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Microsoft Putting Servers In Germany To Keep User Data Away From US Intelligence (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Ever since the Snowden leaks, people and businesses in foreign countries have been wary about hosting sensitive data on U.S. soil for fear intelligence agencies would be able to comb through it at their leisure. Microsoft has announced a plan to combat those worries, saying they will host infrastructure for Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics CRM at data centers in Germany. In addition, the data centers themselves will not be run by Microsoft, but by a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, which eliminates more legal avenues for U.S. agencies to access the data stored there. "The two data centers will be based in Magdeburg and Frankfurt am Main, with Microsoft stressing this 'data trustee' model means it will not have any access to customer data without the consent of the trustee, and that it cannot therefore be compelled — 'even by a third party' — to hand over customer data."
This just in... German authorities access data on behalf of USA in accordance with intel sharing agreements.
The US are already spying on Germany.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07...
Summation 2
From Wikipedia: "The Dagger Complex is a US military base in Darmstadt (Germany), close to Griesheim [about 20km south of Frankfurt am Main]. [...] The complex is operated by the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Building 4373 within the complex houses the NSA's European Cryptologic Center (ECC), the agency's principal SIGINT processing, analysis and reporting center in Germany."
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
This is an illusion of combat of the worries.
When one hand pointed to the physical presence of the servers and told "it is mine", servers were moved, just to defend from the legal argument. Then the other hand pays no attention to the physical location of the data, because, you know, it does not that matter where the data is. If it is online it is accessible to Stasi (or whatever the new name is) which, as we already know, shares with others.
it cannot therefore be compelled — 'even by a third party' — to hand over customer data.
They might not be able to hand over the data, but I imagine they could still be found in contempt for not doing so.
Judge: "Hand over the data."
Microsoft: "We are physically incapable of doing so."
Judge: "Not my problem."
But just today all news sites over Germany reported that the German BND (the direct successor of the Nazi "Organization Gehlen") has been spying on allies, too, including France and German(!) diplomats.
Germany is a great place to do benchmark testing.
So, every communication and bit of data is stored on a German server by a German company?
This is a great win for the National Security Agenty in the United States.
The NSA is not "legally" allowed to spy on USA Citizens. Great Briton and other countries have similar laws about their own citizens (for now.)
But a German company and its servers are German not American. So the NSA is perfectly in the right to hack, intercept or interrupt those severs in the interest of national security.
Sure, the current USA government can't publicly compel the release of USA citizens, but everything else is now on the table once your data is communicated to or kept by a non-citizen.
The only question now is: is Microsoft Word the format of choice for foreign terrorists? It's currently the standard for corporate ones.
Snowden's documents revealed that there's often close cooperation between the german intelligence and the NSA. So this legal arrangement might protect your data from a US court order, but not from the NSA. In general, the only jurisdictions that are unlikely to cooperate with the US intelligence are those of US adversaries, like Russia or China.
The only western country that has refused to cooperate with american intelligence and LEAs multiple times is... Vatican City. However, it's too artistically wonderful and too tiny to host ugly, massive data centers. You don't want to see fiber optics and heat sinks in front of a Michelangelo's, do you?
this wouldn't change anything XD
It is no more effective than security theatre at the airport...just makes you feel warm and fuzzy having defied the evil Americans.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Let's see if this so called arms-length distancing can survive rubber-host access to the data.
The physical geographic location of the server is irrelevant, the data still has to get there and back. It is already well known that all underseas cables and satellite links are heavily monitored by the world's spy agencies. Whether it be the US, France, UK, China, Russia, or Germany it makes no difference. Whatever you do on the Internet is being monitored by somebody. "Hiding" a server from the US "authorities" in Germany with German employees won't do anything but be a PR buzzword for the ignorant.
I have a hard time accepting that Microsoft is actually trying to keep data from any government. Putting a database in Germany that will be managed by German a communications company may make data collection easier for both governments while providing Microsoft the opportunity to claim security.
Why, then, should Microsoft be able to have any profits from such a relationship? Oh, that's right... they'll never declare them in the US anyway.
Germany is no better, and talking to security experts in the know they are actually getting worse. Microsoft has never had your best interests at heart. Google, Apple, Facebook, etc are all different costumes for the same wolves.
The article snippet being used by Slashdot is slightly misleading. It's not the spy agencies that this is designed to protect data from but the illegal overreach of the US dept of injustice which claims their warrants have worldwide jurisdiction.
This is not really a surprise. One of the ways you get around domestic anti-surveillance laws is to ask some friendly allies to do it for you. Basically you spy on their citizens and they spy on yours. Each government can then say it is not infringing its own citizen's rights.
I believe the USA - UK - Canada - Australia - New Zealand have a reasonably formal agreement to this effect.
The irony is that over the last few years it has become apparent that most westerners really don't give a stuff about whether their government is spying on them or not, so all that effort was largely a waste of time.
By moving this data to a foreign country doesn't that mean the NSA can hack at will and no need for any warrant rubberstamping at all ?
Sure I guess it protects microsoft from a warrant issued in the US but it doesn't protect the data at all.
Put the datacenters in Hollywood.
The NSA is allowed to spy on foreign entities. That is their mission.
Soon, they will be barred from spying on US assets.
However in reality - they will continue to spy on everyone and everything.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
To me, it just seems like Microsoft wants to look like they're trying to protect data from the US government's snooping, rather than actually working to protect data from US government snooping.
Germany is one of the last places I'd go to escape US intelligence agencies. Microsoft would've been more believable if they'd partnered up with relatively neutral parties like Iceland or Switzerland.
The idea that they're trying is using technical measures to keep the CIA and friends out, and the legal protection to stave off warrents. It's a decent idea when you think about it - it's not bulletproof, but a step up from existing measures. Furthermore, it makes it more illegal - going after an American on foreign land isn't domestic surveillance and it's not foreign surveillance either, making it harder to justify, and as such hopefully making whoever approves this crap more worried about the potential reprecussions. And that I think is the real purpose of this: not to make users immune to the intrusion, but simply to make it more difficult. I don't mind a fight being up, even if it is yet to be determined how effective it is.
Who thought we'd ever see a big corporation use a loophole for the benefit of its customers? I almost want to say that's what really scares me, if bribery didn't work.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The Gehlen Org had nothing to do with the Nazis. It was founded by the Americans in 1946 to counter the Soviets.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization
so it's kind of like how some people are sent to a hole in another country and tortured? doesn't Germany have a high level of data retention time?
If you bothered to read the article you would note, they are doing this to appease the Europeans/Germany not US citizens. This move has nothing to do with US citizens data, that will still be in the USA. Its a logic move to host their data in one of their countries instead of the US.
NSA Agent1: No.2, after Snowden leaks, people have become wary of our methods. They are using strong encryption and are refusing to host data in US servers.
NSA Agent2: No.1, I have an idea. Let us spread the idea that having data hosted in Germany's server is absolutely safe. *winks*
NSA Agent1: That's a splendid idea!! Bill, what do you say?
Bill: Excellent, I will inform our boys at M$ corp to spread this idea right away.
This is to allow MS to continue to collect data on European customers without running afoul of the recent EU slam of 'Safe Harbor'.
Marketing spin turns this into "We are protecting you from spies" bullshit.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Rosenheim just down the way. Can see the Alps from there. What could possibly be wrong?
As government expands the economy and jobs disappear.
...
Just one more data point
MicroSoft must have enough petty cash to buy their own nation by now.
Why bother trying to change or conform to another nation's laws - just buy one and make your own up.
MS Monopolis sounds like a good name for it.
What you are describing is a usual practice.That is how things work in real life. Many large corporations have individuals or even entire departments on their payroll who do the "national interests" stuff. In telecommunications' company some of the people in these groups provide a redundant access.
How do you think NSA "knew" where and how to "hack" Google? It is not smart to get the work done the hard way.
Translation: German intelligence is miffed that it is hard to spy on Germany citizens when their data sits on a US server; therefore, the German government pressures companies like Microsoft to move their servers to Germany, where the German government can spy on them much more easily. Having the servers in Germany not only makes it technically much easier to spy on users, it also allows the German police and spy agencies to demand data and issue gag orders, or even seize physical hardware if need be.
Will this reduce NSA spying on German citizens? Possibly, it's hard to say. But NSA spying has always been of little consequence to Germans. What Germans have to worry about is German agencies (e.g., BKA, BND) going on fishing expeditions through their E-mail and documents, looking for signs of illegal (under German law) political views and speech, and behaviors that allow blackmail of criminal suspects, public figures, and politicians.
Should Microsoft have done this? Of course: if that's what Germans want, they should get it; after all, US businesses make arrangements with much worse governments than the German government. Let's just not kid ourselves that this is for the benefit of Germans or their privacy.
... jobs to move offshore.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
> Microsoft Putting Servers In Germany To Keep User Data Away From US Intelligence
Germany has been , from 1945 to to this day, under american, british and french military occupation. Only the soviet russians left, but the number of "Entente Cordiale" soldiers, tanks and warplanes still garrisoned on teutonic soil slightly exceeds the numbers of german military. Thus Germany is about as independent as Japan or those pacific ocean micro-nation protectorates, whom USA used as H-bomb testing grounds to protect them...
Microsoft's hopes are soap bubbles. NSA will just tell Berlin to sit and beckon and the german shephard will obey like any good dog should!
Hosting with Deutsche Telekom is really safe.
As soon as somebody accesses the data, they'll have their high-speed quota maxed out in an instant and their bandwidth reduced to a agonising 200 baud trickle.
I expect most people to give up accessing your data before they can get anything meaningful.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yesterday M$ announced major data centre expansions in those countries, for Azure, DynamicCRM and other cloud offerings (link. I imagine the lower corporate tax rates had something to do with it!
(this is not a
if data cannot be legally obtained.
Of course it won't do anything about ELINT.
I thought it was comical to see this headline, as if data stored in Germany would be safe from US intelligence.
I thought Germany was NSA central in Europe.
If you're worried about the NSA, this won't do a bit of good. If, however, you're worried about the DOJ, this may be an adequate defense. Which means that it's likely to be a safe place to hide corporate shenanigans, but not something the intelligence agencies are interested in.
So who benefits?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They saw the breakup between Germany and the CIA
It seems more like they're building data centres in Germany because it makes it much easier to serve Europe from inside Europe.
I doubt they'll be storing any USA customer data there.
Maybe also because Europe frowns upon American companies shipping European customer data off to the USA.
if they can be hacked from another jurisdiction. This is a lawful method in some countries. Hide your data in another country and your servers can be lawfully targeted. All that relocation prevents is large scale data harvesting. And that is without considering how compromised Microsoft probably is by insiders, along with every other large company on the planet.
Encrypt, then stripe the data across countries so you need cooperation from everyone to get anything (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
If Microsoft is afraid of America you should be too.
This is so out of hand.
Both Republicans and Democrats so shitty.
A German company will be operating the data center, but Microsoft will still be writing and presumably operating the software.
Or are they making an Office 365 install like running Apache and any ol' ISP can run a copy?
In a world where any computer can talk to any other computer, the physical location of the small bits of wire and magnets holding your data isn't the most important thing to worry about.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
My last comment was wrongly formatted. This is how it should read.
There was never any doubt about who shot down that aircraft. The US never admitted responsibility, but formally regretted the loss of life and handed over tens of millions of dollars. The crew received combat zone medals for operating in a combat zone, which they had. There were no decorations for shooting down a civilian airliner.
And what about the criminal prosecution, which is being so enthusiastically pursued in the case of MH17? Where was the world-wide condemnation? Why did the prime minister of Australia never declare that he would confront the president of the USA and demand an explanation?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
OPEC Oil is exclusively sold in US$
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
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