Dropbox Follows Twitter by Basing Services in Ireland, as UK Gives Immunity to Spies

If you live outside the United States and use Twitter, then from today that service is provided to you by Twitter International Company, which is based in Dublin.

In its announcement last month the company made reference to EU data protection legislation and the move has been viewed as a vote of confidence in Irish and EU data protection legislation in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

Twitter International Company will be responsible for handling your account information under Irish privacy and data protection law, which is based on the European Union’s Data Protection Directive.

Now Twitter has been joined by Dropbox, who mailed users recently to say that Dropbox Ireland would take over services from June 1 for users outside the the US, Mexico and Canada. It’s unclear from the company’s communications whether data protection is a factor, and there has been strong criticism on user forums with speculation that the decision is tax-related.

In a recent interview, barrister Fergal Crehan told Technology.ie that Ireland has the potential to attract data industries by raising our data protection standards, explaining that such companies were no longer interested in ‘light touch’ data regulation, but in being able to offer assurances of strong legal protection of users’ privacy.

Meanwhile it has emerged that the UK government has quietly updated anti-hacking legislation to ensure immunity from prosecution for police, and for spying by GCHQ.

HT: Keith Gaughan

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