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European Commission's use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection law for EU
- fermigier 3y ago[flagged]
- SiempreViernes 3y agoTo me there's something very likeable about the highest offices in the land getting a public reprimand for not keeping things in order properly, it lets me dream I live in a society with equality before the law.
- veltas 3y agoYes, and they are 'leading by example', they start by scrutinising their own practices.
- dang 3y agoPlease don't post summary comments like this. I know they're well-intentioned, but they're not in the spirit of this site. HN threads are supposed to be curious conversations. Also, we want people to respond to the article, not to a summary. Links to past explanations in case helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39572941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39572941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39529403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39529403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39504137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39504137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39308859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39308859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187161
- belter 3y agoThe use of LibreOffice should be mandated by law for any EU or Governmental departments. But then what would 16 Lobbyists do in Brussels all day? https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/microsoft-corporation?rid=0801162959-21 https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/microsoft-corporation?rid...
- SiempreViernes 3y agoDon't worry about 16 lobbyist, I'm sure the oil industry can put them to use no problem.
- t0bia_s 3y agoGreen industry as well.
- bayindirh 3y agoWhile LibreOffice works like a charm on Linux, it's way behind in Windows and macOS. Microsoft's tools use the screen space much more efficiently under both. While I understand that looks isn't everything (I use Eclipse with great joy), it's to the point that hinders productivity in these tools.
- notpushkin 3y agoMy current favourite is OnlyOffice – pretty concise interface and good compatibility. Unfortunately, there's no build for Linux on Arm yet, so I'm stuck with LibreOffice (not too bad either).
- nerdponx 3y agoIsn't OnlyOffice browser-based? Or is that something else?
- notpushkin 3y agoIt is, but they also package it as a desktop app using CEF. (It is one of maybe two Chromium-based desktop apps that I like, the other one being VSCodium.)
- akvadrako 3y agoIt's a shady closed source product though. I've also encountered plenty of bugs so moved back to Libreoffice.
- RedShift1 3y agoEurope (and the rest of the world!) really needs proper alternatives to Microsoft's cloud offerings!
- jlpcsl 3y agoWe just need to start using what libre and opensource software is already available. That is what every public institutions should use if they are serious about privacy and sovereignty
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoOn the contrary, we need to fund their improvement, and use them once they are ready
- cesarb 3y ago> and use them once they are ready There's always some tiny little thing which is missing for someone. If you demand 100% completion before you can switch, you will never switch. > we need to fund their improvement, and use them once they are ready That would mean funding for a long time, without getting any tangible results (since you refuse to use it until it's "ready") until the very end. The end result would be that the funding is abandoned after a while, and you never switch.
- prmoustache 3y agoThere is no such thing as funding and wait for it to be ready. I once worked for a company that was building among other things a videoconference app. The quality of the product only really started to increase when employees were sent home during covid and they started using their own tool.
- nullindividual 3y agoThose tools are 25-30+ years old in the making, both client and server software. Making a true alternative would take an army of developers many years.
- shortsunblack 3y agoEuropean Commission's disdain for rule of law gets demonstrated once again. First with Schrems I, Schrems II cases, where the commission kept editing documents struck down by CJEU by couple sentences only for the same document (but renamed) to be struck down once again, then now. See Safe Harbor, EU-US Privacy Shield and the "new" TADPF.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoIs it a coincidence that all of these issues seem to be related to the United States? You don’t see this kind of treatment even for domestic issues, let alone third countries. US is kind of above the law on most issues.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoI think it’s more like ‘we don’t have a European MS365 or AWS, so our companies and governments are over-indexed on American software, therefore we have to go along with the Americans or we cripple our digital infrastructure’
- miohtama 3y agoDon't worry. This will be fixed with one more regulation.
- marcosdumay 3y agoWhat means the US companies are above the law. That's not as pragmatic a statement as people try to make it. So, also, I don't really believe the feeling is completely honest instead of driven by propaganda.
- 6510 3y agoNo, the same US provides plenty of tools to do it in countless other ways.
- pembrook 3y agoTurns out it’s kind of hard to tell the US to eff off when the peaceful existence of your entire region relies on the US military. And there’s no alternative. When left to build their own strong domestic militaries, the Europeans tend to quickly start conquering each other. See history. If you give the middle finger to the US a little too much, bye bye NATO, and then we see how fun Europe gets when regular programming resumes.
- junto 3y agoMicrosoft really doesn’t have much competition in the collaborative unified office suite experience. Closest competitor would be Google, as if it’s any better. Fine grained permissions control and tight integrations into applications such as Outlook and Teams make the D365 experience easy and attractive for organizations to use. Microsoft does provide the tools to keep data storage compliant with EU data rules. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/eudb/eu-data-boundary-learn https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy/eudb/eu-data-bound...
- sam_lowry_ 3y ago> Microsoft does provide the tools to keep data storage compliant with EU data rules. This is exactly what the press release above disproves.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cesarb 3y ago> Microsoft does provide the tools to keep data storage compliant with EU data rules. It doesn't matter; the CLOUD Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act) means that, even if Microsoft (or any other USA company) takes every care to keep data storage compliant with EU data rules, that data can still be transferred to the USA. The only way around it is to have a completely independent non-USA company hold the EU data; I've heard that Microsoft used that trick in the past, but they stopped doing it for some reason.
- miohtama 3y agoCost. Here is the translated announcement https://hackernoon.com/microsoft-announces-the-end-of-the-germany-cloud-431bbe407b94 https://hackernoon.com/microsoft-announces-the-end-of-the-ge...
- prmoustache 3y ago> Microsoft really doesn’t have much competition in the collaborative unified office suite experience. I keep reading that, and I somewhat agree, yet I keep seeing a majority of people still exchanging docx files on email or even teams( by uploading new documents each time!) instead of using the collaborative features of office 365.
- dappermanneke 3y agothe EC should be forced to use the libre suite, thereby permanently crippling it as a functional institution
- username332211 3y agoSurprise, surprise, the commission can't follow it's own regulations. I hope they also hold the Commission and member state governments to account w.r.t. regulation 2016/679 (more commonly known as GDPR). Not because I care very much about personal data, but because knowing how things are done in civil service organizations, all government business will grind to a halt for a decade or so.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AlanYx 3y agoDoes anyone know how section 702 of FISA fits into this? I was under the impression that s.702 allows secret, warrantless access to data stored in European subsidiaries of US corporations even if the data is domiciled in the EU. The linked article talks about limiting international data transfers, but that wouldn't fully address the s.702 issue, would it? Do they also have to ensure that the data is subject to the new DPF framework negotiated with the US (replacement for Privacy Shield)?
- esbranson 3y agoCorrect, US law allows US spy agencies to spy, in secret as it were. The US has a thing called the United States Code with most relevant laws in order, this section you refer being 50 U.S.C. 1881a, under title 50 with the apt heading "War and National Defense". I think it's doubtful that Europeans know their own laws, but if we could, it's probably reciprocal in most if not all EU countries. As if foreign spying were conducted in public, or was somehow not authorized by the country doing the spying.
- maxzorazon 3y agoI am in an antenna of IPCC in France and we are currently evaluating collaborative suites. On the shortlist are M365, Collabora online + LibreOffice and OnlyOffice + NextCloud. I am having a look at making a small portion of IPCC move from Microsoft Word to LibreOffice Writer.
- Const-me 3y agoMicrosoft has multiple data centers online within EU: Ireland, Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden. Is there any evidence of the transfers of personal data outside the EU?
- f1refly 3y agoWhy would there be evidence when the US can just order to delete the evidence after exfiltrating everything they want?
- Const-me 3y agoIf you’re right and no such evidence exists, seems the original article is an entirely false accusation? On your new topic, I doubt Microsoft would risk their multi-billion/year cloud business complying with illegal requests from the US government. And there’s a relevant execution order signed by President Biden in 2022: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/07/fact-sheet-president-biden-signs-executive-order-to-implement-the-european-union-u-s-data-privacy-framework/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
- amai 3y agoLog files, backups and MS content delivery network might easily leak data to servers outside of the EU. As far as I know MS is even admitting this: https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/11/microsoft-eu-data-boundary-phase-2-complete/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/11/microsoft-eu-data-boundary...
- miohtama 3y ago1. Create far-reaching regulations and laws 2. Fail to follow them yourself 3. Profit?
- torginus 3y agoIt is still beyond me why a common tool as a word processor needs to be an always online web-app. This cloud thing to this day feels like an inferior technical solution that's being forced by big companies at the detriment of end users, not to mention the privacy downsides. And I say that as someone who earns his keep doing cloud stuff.
- onion2k 3y agoIt is still beyond me why a common tool as a word processor needs to be an always online web-app. It doesn't, and Word works fine entirely offline. If you want live collaboration on a document, or integration with AI, or if you want your employees not to have Word installed because that requires an IT department to manage at scale instead of running the app in a browser, then you need a network connection.
- torginus 3y ago> If you want live collaboration on a document, I have never wanted that ever. There are wikis with markdown for that. > Integration with AI AI still creeps me out to this day. Why would I want Microsoft to ingest my documents to train their next gen AI blackbox on it? Besides, the only thing AI can do is take the information the document has, and say it with more words. > if you want your employees not to have Word installed Got it, package management is still busted, and MS is disincentivised from fixing it.
- e_i_pi_2 3y agoMy main use case has been when you need to work on a document on multiple computers, or collaboratively. In that case it solves a big problem of dealing with flash drives, different versions, and email attachments/updates
- kkfx 3y agoMandate something is different than allowing something. IF/When you want to have public versioning of a document, even multiple hands writing together with multiple cursors visible on all participant screens you can have something on-line. There is no need to mandate be online, except surveillance capitalism. Another story is the fact no wise user have reasons to have modern office suite to work on office task, but that's a more complex and broad topic about regressive evolution and computer illiteracy...
- amai 3y agoEuropeans commission's use of any software from US-based companies infringes data protection law for EU.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]