Data need not have location

Many governments have policies that address the location of data. For example, there has been a long series of disputes about the transfer of data into the United States, when those data are covered by European Union privacy rules. The latest dispute in that series concerns the transfer of data from Facebook Ireland to its US parent. For another example, the state of Georgia requires that state data never leave the United States. These policies are increasingly detached from how modern computer systems work. Indeed, the policies give engineers incentives to design systems that deliberately blur or evade questions of where data reside.