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Microsoft Opens Up Azure Cloud in Germany Even It Can't Access (windowsitpro.com)
Reader v3rgEz writes: International customers are becoming increasingly concerned about the U.S.'s data snooping practices, and it appears Microsoft has devised a solution to make them happy: Set up Azure cloud in a foreign region. Because it's under the technical ownership of a German company named Deutsche Telekom, even Microsoft doesn't have access to the data. The move is not surprising, but it could set a precedent that encourages others to move their corporate data away from U.S. shores to countries that take a friendlier view of encryption and data privacy. From the official blog post, "Microsoft has -- in this new model -- no rights at all to access customer data. Only for special purpose like a support call from a customer a temporary access will be granted by the Data Trustee to the Microsoft engineer, and only for the specified area. After that time (using a technology similar to what you might know as JIT) all access is revoked automatically. So to repeat: Access is granted to the Microsoft engineer only by the Data Trustee. Microsoft has no way to grant that access to itself."
I'm freaked out right now. Whats going on here?
a German company named Deutsche Telekom
I think I've heard of them. They're a niche local exchange phone carrier, right?
Just a little Mom and Pop business in Germany with an $81 Billion USD market capitalization. :)
I think most people would associate JIT with Just-In-Time compilers, but I fail to see how that translates to credentialing.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The only way they could not possibly access the data was if they did not develop the software and consequently could not use their update mechanisms, back doors and other established methods to gain access when so requested. So is the author trying to tell us Microsoft is no longer the software developing company behind Azure and Windows?
Yet again, laws matter.
If the US wants to keep data centers in the US, it needs to understand that making draconian laws is NOT the way to go about it.
Simply put, right now, I would NOT be building a data center in the US if my primary customer base was outside of the US, period.
After betraying their customers for years by doing stupid shit like uploading their encryption keys to OneDrive by default, Microsoft wants to jump in on the fame and honor that Apple is getting for refusing to make malware in order to unlock a terrorist's iPhone. Hurray, off-shore data lodging! Ultimately though this'll mean nothing but a teeny bit more latency for PRISM, which Microsoft has oh-so-willingly cooperated with the NSA to power for years.
>Because it's under the technical ownership of a German company named Deutsche Telekom, even Microsoft doesn't have access to the data.
see: Red Core Nodes
Seems more like a way for Microsoft to avoid legal law enforcement inquiries and investigations than to protect customers from "US data snooping practices".
What happens when Microsoft, operating under a secret NSA Security Letter, intentionally induces a fault in the Azure Cloud service of an individual of interest. And then of course the Data Trustee gives the Microsoft engineer access to the customer's data. If the NSA knows what they want, the access would not have to be for an extended period of time.
No, this won't work for mass surveillance or even continuous surveillance of one individual. But it is not data security of the type implied by the announcement.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
" Only for special purpose [sic] like a support call from a customer..."
Or the NSA, FBI, CIA...
US Government: "We will fine you until you comply with the order giving us access to the servers."
Microsoft:"Those aren't our servers. We don't have access."
Government: "Comply or be fined a million dollars a day."
Microsoft files bankruptcy in AD 3276.
Thus begins the first Year of Linux on the Desktop.
When will this enterprise feature find its way to Microsoft's Desktop OS ?
Amazon did it first for the US government: http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...
Comes down to can Microsoft be trusted and that answer we all know is a flat out No. Forcing people to download adware to get a security patch is flat out evil and all the tricks they have been using to get people to switch to Windows 10 is also evil. So Microsoft is a 100% untrustable and evil IMO based on those facts.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Like most things this I'm guessing this comes down to money (not that that's always a bad thing).
In many market segments (think government, healthcare) data residency requirements are build into any contracts. Having a European data center likely allows them to big and win business in these markets.
German intelligence agencies have decades of very close cooperation with US intelligence agencies
Hmm,
so DTAG announced this in November here and MS did it here with availability of H2 2016.
I wonder if there is any discount for ex employees of that small, unheard of 260000 (iirc in 2006) people employing obscure German company.
Could Microsoft open up an Azure cloud so that even it can't access it?
Apparently, the answer is yes.
(not that I'm buying in to this, whether US authorities will have access to the data, the German ones most certainly will, and they have been very co-operative with NSA et al.)
Microsoft Windows 10 monitors the user in my opinion more than any exploration of the world, I really understand those users who are concerned about their safety and privacy, I think this is only the beginning, many companies are engaged in the surveillance of Internet users it is only necessary to look deeper at the problem of personal data
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Microshaft to trustee: :)
Hand over that fscking data now.
Trustee:
Ok.
10 minutes later, Microshaft to NSA troll:
Here NSA troll, smell all that fresh data...!!
Microsoft's betting on Azure being the next IBM mainframe-style lock in device for IT. It seems to me like their goal is to get IT people thinking in Azure terms whenever they design anything, such that it becomes one of only a couple of ways to get anything deployed. Look at Windows Server 2016 and the upcoming Azure Stack -- Microsoft is basically telegraphing that the days of an on-site server not controlled by the Azure resource manager are on the way out. I'm betting Server 2016 is one of the last "monolithic" server releases, and the rest is going to be an Azure-y collection of services that you turn on and off either in the cloud or in your own datacenter.
Given that, and given Germany's privacy laws, it makes perfect sense that they would essentially build a "Public Azure Stack" to work around that detail. Whether every single company decides they're not afraid of the public cloud or not is in question, but Microsoft's looking to control that conversation and slowly bring everyone into the ongoing monthly charges model. Makes sense too -- either collect one fee for Windows Server one time, or sell it over and over again in monthly installments forever -- the choice seems obvious!
They don't need access to your data in the Azure Cloud any more. They will just read all your data directly from within Windows 10, when you're using it in its unencrypted form.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
They did a similar setup in China, but for a different reason. The Chinese government wanted one of their service providers to have access to everything. Same separation of ownership, completely different outcome.
and serve Microsoft in the same writ. I think this sort of hocus-pocus would only work in places where there is minimal infrastructure and no treaties with the US. like, say North Korea. places where you KNOW your data is being analyzed, mangled, and monetized.
so the ultimate responsibility has to be the Congress formally recognizing the first amendment still applies to technology that didn't exist at the time they were sharpening their goose quills to write the document.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Who really thinks that the Germans are more friendly about privacy and encryption? European laws might grant individuals some recourse about the use of data by corporations, but don't count on corresponding constraints on government. The difference between what ends up in German vs American government hands has more to do with how developed their snooping infrastructure is, not on whether the legal environment is more "friendly"
You may also know it by it's international Name "T-Mobile".
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Stripe the data on the servers. Put two bits in Germany, two in Russia, two in China, and two in Taiwan.
Nobody has access to all the data, and they're never going to cooperate to get the missing pieces.
If anyone (*anyone*!) other than yourself has access for any amount of time to your unencrypted data, your storage provider is doing it wrong.
If anyone (*anyone*!) other than yourself has access for any amount of time to your unencrypted data, your storage provider is doing it wrong.
There needs to be a backup way to retrieve data. Otherwise you get cases like the system that needs seven people to do certain critical things, and one day one of them walks in front of a bus.
Deutsche Telekom is roughly the German equivalent of AT&T: a former government-sponsored monopoly. It is in bed with the German government; they are actually still 30% government owned. You can bet that if you put your data on that cloud, the German government, intelligence agencies, and police are going to get full access to it. And that's the best case scenario: their security and privacy record is actually pretty bad.
OK, I am an American admin heading over to Germany for a security audit, code update, bug tracking, etc. (at the airport 8 thugs in cheap suits hand me a security letter from the DOJ saying that if I don't comply I go to jail. If I tell anyone about the security letter, I go to jail. If I call a lawyer they haven't approved, I go to jail. But at the same time they tell me that they are trying to stop very very bad people and that it would improve my job prospects with future applications to various security companies if I do help out.)
So I go to Germany and do what? Nothing. Yeah some wishful thinking there.
German intelligence has been set up by the Americans. They are their stooges.
And the German elite is a bunch of traitors who always will bend over to American demands.
They have their secret operatives inside all the big companies and the big FOSS projects. They will insert some highly complex, highly covered "bugs" into these projects. You bet they have a special team in the center of blackness who develop these "mishaps". And the exploits to use the mishaps as backdoors.
Voila - EVERY encryption is easy to break now.
This is just one of the 1% lies.
Fiorina and Clinton told the truth some time ago....
Not exactly unusual for this sort of arrangement if the deal is big enough. Optus/Singtel have a satellite ground station in Australia which not even they can access because it's carrying sensitive government communications, would make sense for same sort of arrangement in other sectors.
The upsides are Russia will not bend its laws for the West. As long as the customer does not break Russian laws, his data is safe on Russian servers. The only entities potentially surreptiously accessing the data are FSB and possibly Sledcom, the Russian FBI, and none pose a great danger to Western businesses.