Germany Forces a Microsoft 365 Ban Due to Privacy Concerns

When I was working for M$ here in Germany, I was always flabbergasted at the Redmond execs flying in and telling us how amazingly wonderfully fantastic it was that M$ could look at all the 365 data and provide "better services".

Yikes.

I. Don't. Want. This.

Not in the sense of "This is not something I need", but in the sense of "Oh my god, get it off of me. Immediately".

This was not a response they were able to even perceive, never mind comprehend.

Don't want no cloud. Local First Software!

If you follow the discussion in Germany, there are 2 main arguments brought up by proponents of Microsoft's cloud offerings:

1. The kids should learn the tools they will later use in their jobs anyways. 2. The idea that Microsoft or some US agency would want to read the kid's data is laughable.

Obviously, argument is and always has been BS in the fast-paced world of IT solutions. (Imagine the same argument from 10 years ago, no one in a typical business used cloud services back then). But ironically, it implies that the person making this argument does work with Microsoft cloud technology and thus implicitly hands all their oh-so-important trade and business secrets willingly to the US company. And of course this access is being used for industrial and other espionage.

But even if the USA would, for some inexplicable reason, not chose to gain that competitive edge, the data of kids from school is valuable in itself. I can envision a tool that cross-checks a CV, or evaluates a kid's college prospects. The access doesn't even need to leave the US, so what's the EU or anyone else going to do? What was that note that Mrs. Smith put in your file about the firecrackers and the girl's bathroom? Whoops, there goes your admission to Stanford. Did you write in an essay in tenth grade that you sympathize with the Palestinians? Entry denied for your trip to Israel. Did you use a copyrighted font for your art project? There comes the bill.

All closed source and network connected software/devices can be, and often are, used to spy on users; all of them, not just Microsoft products and not just when used by kids in schools. The sooner they realize this, the better. No need for conspiracy theories here: user profiling is already a well established business model even where there aren't other motivations to exfiltrate personal information.

It’s amazing how the first sentence declares the headline a lie already:

> The […] state of Hesse’s […] DPA […] has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

Which is a headline that could be argued about, but it’s at least not flag-worthy bullshit.

Why does this article trail off to a link into the full article? https://techgenix.com/microsoft-365-ban-in-germany/

This is a reblog of an article at:

https://techgenix.com/microsoft-365-ban-in-germany/

All those infrastructure managers are going to be really annoyed about this

Ironic, considering that they have previously have a solution to this (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/azure/ger..., double-irony since that this is essentially Azure China EUified), but maybe it's for the best.

Also, I think that this is actually old news already, I remember hearing Hesse banning (then) Office 365 years ago, is this a new decision?

Exactly nothing will happen because this "Authority" does not actually have any power. It also does not represent any federal state, much less Germany as a whole.