Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence Microsoft is responding to mounting "geopolitical and trade volatility" between the US administration and governments in Europe by pledging privacy safeguards for customers worried about using American hyperscalers, and vowing to fight the US government in court to protect Euro customers' data if needed. Under Trump 2.0, some …
Give MS the finger, AWS as well.
They are leeching data back to the new DOGE mega Database. It won't matter if you are a US citizen or not. If the DOGE/Trump machine decides to target you, then being swatted is small fry. They will positively enjoy destroying your life just in case you have something on them.
Here's a nice website that documents the alternatives to some US services. Maybe it's time to look at these and start making decisions :-)
Yes, that's lovely.
None of them currently have the scale to support a global enterprise and most of the necessary services. OVHcloud is the largest and is still a fraction the size of MS or AWS.
User authorisation and access control, cybersecurity are still US or Israeli led.
Court? Due process? Trump? If he gets the urge he'll just send in thugs to take the data he's interested in. It would be a brave Microsoft employee who got in his way... he might find himself relocated to El Salvador.
Thanks to Pam Bleach Blond Bondi authorising ICE/FBI etc to go into suspects houses and wreak hell. Trump is busy signing exectuive orders making it impossible to even sue those who SWATTED your home/bsuness.
Welcome to Gestapo 2025. The USA is fast becoming a Facist State. The sooner the world wakes up and boycotts anything to do with the USA the better.
Posting AC because I don't want to make a one way trip to Rwanda.
The apparatus for it has certainly been building for 20-some years now. For ages, I've been asked "what are you trying to hide?" when I even mention anything related to privacy or don't use US-based data services whenever possible. And that was since long before the current maladministration. Back in 2019, I ended up going to dinner with a friend who is one of the most coldly rational people whom I know. She confessed that she wondered what I was hiding with near "tinfoil hat" level of an obsession with privacy, but was starting to think more and more that my position was the correct one all along.
Ah, the old 'If you've got nothing to hide, nothing to fear' bollocks.
To which my response is always 'If I've got nothing to hide, there's no need to invade my privacy to begin with'
Same response to the UK govt wanting access to peoples bank accounts if they get any benefits, not that they want them to have any benefits and will do everything they can to punish the poor and the disabled... gifting this country to grifters and fascists like farage.
And they pay telcos (amongst other subsidies) orders of magnitude more to do work that they *don't*, with no actual audits. I guess dole money is only for the super rich, and not some poor person who might have marked a piece of paperwork wrong because the document confused them or something.
There's a good book about Blackwater (you know, the mercenary company that the US government loves to use so much), and it also goes into the back room machinations about this. The Christian fundamentalist right has been plotting for decades to 'bring the country back' (referring to the country of ye olde tymes where women were seen, not heard, preferably pregnant and in the kitchen, where white men ruled supreme, any human liberties didn't exist unless a white man offered it), and Prince and his goons are just part of it.
I had to stop reading it because it was just too infuriating and disturbing, especially in the light of recent events!
Exactly. This is a red-herring. The misidentification of the causal problem is propaganda used against the American public by companies and especially the federal government. Republicans are quite adept at using this but this administration in particular loves to use it.
The EU already has laws that would de-facto require MS to fight the US for said protections to even to operate in the area. Privacy laws isn't what Europe is anxious about, it is availability and over reliance on technologies housed by a potentially, hostile country. If a broader war erupts across Europe with Moscow-aligned nations and Trump continues to allow Putin to puppet his naive ass, pressuring him into placing sanctions on the European block, then it is no longer about privacy. European lives lost, the economy, and war effort could screech to a halt and the Russian bear could end up demarcating Europe again.
If they are really serious about this, they would consider breaking up their own company into create a European company.
This American is rooting for a European company to fill in this gap and would like to buy server space in the future. Better privacy laws.
And maybe a job.
We (that's the US) have a bit of a track record when it comes to ignoring court rulings or even international treaties that we don't like. Now the Trump administration has extended this to ignoring our own court rulings I wouldn't make any assumptions for the time being.
I guessing -- hoping -- this situation will change and get clarified eventually. After all, what Trump is doing is blatantly unconstitutional but its one of those situations where the checks and balances that are supposed to keep things under control have broken down. We will have to see whether things can be changed before the damage is irreversible and whether the people we would expect to rectify the shortcomings in our system are statesmen enough to ignore the temptation that absolute power offers. In the meantime, though -- don't put anything sensitive near us and pursuing a modicum of independence would be a really smart move, especially if it hits US corporations financially ("The Money" has a way of making its opinions known that make even the trappings of democracy seem ineffectual).
And that's the crux of the point isn't it, the rule of law is unlikely to be upheld.
As you said the US is powerful enough to largely ignore international laws that don't suit it.
We don't trust Chinese companies becasue their governemnt requires that Chinese businesses must coopoerate with the wants of the Chinese government.
Largely the same rule applies to the US but until now we had reasonable trust that the US government was unlikely to use that data in a hostile act against other countries.
I don't think we have the trust now.
Unless MS is split into a different entity completely unanswerable to its US counterpart we will be living with the threat that the US government may act to weaponise data and services on a whim.
Why are all our eggs in one basket with MS? Well that's story with a history of decades but it's not going to be turned around now even if that is a desirable destination.
I suspect either MS will split to retain EU businesses or will leverage its own money back home to keep POTUS in check over data and services. Apple and Google are likely to support MS in that endevour and that's a lot of money.
Has Max Schrems kicked off round three yet?
Exactly. It didn't work for Huawei, and despite Microsofts best efforts, it unfortunately shouldn't work for them for the same reasons. And yes, it sucks for both of them.
Besides, what would a court case do? Even if they won, the damage would be done. "We were forced to shut down all your services at a critical time, but don't worry, have some cash" won't cut it.
I actually do sympathise with Microsoft on this, and applaud their efforts, but if they have any link to being a US company, they are screwed.
When Microsoft loses in court, EU data will be made available to the US party that won the case. I've been trying to get more people to be aware of this for ages (I'm a Dutch techy who provides support for MS on prem and cloud services) and it looks like people are slowly waking up and smelling the napalm. We need European alternatives to at least host our data, it's not in safe hands with US suppliers. A US company has to adhere to US laws first and foremost and if a US judge orders them to fork over data, it doesn't matter where the data is hosted, they're going to have to fork over the data.
There are so many reasons NOT to use Microsoft products that I find it staggering that some governments have allowed themselves to be bribed lobbied into declaring Microsoft "essential", and so exempt from the controls that everyone else has to abide by (I picked up those staggering rumours in Belgium, and this apparently even extends to privacy).
Worse, there are government managers who think that MS products are actually capable of handling the volume of a whole nation and so convert long working environments by hook and by crook into trying to use Microsoft products to handle that load and it's going wrong everywhere, to the point where I'm wondering what platform Azure is running on. There's no way that is Windows, and if it is it's a version they're not selling. Well, renting out.
I've been posting exactly that for the better part of 10 years. Can't believe that it took "orange man bad" to get people to understand it.
Now given a choice between the US spying on you and China spying I'll always say go with the US as our primary goal is to make sure Europe doesn't drag us into yet another major war while the Chinese plan to rob you blind and use your own IP to undercut you, but for true security you want to provide for yourself and not rely on other nations.
Difference between a Wish a Pledge?
One is a distributor of cheap tat that frequently doesn't hold to promises made.
The other is either sprayed onto make something seem cleaner than it is, or is a person submitting themselves to humiliation just to be liked by a bunch of Americans.
... When it becomes no longer viable or economic to defend European customers against the rapaciousness of the Cheeto Trumpet regime, Microsoft will also pull the plug or throw its customers to the wolves.
I'd love to believe the chief lawbook thrower at Microsoft, but I won't. Consider the US tech industry at risk of being suborned into compliance in some form or fashion, park it on your company's risk register, and be prepared to lift and shift what you have from them to someone else.
"Smith says Microsoft is no stranger to pursuing litigation to 'protect the rights of our customers and other stakeholders'"
This only matters in a system where a separation of powers exists. That system has collapsed in the US. It is now an authoritarian regime ruled by a megalomaniac.
You'd have be insane to trust that regime with your data, and that's what you're doing when you trust a company under that regime with your data - we were being warned about this BY the US (amongst others) 5 or 10 years ago in respect to Russia, China, and so on. You know what they say... "what goes around comes around" .... the warnings are as true now for the US as it was then for other despotic regimes... you're insane if you're not, at the very least, looking at and considering alternatives to US tech RIGHT NOW. Don't wait. Do it now.
And some in the IT world were warning about it a lot longer ago than that. Some of us have been pointing out to manglement the dangers - but all they see is short term convenience because MS has managed to gaffer tape enough bits together to give the illusion of having a product suite to run the entire business.
"We respect European values, comply with European laws, and actively defend Europe's cybersecurity."
No, you don't. The US Cloud Act is what makes your empty words an obvious lie. Any European company that stores their data on your cloud services is effectively donating it all to the US government.
These empty words sound just the same as what any company spews when they get owned by a ransomware group or state actor. "We take our customer's privacy very seriously". Yeah, sure you do.
The EU should have started reducing dependency on US cloud infrastructure a long time ago.
25 years of history shows me that Europeans are very very good at bellyaching, and fucking useless at doing.
It would have been relatively trivial in a Euro-scale of things to setup a project to deliver a non-proprietary client-server OS based on FOSS, *and* provide support for Euro companies using it.
But hey, it's "cheaper" to shovel $$$ to MS, so why would we do that ?
"Europeans are very very good at bellyaching, and fucking useless at doing."
What, *all" of us? Would you be generalising, by any chance?
"But hey, it's "cheaper" to shovel $$$ to MS, so why would we do that ?"
It's certainly "cheaper" when Microsoft deploys its huge cash mountain in slush funds, yes. But we live in an age where senior American politicians prefer WhatsApp to secure military alternatives.
-A.
My largest customer has a 6-figure a month spend on AWS. They've currently mandated all work in progress is to go back into our EU data centres and they are looking at what they can easily move on a short term basis with a longer term, slower migration combined with a watch-and-see approach.
So...to be fair, a small sample size of one, but there is definite movement and they are most definitely acting.
It's actually not cheaper to shovel $$$ at Microsoft...we're stuck with Microsoft because of FOMO. How many times have you heard "I need $MSPRODUCT because everyone else uses it and I want to make sure I can open things that people send me" or "I know $MSPRODUCT I don't want to learn anything new".
Familiarity and fear is what drives people to use MS products. I don't really have a problem per se with Microsoft products, they are what they are, I just won't recommend them if someone asks me for "the best solution" because in my opinion, none of their products are "the best solution"...they are "the quick solution".
Well it doesn't change things on a whim usually. There is a beta channel that exists for techies and engineers to test things out...admittedly, it's not as good as it once was...but it does exist.
Keeping users informed of upcoming changes is the job of the IT department who should be actively testing the beta channels before release anyway.
It's why we used to get Technet subscriptions back in the day...to stay ahead.
If a new change is as surprising to the sysadmin as it is to the users, the sysadmin is garbage.
For example, it has been possible to switch between "old" Outlook and "new" Outlook for well over a year now...same with Teams...if you haven't bothered to test the new functionality / demonstrate it to your users...that's on you.
Speaking as a user, my job is engineering - the IT is a tool, it should not be something I need to spend significant amounts of time watching to see if the program I launch this morning has a different look & feel to what it did yesterday because ... well to be frank, I have zero f'in idea why Outlook suddenly changed appearance other than someone thought it would make it look prettier.
I hate Teams with a passion anyway. Yes I knew changes were coming, but yes, I clicked the option to switch back to separate chat and Teams.
IT does have sessions to introduce some of the new stuff that's coming along. I stopped going to those, just seemed to be an endless stream of "this is changing, that is changing, this change is delayed, ..." and it was hard to pick out stuff that would actually affect me from all the stuff that I reckoned wouldn't. But again. most of it fell into two categories :
1) Did someone really ask for that ?
2) Surely that's something they should have picked up from alpha testers (from the "that's a crock of manure" feedback) before the product was released.
3) Hang on, isn't that just changing the wallpaper for no reason other than to disorientate the users ?
OK, that's 3
"Speaking as a user, my job is engineering - the IT is a tool, it should not be something I need to spend significant amounts of time watching"
It's the job of your IT guys. They should be keeping track of these things and preparing their users for it...testing processes out to ensure they still work etc etc.
However, if you don't have IT guys and you work for yourself, then it's absolutely your job. As is keeping an eye on the state of the economy, reading the news, listening to customers, complying with regulation, filing your accounts, calculating budgets etc etc...
Even if you do have IT guys, you still have a responsibility to speak up if your tools are shit and to keep track of alternatives you'd rather use if the tool foisted on you is crap. Why suffer in silence, why struggle?
"I have zero f'in idea why Outlook suddenly changed appearance"
It didn't suddenly change, it was an optional change for over a year and you could switch back, this was to allow for testing and user feedback, the button was there at the top of the window, you just buried your head in the sand and ignored it. They even added a splash screen at one point giving you the option on the spot to try it. They put it right in your face, centre of the screen for about 2 months. You've had 12 months to find 5 minutes to give it a whirl and plan your transition or flag up any issues. There was even an option, right in the "new" version to allow you to provide feedback. If you never submit feedback, how can you expect the application to change in ways that suit you? Or for features to be fixed that you found a problem with?
I've been aware of the new outlook for what feels like forever now. I gradually rolled it out to test it amongst users to see if it would be a massive problem if it was enforced. Some stuff has been stripped away and did cause some headaches, but I worked with the users to find ways to implement some continuity...as a result, switching over was seamless...nobody really likes it, but it's not stopping work being done and it wasn't unexpected...we were able to plan for it and adjust things accordingly. Mostly it was things like CRM integration that disappeared etc.
..shared mailboxes worked slightly differently etc.
I'm not defending Microsoft here, the new Outlook is fucking shit and it's full of problems...most people hate it for justifiable reasons...but claiming that it "suddenly changed" is just actual bollocks.
In our world - complain and you are just ignored (really, I have, and have been ghosted).
As for "trialled for a year, button to click, blah, blah" - nah, in our case, software updates itself (annoyingly, they usually set the "will up date by" to the same day as it rolls out, so F-U if you happen to have a busy day and deadlines), then you find it's changed appearance. Outlook was just one example. Excel has changed appearance as well - no idea why, it's just changed.
OK, some of these changes are not that important - I hated Outlook before, I hate it now - but they are "annoying" changes that appear to have no function other than to further annoy the users who already hate the pile of manure foisted on us.
Well convincing the board starts from having the balls to propose something in the first place. For most techies, that is 80% of the work.
In my time in the IT industry, roughly 25 years at this point, I've rarely come across techies that will persistently push things at board level. Most IT departments seem to prefer to stay away from the board and never get involved unless they have to...they prefer to be told a set of requirements rather than deriving them. If that wasn't the case, consultants like me wouldn't exist.
I've managed to convince a few boards to consider switching away from Microsoft where I thought they would derive considerable value and business edge. It is possible to do with some well researched ideas and the right kind of execution (i.e. don't do it all at once). It's the push back from the users that stops it going ahead or sticking...particularly if you wade in too deep and change too much too fast.
There are plenty of companies out there now that are Linux first in their deployments, mostly tech companies and engineering companies admittedly, but they are out there.
I was pleasantly surprised to visit a potential client sort of middle of last year to find they were using Manjaro across the board on their workstations and a mixture of Debian / Rocky / Alpine on the servers.
I was called in for "Linux Expertise" expecting that one shitty Debian box that has been running a Django based project for 10 years...but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that wasn't the case!
The business in question was a firm of architects as well who were drawing and producing plans using mostly FOSS products...using LibreCAD, Inkscape, GIMP, Krita and Blender amongst other things. Not a single user I interacted with had anything negative to say about the setup and seemed quite happy with it...I didn't detect a whiff of moaning and the entire office environment seemed relaxed and chill.
Apparently they switched over a few years ago because they were sick to death of things like updates taking ages, licensing dongles crapping out and costing a fortune to replace, boot up times being rubbish, CAD software on Windows being way slower than the spec of the machine would suggest for complex drawings etc etc.
They picked Manjaro because it is a rolling release with an Enterprise support option as well as other Enterprise based services...I didn't even know Manjaro had come that far it had been quite a while since I used Manjaro...I've since switched back to Manjaro (from Endeavour) and it really has come a long way...CachyOS is another one to watch as well. I recently put that on one of my laptops and it's very performant.
25 years of history shows me that average sysadmins are very very good at bellyaching, and fucking useless at doing.
FTFY
It's not *just* the users that are fault for not picking alternate solutions...sysadmins are sometimes just as guilty. I know plenty of sysadmins that point blank refuse to touch Linux in any way, shape or form...they just want their AD, NTFS file and print server and some cloud based shit to manage.
What I've done in the past to argue my case for Linux is to build out a demonstration machine that has everything in it that the typical worker in the company needs in order to operate. I then demonstrate the build by showing how business critical processes are performed within that environment. There is no ambiguity this way...the one thing you can rely on is that the company understands it's own processes and if they can see those processes being executed in a different environment in a similar way (or better way) arguing for Linux becomes a lot less abstract and a lot more tangible.
It hasn't been legally safe to use such services for personal data since GDPR, even worse since the CLOUD Act but maintaining trade with the US meant that it suited the arm of the EU that handled that sort of thing to pretend it was and keep inventing privacy fig-leaves even as each one was torn off in court actions. Now that pretence is no longer needed.
As these things come under closer scrutiny in the EU HMG is going to have to be careful not to lose equivalence or the UK's interests could also be impacted.
It all sounds rather like the time Munich decided to go all in on Linux. MS spent a LOT of money to reverse that decision, even setting up their EU headquarters in a State that no longer used their products. I mean, why would they do that? Well, clearly it was so they could "create" lots of local jobs and then threaten to make all those jobs "go away", while schmoozing" the local political incumbents.
Passed through about 7 years ago, and went to the ESO planetarium and a lovely Biergarten. I spend much more time in Austria, though, although technically I visit Germany about twice as often, as I'm almost always flying through Frankfurt or Munich to get there. Oh yeah, I'm assuming the Munich Airport stops don't count, being what they are. Anyway, here's to Biergarten Mühlenpark! -->
Munich is lovely: warm, green, clean, sunny and cosmopolitan. Drive along the wide, smooth road from northern Munich toward nearby Augsburg and on the way you'll see some wooden towers that wouldn't look out of place in a wild west fort. Nearby are the bases of huts and a substantial building. Yes, it's Dachau concentration camp. Two hours there will change the rest of your life. Never trust a totalitarian regime, be it Nazi, Russian, Chinese or the good ol' U.S. of A.
They just need to make shareholders happy, and the world gets fragmented so they also follow this trend. Confidential compute is already available in European datacenters and companies can use those to protect data from exfiltration into US. It is abit more expensive and complicated but it is there.
MPs have seen the light, I'd imagine security services and policy makers have known for a while.
And you can realistically switch, because exactly what does Microsoft offer that is novel or unique?
But it won't be frictionless, and right now, if you switch tomorrow, you will get a tsunami of complaints because the UI isn't exactly as expected.
Until a majority of people won't even touch Microsoft because US, then a switch will be easy.
You could have a PR campaign to compute how much of Window/Office/365/Teams licensing goes to Trump, to show people who complain they cannot make do with LibreOffice and email (standard compliant email, not outlook).
exactly what does Microsoft offer that is novel or unique?
Integration.
You hand over some cash every month, you get a suite of stuff that appears to the user as if it works together. We all know it's a pile of rotting {insert derogatory terms here} underneath, all held together with gaffer tape and wishful thinking, but it does mostly "just work".
Yes, it's possible to replicate most of it, to some extent, but that's a heck of a lot of work. What you'll struggle to manage is seamless login across all devices & services, files transparently synced wherever you log in, files that multiple people can work on simultaneously (yes, that's actually quite a nifty feature in Excel when working with a shared file), and stuff like that.
you should be using a proper database application
You are preaching to the choir, it's one of those constant irritations that so much of what we do is an Excel sheet because it's the hammer in the toolbox and we don't have the database screwdriver we should be using.
When you constantly see stuff screwed up because the sheet isn't well built (and some stuff protected from accidental change), and it can't cope if someone sorts the data, and it doesn't even have the concept of null, and there's no referential integrity, and not even level zero data normalisation - as someone who I like to think has some professionalism ... it's painful. And then you get projects where you've spent a couple of months checking all the drawings and data for a system, where at least half of that time was manually cross-checking what a database would do in minutes with not very complicated queries (I did find some errors that would have had a significant cost to fix later). But then when you are restricted to (as the IT dept. put it in one blog that I suspect wasn't supposed to be widely seen) "the best Microsoft tools for the job" (yes, someone actually stated that) as a matter of corporate policy, as a decent but easy to use database isn't in that toolset, then everyone uses Excel because it looks like it's a tool for the job to someone with no idea what a database should look like.
But any time I bring this up, colleagues don't see what the problem is - and in any case "what else do we use ?" I went MS free at home a long time ago, at work we're afflicted with M365, evergreen (so it changes randomly), multi-factor authentication because moving everything to the cloud made it inherently less secure than on-prem, and the Win 11 juggernaught is looking horribly big and close (oh yes, and we'll have to do more typing to log in because "Microsoft say we'll need to use full email addresses"). FFS, why on earth does a large government department allow it's IT policy to be dictated by a supplier, and for good measure a supplier subject to the whims and law in an unstable foreign country ?
Oh that feels better now after a good rant.
Trust microsoft.....
this is of course hte same Microsoft that jad Russian & Chinese spy's running about their systems...
and the same Ms , system , I have managed to thwart the security & login systems several times just during normal working.
And the same MS who seem annoyed that i wont work for free debugging their security systems.
the same company who string me along with their engineering team for 3-4 months over 5 separate security reports , only to give me a link to their forums where i can request improvements...
Definitely a company i'd feel safe putting all my data with.
"European techies and lobbyists are pressing the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, to create a sovereign infrastructure."
Yeah, that'll fix it. Typical EU posturing. While the US developed a rocket stage that can return to earth and park itself on its launch pad, the best the EU could produce from all it's self-appointed 'experts' and lobbyists is a bottle top that remains attached to the plastic bottle.
By the time the EU create their own cloud, the US will have invented the cloud's replacement.
"The US" didn't develop shit. That is SpaceX property that the US taxpayer merely paid for.
We used to have a belief if we paid for it, it was ours though.
Too bad we're so debased we would rather pay for someone's dalliances with profitability and then put him in charge of the government to counter waste and fraud lol.
I realize Euros play by rules but they need to realize we're the same as the Russians.
FISA warrants and courts mean Microsoft doesn't answer to a "real" court of law, and that ignores the new dance move called "DOGE Double": US government gets an injunction against its actions and the cops/executive force help them exfiltrate data anyway.
Maybe none of that exists. After all if it did surely Smith's post would explain how they deal with is - and with the CLOUD Act.* So if he doesn't mention it it must all have gone away. We can trust him with things like that, can't we?
* He welcomed that when it was passed. Not because it enabled them to look after user interests but because it gave them clarity about not doing so.
You won't have the chance to go to court.
You'll get a National Security Letter telling you what you need to do to, that you are forced to comply and that you are forbidden from telling anyone about it.
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Trust Americans ? With the lot in power noone in their right minds will trust Americans , companies or government. Trust , once lost , is gone forever. You can forgive but never forget. It will always live in your mind , back there , suspicion will be forever. Best thing to do is let go of them and their products. Microsoft cannot guarantee anything. They try not to loose customers and make promises because the trust we had in the USA is gone. For good reasons. Time to let go , time to cut the umbelical and develop our own software and infrastructure. Investing as much in local solutions is going to be beneficial to our economy and not the USA's. That's a good thing. Too bad for them. They voted for that clown and his circus again. They need to learn their lesson and that's through their wallets .. it's the only thing Americans understand. The best way to hurt an American is closing our wallets. Time to fight back.
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