Digital rights aren’t just national law.
Trade treaties you’ve never read dictate what data can cross borders and what companies must hand over.
If sovereignty means control, you need to know who else is in the chain.
Treaties Shape the Infrastructure
Deals like USMCA, GDPR adequacy decisions, or cross-border surveillance pacts define:
- Which privacy laws apply where
- What counts as legal data transfer
- How law enforcement requests are honoured abroad
You don’t vote on these treaties. You still live under them.
Hidden Compliance Costs
A service in another country may:
- Hand your data over under its local laws
- Block you due to sanctions or export restrictions
- Demand identification to comply with agreements
It’s not malice. It’s treaties baked into the system.
What You Can Do
You can’t rewrite treaties, but you can:
- Pick providers aligned with your legal environment
- Encrypt data before it leaves your control
- Diversify jurisdictions to avoid single points of failure
Sovereignty means mapping the law as well as the network.