@riskybiz Given the single point of failure caused by having all one's infrastructure eggs in one national legislative basket—as exemplified by some non-US countries running their government IT on #Azure—it may be necessary for governments to learn from the online federation and apply those lessons to their cloud service providers.

For example, if #Microsoft were legislatively required by, say, the #EU, to restructure legally and technologically, such that Microsoft EU would become a non-subsidiary partner and licensor of Microsoft (US), with all plaintext data and all relevant symmetric and private remain EU-resident and inaccessible to the US counterpart, a great deal of exposure to adverse US legislative or executive action could be mitigated.

If #Canada or perhaps the #Commonwealth were to do likewise, and other countries or blocs as well, large infrastructure providing corporations would effective be required to transform into federated groups of entities, bound by contracts, licences, and API keys, but each legally and technically unable of violating the laws of their corporate instance's home country.

They could still slosh properly encrypted data around globally, for resilience, as long as keys remain in exclusive custody of the nationally resident corporate instance.

Smaller countries, like #Fediverse users selecting an instance based on its administration and moderation, could then choose their jurisdiction of infrastructure to trust, based on the laws (and rule thereof, or not) of each jurisdiction. This in turn would create a global market incentive for laws more protective of other Peoples' data.

@EugeneMcParland

How about #EU plus #commonwealth ?

"Donald #Trump is now badly wounded. Europe and the UK can seize an advantage"

@kibcol1049 The Commonwealth could make an interesting trading bloc, if the Global South members participated as fully-equal partners with the rich members.

We'd need to avoid a British Empire v.2, with the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand having special status and making most of the decisions.

@voxofgod the Commonwealth doesn't want the USA, that's not going to happen. Also, I'm kinda of getting the impression you think it's a bit like the EU? Commonwealth is basically just the old British colonies kinda maintaining some cultural (and sometimes head of state) ties after independence. In practice it just means some countries like Canada and Australia still have the UK monarch as a powerless head of state. We don't get freedom of movement like the EU gets. I don't think we even get special visa conditions.

In practical terms, being a member of the Commonwealth means your country gets to take part in the Commonwealth games. And maybe extra diplomatic help in other Commonwealth countries if you don't have an embassy there. Um. That's it afaik

Btw New Zealand is not disability friendly for immigration. There was a big story a few years ago where a British man was offered a high paying job there and was told he can take his wife and older child, but his disabled daughter was not given residency.

When trying to find the article, I found these:

https://news.sky.com/story/girl-12-denied-residency-because-her-autism-does-not-meet-acceptable-standards-of-health-in-new-zealand-12599259

https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/26/family-denied-visa-daughter-downs-syndrome-9022812/

https://www.liveaction.org/news/new-zealand-denied-residency-teenage-girl-syndrome/

@GottaLaff

I have no idea if this is true, either.

But as a Canadian, if Charles III even extends the invitation to the USA, regardless of whether they take it, Canada *must* immediately withdraw from the commonwealth, do the impossible and modify our constitution to remove the monarchy as our head of state, and drop every Royal from our currency and the titles of every government job, facility, or process.

There is *no* room in which both the current USA and Canada belong together, and if the UK wants to choose the USA, then we know when we're not wanted.

@Sarahp #Canada and the rest of the #Commonwealth should join the #EU on this. Hit the US oligarchy back where it costs them the most and benefits us the most.