HMRC gives £700 million IT contract to Amazon.

[Kudoscycles]

And they do things rather well.

The fact that they have brought about a seismic change to retail is only a threat to less efficient competition or should I say to unnecessary competition.

I respect that Amazon and E-bay are dynamic businesses that have transformed online retail sales. But neither pay a fair share of UK tax and are a shelter for vat fraud which is unfair competition to honest UK traders.
Consumers love them because they get cheap goods delivered to home,but rarely you get a vatable invoice from these traders...if HMRC hit them properly the estimate of vat fraud is £27 billion....that would sort out a lot of problems in the NHS and Social Care....don't forget this is the direct tax loss....if honest UK traders were given opportunity to compete then those companies would employ more and pay more income and corporation tax.
The fraudulent trading within e-bay has reached epidemic proportions,these sellers now have a competitive market within the illegals,it is now not exclusively Chinese companies there are many UK businesses who have the attitude 'if you can't beat them,then join them',all the proceeds end up in Asian banks usually in Hong Kong,lost to the UK.
HMRC are frightened to do anything about this fraud,these businesses are now more powerful than governments.
KudosDave

 

[Woosh]

A state body, the UK revenue, to whom you are required to give truthful information, on pain of imprisonment, chooses to put that information , whether encrypted or not on machinery owned and controlled by a foreign power. That foreign company , under pain of imprisonment by its own government may demand that that data be provided to them.
Whether they have difficulty in decryption of the data is a moot point.
The US government can and could by regulation require that all data stored by US companies be decryptable by keys provided to them. ... Court cases pending.
And in any event the power of decryption software and hardware under the control of US state is formidable.
And you are happy with this.?

If the UK government \ state wants to hold information on you or I ( though not being a UK tax payer in my case unlikely), then it needs to hold it secured. By having total control on its physical local and all means of access, and immune from challenges legal or otherwise from third parties.

you can't cite a single precedent to support your central argument - let's wait until the Microsoft case is decided by the US Supreme Court. As I understand it, the case you mentioned relies on interpretation of the US Communication Act, more specifically emails generated and controlled by a US entity, miles away from private data held on servers own by a subsidary company of a US company. I cannot see any circumstance where HMRC data can be hijacked that way. You may but I can't. I don't know if you have ever rented a dedicated server but I can assure you, nicking data from it is not as easy as it looks. All the HMRC laptops for example will self lock if lost in public transport.
A whiff of a US warrant and C&E will descend on this outfit like a ton of bricks.

 

[Danidl]

you can't cite a single precedent to support your central argument - let's wait until the Microsoft case is decided by the US Supreme Court. As I understand it, the case you mentioned relies on interpretation of the US Communication Act, more specifically emails generated and controlled by a US entity, miles away from private data held on servers own by a subsidary company of a US company. I cannot see any circumstance where HMRC data can be hijacked that way. You may but I can't. I don't know if you have ever rented a dedicated server but I can assure you, nicking data from it is not as easy as it looks. All the HMRC laptops for example will self lock if lost in public transport.
A whiff of a US warrant and C&E will descend on this outfit like a ton of bricks.

I am glad that you are at last appreciating the seriousness of the potential situation. While the case is about an email, it is actually about Data. It is not about hijacking data or nicking it. It is about an instruction to be given to the operators of a server in a foreign country ( UK) by their line managers and superiors in another(USA) to transfer files into another jurisdiction (USA). The warrants could be served in the states and neither UK operators nor government being made aware. Such file transfers are an everyday occurance.. C& E I assume refers to Customs and Excise. What possible role would they have? ... another Red Herring.

I have actually provided the precedence's, . They happened in that US second circuit court. If the company to whom it was directed was much smaller and had not the clout of a Microsoft, we might not have heard about it and it would now be quoted as established precedent. It is because of Microsofts involvement that the action has escalated to their Supreme Court..

We may be more conscious of these cases in Ireland because of the presence of a number of US IT companies here along with and their European corporate headquarters.

There are also a number of similar cases in the US one involving Apple and its refusal to decrypt an iPhone to confirm a prosecutions case.

I have explained this in exhausting detail and am not prepared to prolong this discussion.