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Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

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Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#101

Post by FinnKuhn »

andy_ppp wrote: post #27

Is anyone building (open source?) G-Suite - I’m honestly tired of paying Google money and I think everyone needs independence.

Yes, "Euro-Office" was launched this week. It is a European fork of "OPENOFFICE".

It is open source and supported by Nextcloud, IONOS, Proton, Tuta and more.[1]

I haven't tried it out, bu you can find the documentation on how to host it yourself here: https://euro-office.github.io/documentation/

A more mature alternative would is Nextcloud as it offers a lot more, but setup is reportedly more involved. It does appear to be available for enterprise customers as hosted version as well though: https://nextcloud.com/office/

[1] https://github.com/Euro-Office

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#102

Post by closewith »

djaro wrote: post #40
closewith wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.

It exists, but the vast majority of government services dont use it (i.e. taxes are just done through belastingdienst.nl).

Yes, which I think is also very common, but what Wikipedia was referring to is that there's no official second-level domain for Government, unlike say gov.br or gov.uk).

Gov.nl is just a domain owned by the Dutch Government, like gov.ie or belgium.be.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#103

Post by mcv »

nickpp wrote: post #38
mcv wrote: post #35

The EU should fine such intentional violations with a billion euros per violation. That would stop this immediately and force cloud providers to split off their European side into separate companies that don't fall under US law.

The EU is trying relentlessly to read our IMs though.

Chat Control is not law. Of course there are some people inside the EU pushing for privacy violation, just like there are everywhere else, but it's not law. For now, the law protects privacy, and Microsoft violated it. That is the issue at hand.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#104

Post by FinnKuhn »

brador wrote: post #78
andy_ppp wrote: post #27

Is anyone building (open source?) G-Suite - I’m honestly tired of paying Google money and I think everyone needs independence.

No one made the easy pickings of Facebook clone, Reddit clone or Twitter clone for insane profits. You really think someone will make a gsuite? The person making project X days are over. The energy and drive is extinguished from humanity. Ambition is all that’s left.

Facebook made a Twitter (now X) clone (Threads) and has reportedly more users than X now [1]. They have also started a Reddit clone as well now (Forum)[2]. Not sure if that one will be a success as well though, as Reddit isn't loosing users like X is.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/18/threads-edges-out-x-in-dai... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/meta-quietly-launches-a-ne...

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#105

Post by kubb »

beloch wrote: post #94

If a politically stable nation with a good international reputation were to guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil and run by its companies, that nation could become the Swiss bankers of data. Rolling your own "digital sovereignty" is not going to be cheap for most nations, and many other nations simply won't be trusted by anyone, least of all their own citizens. It's a bit…

You could take your analogy further, and consider why the Swiss banking isn’t so opaque anymore. Hint: people who did really inhuman things used that system to store their profits, and the Swiss society, developed and stable as it is, decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#106

Post by kergonath »

EdiX wrote: post #93
vrganj wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU in just the past year has signed deals with Latin America and India in addition to the already existing ones with South Korea, Canada, Japan etc. It has positioned itself at the center of the world's largest free trade zone. It's managed to replace US contributions to Ukraine and looks like its in the process of bloodying Russia's nose. Reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

Free trade didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine and it didn't convert China into a democracy. And the india's deal is saddling us with more third world immigration that will only make things worse. It seems to me that this is still all the EU not keeping up with where the world is going. We started drafting the mercosur agreement 27 years ago so we finalize it and call it a victory, all that it's probably going t…

> Free trade didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine and it didn't convert China into a democracy.

We do not need China to be a democracy. That’s a matter for the Chinese people. Imposing a form of government from outside rarely works and is really counter-productive most of the time.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#107

Post by graemep »

lava_pidgeon wrote: post #69
graemep wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes for stating a reasonable, and probably correct argument. Europe's biggest problem (I do not mean just the EU, I mean everyone from the UK to Russia) is that it is in denial about its decline, weakness and irrelevance to the rest of the world. The UK is a bit of an exception in being aware of it and actually talking about it. That is about it.

"Europe's biggest problem (I do not mean just the EU, I mean everyone from the UK to Russia) is that it is in denial about its decline, weakness and irrelevance to the rest of the world." I disagree on this broad statement.

Why? I see statements like this as evidence of denial - the same with the downvotes. No real counter argument, no evidence, just - "you are wrong".

Europe is relatively a much smaller fraction of the global economy or population than it was a few decades ago. It is militarily less significant. How is that not a decline?

Shooting the messenger is just another sign of being in denial.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#108

Post by brador »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #104
brador wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one made the easy pickings of Facebook clone, Reddit clone or Twitter clone for insane profits. You really think someone will make a gsuite? The person making project X days are over. The energy and drive is extinguished from humanity. Ambition is all that’s left.

Facebook made a Twitter (now X) clone (Threads) and has reportedly more users than X now [1]. They have also started a Reddit clone as well now (Forum)[2]. Not sure if that one will be a success as well though, as Reddit isn't loosing users like X is. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/18/threads-edges-out-x-in-dai... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/meta-quietly-launches-a-ne...

Reddit was waiting for Digg to have an incident and milked it to billions. Why was there no project waiting for Reddit to have an incident? (It has had many).

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#109

Post by graemep »

vrganj wrote: post #84
graemep wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes for stating a reasonable, and probably correct argument. Europe's biggest problem (I do not mean just the EU, I mean everyone from the UK to Russia) is that it is in denial about its decline, weakness and irrelevance to the rest of the world. The UK is a bit of an exception in being aware of it and actually talking about it. That is about it.

The EU in just the past year has signed deals with Latin America and India in addition to the already existing ones with South Korea, Canada, Japan etc. It has positioned itself at the center of the world's largest free trade zone. It's managed to replace US contributions to Ukraine and looks like its in the process of bloodying Russia's nose. Reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

The EU has expanded to incorporate many more countries but is a much smaller fraction of the world's economy than it was in the 70s. Europe is the world's slowest growing region so this will continue.

Re: Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails

#110

Post by beloch »

kubb wrote: post #105
beloch wrote: post #94

If a politically stable nation with a good international reputation were to guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil and run by its companies, that nation could become the Swiss bankers of data. Rolling your own "digital sovereignty" is not going to be cheap for most nations, and many other nations simply won't be trusted by anyone, least of all their own citizens. It's a bit…

You could take your analogy further, and consider why the Swiss banking isn’t so opaque anymore. Hint: people who did really inhuman things used that system to store their profits, and the Swiss society, developed and stable as it is, decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.

The Swiss didn't vet their clients. If Vladimir Putin wants to contract a data centre on your soil for the privacy, you can always have regulations that say, "No.".
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