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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."
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 -----------------------------------
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.
Don't pay much attention to the news, do you?
https://www.rt.com/news/256729...
Oh, we've been paying attention. Question is, how much of these "anti" monitoring actions being taken are we supposed to believe are legitimate?
Hmmm, look what I found in TFA:
"However, the BND will continue to garner telephone calls and fax messages for Washington as this service falls under a different agreement."
So, requests merely hitting the BND in a different fucking format are a loophole big enough to drive a fleet of Mack trucks through. Gee, why am I not fucking surprised...
Behind our backs is where they've been illegally operating for years. Why the hell ignorant citizens of any country think governments will actually grow ethics and morals out of this is beyond even common sense.
The US has owned Germany since the end of WWII. Microsoft knows this. This is pure deception on their part in order to gain back some business while still complying with spying demands.
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."
As government expands the economy and jobs disappear.
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Just one more data point
At best, rt are beholden to different masters; masters with motives that a *Russian* history student would be far more apt to perceive.
What Microsoft created here is a "plausible deniability". They are neither the owner nor the operator of the computers. So if the judge argues that the data is stored on the german servers, Microsoft can say that they asked their german service provider, but the german service provider refused (rightfully, as Deutsche Telekom is incorporated in Germany and subject to german laws), and thus Microsoft simply can't answer the judge's request.
I guess this Mensa member couldn't figure out that Private Eye is a parody paper.
Since I have been reading Private Eye since its first issue in 1961, that is not true. And, in fact, Private Eye has never been a "parody paper"; it has been a satirical magazine, which is something rather different. Journalists like Richard Ingrams, Paul Foot, and even Peter Cook the great satirical comedian went ruthlessly for the jugular with absolutely no respect for person or position. That was what made Private Eye worth reading - its complete and utter lack of deference or political correctness.
If that tradition were still alive today, Private Eye would be ripping to shreds the claims of the US government to represent the unique, exceptional, indispensable nation and to be the supreme global arbiter of right and wrong. It might well maintain a running total of innocent civilians killed and maimed in the dozens of nations that the USA has viciously attacked without the slightest provocation or legal pretext.
Instead, it indulges in unfunny abuse and kicks to the head of those who are already down. Goodbye to the grand old British tradition of always siding with the underdog. Private Eye, like the BBC, The Times, The Guardian, and the American media, proudly and unhesitatingly sides with the alpha predator. It's not funny, it's not clever, it's not satirical, and it's not decent.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.