5 ms·

The Comission doesn't care about privacy and wants tighter integration with the US (for the companies). The parliament and the European Court of Justice want st

The Comission doesn't care about privacy and wants tighter integration with the US (for the companies). The parliament and the European Court of Justice want stronger privacy (for the people). That is the reason for the drama over the last years concerning Privacy Shield etc.

moi2388 3y ago
Yeah, they will do whatever they can to keep our data flowing to the US so that their intelligence agencies and data brokers can extract the info and sell it back legally
- close04 3y ago
  This is taking it a bit far. The choice is a lot simpler in most cases, between the loss of privacy and the loss of productivity the choice is usually for the former. Eventually for almost anything "computers" you'll loop back to a US company. Where do you think every EU company and institution is going "to the cloud"? Hetzner? OVH? Or AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI? The background being that there's little competition for the M365 ecosystem in general, least of all in the EU. EU has homegrown "bits and pieces" that could, maybe, somehow, go head to head with the equivalent bits from M365. But as soon as you need more of them you hit the integration and synergies wall and the advantages of M365 get compounded.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    I'm surprised those agencies cannot setup their own infrastructure to be honest. We're not talking about high volumes of traffic, this is mostly internal tools for few hundreds/thousands people, of those few dozens at best concurrently connected? With all due respect those are few servers worth of hardware plus redundancy, plus all the security you want.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - realityking 3y ago
      The European Commission (which is the institution in question here) has a staff of about 32000 people. Other institutions (parliament, the courts, independent bodies) have their own staff. And while heavily concentrated in Brussels, they’re spread throughout the entire EU and also include 144 delegations abroad. This is not a small setup.
      - epolanski 3y ago
        This is still nothing particularly heavy, I've run with systems with far more concurrent users a decade ago on a handful of servers. Imho the real devil is the reliance on the suite itself, which is hard to replace, especially when you get mail/calendar/sharepoint/office/etc all bundled in one.
        troupo 3y ago
        > This is still nothing particularly heavy, I've run with systems with far more concurrent users a decade ago on a handful of servers. The question isn't about "concurrent users". The question is about processes, documents, revisions, access levels, interdepartmental access, policies, and a billion other details.
  - moi2388 3y ago
    It’s not about storing data with Microsoft and the like. It’s about allowing them to send that data back to the US, which allows their intelligence and data brokers to mine the data. That would not be allowed if it stayed in the EU, and there is literally no technical reason why it has to be sent to the US ever.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago
This is also the reason there is a democracy deficit at the heart of the EU, the European Commission is unelected.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  Yes, there is not enough democracy in the world, just like with the UKs house of lords or the US supreme court. Unelected people making important decisions isn't democratic. Also this Electoral College thing in the US. People should be able to directly vote for the US president instead of an "Electoral College". One person, one vote. Ursula von der Leyen wants to be relected, but people in the EU are not asked about this. If find this highly suspicious. I also for example find the UKs habit suspicious, where the change of a prime minister does not lead to a general election. The UK probably has the largest number of unelected prime ministers of any western country. And it's not voted for like the US president (Electoral College aside). After being voted into the parliament with a majority, an UK party could elect any prime minister they want. I've recently talked to someone from Switzerland about all of this, where much more is voted on by the general public, and how this changes peoples mind, about how they feel responsible for politics. People don't see a dividing line between politics and themselves. Wish more countries would be like Switzerland.

moi2388 3y ago

Yeah, they will do whatever they can to keep our data flowing to the US so that their intelligence agencies and data brokers can extract the info and sell it back legally

close04 3y ago
This is taking it a bit far. The choice is a lot simpler in most cases, between the loss of privacy and the loss of productivity the choice is usually for the former. Eventually for almost anything "computers" you'll loop back to a US company. Where do you think every EU company and institution is going "to the cloud"? Hetzner? OVH? Or AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI? The background being that there's little competition for the M365 ecosystem in general, least of all in the EU. EU has homegrown "bits and pieces" that could, maybe, somehow, go head to head with the equivalent bits from M365. But as soon as you need more of them you hit the integration and synergies wall and the advantages of M365 get compounded.
- epolanski 3y ago
  I'm surprised those agencies cannot setup their own infrastructure to be honest. We're not talking about high volumes of traffic, this is mostly internal tools for few hundreds/thousands people, of those few dozens at best concurrently connected? With all due respect those are few servers worth of hardware plus redundancy, plus all the security you want.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - realityking 3y ago
    The European Commission (which is the institution in question here) has a staff of about 32000 people. Other institutions (parliament, the courts, independent bodies) have their own staff. And while heavily concentrated in Brussels, they’re spread throughout the entire EU and also include 144 delegations abroad. This is not a small setup.
    - epolanski 3y ago
      This is still nothing particularly heavy, I've run with systems with far more concurrent users a decade ago on a handful of servers. Imho the real devil is the reliance on the suite itself, which is hard to replace, especially when you get mail/calendar/sharepoint/office/etc all bundled in one.
      - troupo 3y ago
        > This is still nothing particularly heavy, I've run with systems with far more concurrent users a decade ago on a handful of servers. The question isn't about "concurrent users". The question is about processes, documents, revisions, access levels, interdepartmental access, policies, and a billion other details.
- moi2388 3y ago
  It’s not about storing data with Microsoft and the like. It’s about allowing them to send that data back to the US, which allows their intelligence and data brokers to mine the data. That would not be allowed if it stayed in the EU, and there is literally no technical reason why it has to be sent to the US ever.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago

This is also the reason there is a democracy deficit at the heart of the EU, the European Commission is unelected.

KingOfCoders 3y ago
Yes, there is not enough democracy in the world, just like with the UKs house of lords or the US supreme court. Unelected people making important decisions isn't democratic. Also this Electoral College thing in the US. People should be able to directly vote for the US president instead of an "Electoral College". One person, one vote. Ursula von der Leyen wants to be relected, but people in the EU are not asked about this. If find this highly suspicious. I also for example find the UKs habit suspicious, where the change of a prime minister does not lead to a general election. The UK probably has the largest number of unelected prime ministers of any western country. And it's not voted for like the US president (Electoral College aside). After being voted into the parliament with a majority, an UK party could elect any prime minister they want. I've recently talked to someone from Switzerland about all of this, where much more is voted on by the general public, and how this changes peoples mind, about how they feel responsible for politics. People don't see a dividing line between politics and themselves. Wish more countries would be like Switzerland.