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German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

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Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#201

Post by gjsman-1000 »

e12e wrote: post #194
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from the US perspective, Europe still imports from Xinjiang region of China, where over 2 million Muslims do forced labor. The US banned imports already. Not only that, according to SCMP, they more than doubled in just August. Straighten out the obvious before adding another yoke on small businesses.

We also import goods from the US where prisoners do forced labour. At any rate; one bad thing does not cancel out another. We can fight both slave labor and strive for protecting citizen data.

True - but equating the US prison system to what is happening to them is an absurdity. It’s like if Nazi Germany said their camps weren’t that bad, after all, the US has prisons.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#202

Post by LadyCailin »

luckylion wrote: post #168
angio wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely, someone will figure out a corporate structure that makes the EU subsidiaries out of reach from the US government. It's obvious that eventually all US-based services will be declared in breach of the GDPR given the US stance on global surveillance.

Am I mistaken, or did MS have that with Deutsche Telekom running a special Azure zone on their behalf? The idea was that MS wouldn't be able to comply with US court orders because they weren't in control of that zone, and DT's German subsidiary running that operation wouldn't be in US jurisdiction. As far as I know, they shut it down two years ago citing higher costs and operational issues.

I don’t know about that, but that’s how it works in China, at least. 21vianet is the operator for the Chinese Azure cloud, and presumably is fully accountable to Chinese law, not American.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#203

Post by almostnormal »

_8j50 wrote: post #162
lgreiv wrote: post #50

My personal favorite outcome of this would be a joint public and corporate funded leap in open source development. This would do much for the budget, privacy and probably also security of businesses and private users. A good example where this principle is already in use is the Matrix protocol.

Forget the migration costs just to develop and standup the cost and infra would be a few billion euros just for one O365 app. I don't think people understand how much O365 apps are used. Nobody is filing github issues either with this, you need to do commercial and customer support, basically replace a core MS SaaS product but not with some shitty idealistic hack because the economic consequences are dire!

A few billion is no problem. Simply collect the GDPR defined maximum fine of 4% of total global revenue from Microsoft, and use that to build the alternative. Provide that solution for self-hosting, so the cost of the infrastructure is payed for by the user organizations.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#204

Post by josho »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #141
sgc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to have the podunk builder build my house however I want. What is with all those pesky building codes! Because they (the government) think it is the minimum required for a dignified, safe society. And they are placed in a position of power and must make those judgment calls, because that is their job. Why would people want that? Because they understand, in general, that government is important and don't want a…

> Because they (the government) think it is the minimum required for a dignified, safe society. And they are placed in a position of power and must make those judgment calls, because that is their job. Ha, this is a naïve view of it. In the US, this is only kinda-sorta true. Building permits can often be a lucrative source of income for the city and sleazy inspectors who often come out without the faintest idea of wh…

Has your father taken this to his city councillor? If nobody reports the problem the city will think things are fine and nothing will change.

Regardless I’m quite happy with my safe home. I know that it’s not going to kill me. In some regulations have we gone too far? Yes. Have we gone too far protecting our data? We barely have anything in place, so I applaud the EU on forging ahead.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#205

Post by brookst »

usrbinbash wrote: post #192
_8j50 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget the migration costs just to develop and standup the cost and infra would be a few billion euros just for one O365 app. I don't think people understand how much O365 apps are used. Nobody is filing github issues either with this, you need to do commercial and customer support, basically replace a core MS SaaS product but not with some shitty idealistic hack because the economic consequences are dire!

Investments in that area would be investment into European open source development as a whole and European IT in general. Businesses can spring up around such efforts, people can find employment, technology can be developed, and the European market could be strengthened.

Are business allowed to use M365 if all of this open source investment fails to produce an equal-or-better solution? Or are businesses forced to operate with the result even if it’s terrible?

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#206

Post by pkz »

throwaway4good wrote: post #101

Microsoft just needs to place data from EU customers on EU soil and in a manner that is inaccessible to US authorities. Why is this so hard?

It involves sub licensing the entire suite to a EU entity. It is happening in France with Bleu (MS365 run by Capgemini and Orange): https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/orange-and-capgem...

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#207

Post by 6510 »

smeej wrote: post #124

I'm not European, and maybe this is why I struggle to understand this, but why do people want regulators to say, "This doesn't comply with our regulations, so you aren't allowed to use it ?" I understand the hope is that companies will comply rather than forego the entire European market, but if they don't, the last consequence is ultimately on the consumer, not the company. It seems like the same type of thing as wh…

> why do people want regulators to...

The first misconception is that governments do what people want. They do what serves their national and personal interests. What people want plays a rather small role in it. Far to often they do the exact opposite.

> I understand the hope is that companies will comply

Not at all, they can comply or fuck off. The US gov just runs things differently from the EU. They want full access to everything in secrecy and will hand over or sell data to corporations if it serves US interests.

It means for EU enterprise all information on suppliers, customers, orders, road maps, finances etc etc can be forwarded to your US competitors.

You also forget how easy it is to make software. If [say] Microsoft no longer wants to do it there will be others.

The whole point of the EU is to instruct how business is done here. It was specially designed to stand up to uncle Sam and his army of evil automatons.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#208

Post by e12e »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #133
Lurkars wrote: post #128

Statement from Microsoft https://news.microsoft.com/de-de/microsoft-erfuellt-und-uebe... [in German]

English version (PDF): https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/40/...

Thank you, both.

IMNHO the most likely outcome is that o365 will come to be GDPR compliant - and so business will be able to (continue to) deliver on government contracts building on o365.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#209

Post by brookst »

almostnormal wrote: post #203
_8j50 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget the migration costs just to develop and standup the cost and infra would be a few billion euros just for one O365 app. I don't think people understand how much O365 apps are used. Nobody is filing github issues either with this, you need to do commercial and customer support, basically replace a core MS SaaS product but not with some shitty idealistic hack because the economic consequences are dire!

A few billion is no problem. Simply collect the GDPR defined maximum fine of 4% of total global revenue from Microsoft, and use that to build the alternative. Provide that solution for self-hosting, so the cost of the infrastructure is payed for by the user organizations.

Why would Microsoft (or Google, or anyone) continue to operate in Europe in that model? Seems like a recipe to go from an imperfect tech solution to none at all.

Re: German privacy watchdogs conclude that Microsoft 365 is incompatible with GDPR

#210

Post by yorwba »

jokowueu wrote: post #120
Arathorn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting the balance of this right to prevent a tragedy of the commons turns out to be hard. Element (who funds most of Matrix dev) has released almost everything we do as permissive-licensed FOSS open source. As a result, there's a huge ecosystem of folks building commercial solutions on Matrix. But surprisingly little $ actually gets back to Element (or the Matrix Foundation) from those commercial solutions, if any.

I don't have any proof but I'm certain Germany must have made some sort of funding for matrix https://matrix.org/blog/2021/07/21/germanys-national-healthc...

> TI-Messenger is gematik’s technical specification for an interoperable secure instant messaging standard. The healthcare industry will be able to build a wide range of apps based on TI-Messenger specifications knowing that, being built on Matrix, all those apps will interoperate.

The ones getting most of the money will probably be third-party developers integrating Matrix into their gematik-certified healthcare products.

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