Anyone wonder where your country’s health records about all their citizens are stored? I’m guessing it’s all on either MS, AWS, or Google. That means Trump could get access to your medical history.
This is important because of his attacks on LGBTQ people, vaccines, abortion, autism, and who knows what other nonsense he wants to persecute.
And here in Canada the Liberal government is putting forth bill C-2, which opens up even more access to the US to get even records stored in Canada by Canadian companies.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/canadas-bill-c-2-opens-floodgates-us-surveillance
Feel safe yet?
Only if they aren’t using customer provided encryption keys (is using blob/bucket storage) or an equivalent approach to encryption at rest, and make sure they’re doing standard TLS for encryption in flight.
It’s absolutely possible, and standard for any decent organization, to build their cloud architectures to fully account for the cloud provider potentially accessing your data without authorization. I’ve personally had such design conversations multiple times.
I am from the Netherlands and work at a hospital, we exclusively use Microsoft software.
No one is safe anywhere…
So we all agree that “if demanded” ANYONE’S data can be spied on. Doesn’t matter where.
At least it’s finally admitted to out in the open.
I thought gdpr forced companies to store data securely in the eu. Are they saying they’ll transfer that data to the us to give Trump access, cause that’s a gdpr violation and should result in fines and eventual removal from the eu market.
The CLOUD act and GDPR do indeed not work together.
and should result in fines
Hahaha should
The first sentence and the first paragraph of the article:
even if that data is stored overseas
There’s no telling if that hasn’t already happened. Europe needs to drop Microsoft ASAP.
Canada, too. For the last two years, Canada has entrusted sensitive statistical information to Microsoft. We should be treating MS with the same skepticism we currently reserve for Huawei.
EuropeEveryone needs to drop Microsoft ASAPFTFY
Microsoft said this, but this likely applies to AWS and GCP too.
Check out Hetzner, a German cloud provider. Established, reliable and way cheaper than AWS.
I know migrating is nigh impossible for most large apps, but creating a new one on AWS/GCP/Azure is so shortsighted.
More people need to know about alternatives.
Hetzner and reliable do not belong in the same sentence.
Cheap yes, reliable no.
I’ve been using them for my company a lot because of how cheap they are, but compared to other European competitors (like OVH) they are complete garbage. Their pricing is the only redeeming factor.
The Schwartz Group (parent company of Lidl) is currently building a German cloud platform, which sounds a lot more promising.
Hetzner is really trashy though. They seem to suspend or permanently ban folks for no good reason.
Damn, they really go the extra mile for a full equivalent to googles offering.
There is also OTC https://www.open-telekom-cloud.com/en
Color me skeptical of anything Deutsche Telekom. I’d rather look at OVH, Hetzner, and Scaleway than at something from Telekom.
Germany and a handful of other countries have been moving to Linux over the past decade. Betting the rate of uptick speeds up now though.
Does this also mean Microsoft would allow China to spy on the US if asked?
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My assumption for many years now has been that the answer to any question involving MS giving access to your data is “yes.”
It was the same for Biden, why did no-one care then?
Yeah I wondered the same thing. That cloud act went into effect in 2018. Haven’t seen anyone try to change it in the last 6 years
Goodbye!
Listen, I’m extremely anti-trump but the guy has a point. Evil things can be evil regardless of who is in charge, but we only seem to care when the narrative shifts in certain directions. Why didn’t we care about this back then?
I haven’t used a Microsoft product in my personal life in twenty years. One of the primary reasons for that is that I don’t trust them with my privacy. People (gestures broadly at the tech space) have been expressing similar sentiment for decades.
We are not a monolith, and some people have cared about these things while others have not.
For those who only just began caring, I find it entirely reasonable that when the top of the pyramid wasn’t Trump, someone who there are a great many reasons to distrust, they weren’t as worried about it.
If you didn’t care about it until recently, only you can answer the question you have asked.
All of which is far more of an answer than the sheer whataboutism merited.
How is that news? The CLOUD Act is law since 2018.
I’m guessing the admits part and of course Trump is the current (quite jutified) bogeyman.
Continuing to do business in the US after the CLOUD act already implied enough.
Didn’t Microsoft say not too long ago not to worry, because they didn’t have to give access to data?
suck my arch btw
As an EU citizen, I don’t find the idea of the US government having access to my data nearly as frightening as the idea of my own government getting into my accounts.
What if the US decided to share info about the data on your accounts to your government?
isn’t this part of how the [insert number] eyes works?
Pretty much, basically the country’s involved will share loads of intelligence with each other and data will be a big thing they’ll share.
well… there is self-hosting too
I trust Microsoft.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion.
