marekt77

    Doesn't matter where the Datacenter is located, so long as the parent company is a US based company, the Patriot Act can be used to access the data, even if it is located outside the United States.

    9 1 Reply
    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
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      Yep, and given the number of alternatives already in Germany I don't see this having legs for anything beyond things like CDNs.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        It's a big deal for any euro-based multinationals who've been dying to get AWS but aren't willing to jump on board with the Irish data protection authorities. Germany's a much nicer place to play.

        0 2 Reply
    2. Anonymous Dutch Coward
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      WTF?

      Assuage this?

      Exactly. I would be very interested in seeing what concerns exactly the author can see addressed by having a US corp have a new data centre in Germany...

      1 1 Reply
      1. big_D Silver badge
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        Re: Assuage this?

        Yep and Telekom have just announced the largest data centre in Europe outisde of Magdeburg for their cloud computing customers. German based and run by a German company. I can see more people trusting that than AWS in the current climate.

        0 0 Reply
      2. Anonymous Dutch Coward
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        Happy

        Re: Assuage this?

        Above rant based on previous version of the article - thanks a lot for the clear and informative update, Reg!

        0 1 Reply
    3. Levente Szileszky
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      That's actually not true - I think it's moreup to the individual provider, in this case Amazon... IANAL but there's no "super-world-authority" here, it's more about rather different legal reads of a murky situation, none tested in court so far AFAIK.

      Amazon's take was always rather practical than principled - Vogel (CTO) is saying for several years now that customers in non-US DCs worried about possible access should simply encrypt their data, pure and simple. He's right, there's nothing better protection than using your own, very strong crypto and not giving the keys to anyone. :)

      OTOH Rackspace, with DCs in the US, UK, AU and Hong-Kong, clearly spills out that if they receive any US law enforcement agency request (court order, NSL, FISA court order, anything) targeting non-US data then they require US LEA to contact its counterpart LEA or a court in the target country and have them submit a request (or joint request, not exactly clear to me.)

      Their SVP&General Counsel made it pretty clear on various pages: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/your-data-is-your-data-period/

      https://community.rackspace.com/general/f/34/p/791/1347#1347

      Also: http://www.rackspace.com.au/about/patriot-act

      Now with UK and AU both being parties to the Five Eyes it does nto mean much of a protection but what happens in Hong-Kong is anyone's guess... one thing is sure if I'd have to chose I'd rather have the NSA going through my mp3s instead of the PLA's intelligence brigade.:)

      0 1 Reply
    4. OliverJ
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      Black Helicopters

      Publicity stunt?

      I agree, considering the "NSA scare", which is very important in Germany today, this is more or less a publicity stunt only, as the physical location of the DC doesn't really matter if you can twist the arm of an sysadmin in the US or the UK, and get her or him to access your data. OTOH, there are good reasons for having another DC in continental Europe, like latency, HA/DR/BC requirements, etc.

      1 0 Reply
  2. Nate Amsden

    brings new meaning to

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3wrBFuGK2A

    1 0 Reply
  3. thomaskwscott

    Finally!!

    This is huge for European companies with regulators on their back. Last year a project i was working on for a financial institution very nearly went tits up because the regulators were insisting that our cloud provider handle a "Metropolitan event". This basically means an entire city goes lights out (in our case Dublin) and we were required to have failover inside the EU. Amazon's lack of alternate EU datacenter (apparently availability zones don't count) nearly killed us off. Hopefully a German center will avoid these problems in the future.

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  4. WibbleMe

    Yet again England doest get an AWS probably because of the cost of electricity. Same really as we cant use a cloud that's based in another country like so may other eCommerce web companies because of data protection laws.

    0 0 Reply
    1. WibbleMe
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      shame*

      0 0 Reply

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