Following its investigation, the EDPS has found that the European Commission (Commission) has infringed several key data protection rules when using Microsoft 365. In its decision, the EDPS imposes corrective measures on the Commission.
The EDPS has found that the Commission has infringed several provisions of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, the EU’s data protection law for EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (EUIs), including those on transfers of personal data outside the EU/European Economic Area (EEA).
Does this mean they will ditch Msft or just that they need to click a few checkboxes?
They should ditch them for so many other reasons too. Also Public Money, Public Code. Al public institutions should only use libre and opensurce software. The only way to preserve privacy, freedom, and digital sovereignty.
Some European entities have already jumped to LibreOffice. It’s a European-made drop-in replacement. I’m surprised at them not simply ordering the Commission to switch immediately.
LibreOffice by itself isn’t a drop in replacement for Office365.
LibreOffice + NextCloud + Jitsi/Bluebutton + Grafana + bunch of other services together could be.
If NextCloud does the storage / mail / calendaring/ contacts / tasks / notes etc.
And if the hoster ties some loose ends for Forms, Powerautomate, Kanban oh and everything Azure.
Nextcloud? As an enterprise grade solution? That’s just ridiculous, sorry.
Then we can safely agree just LibreOffice alone and by itself is even more “ridiculous” I think.
Also “could be” icw “loose ends” carry a lot of weight I think.
Also Enterprise differ in requirements so there are organizations for which current NC would suffice.
Your assessment is all fun and games until you realizasse they don’t have another option right now than using Microsoft 365. They’ll simply pressure Microsoft into implementing a few changes to comply with the legislation and move on. Microsoft also doesn’t want their large governmental customers so they’ll do it.
At least temporarily, yes.
The EDPS has therefore decided to order the Commission, effective on 9 December 2024, to suspend all data flows resulting from its use of Microsoft 365 to Microsoft and to its affiliates and sub-processors located in countries outside the EU/EEA not covered by an adequacy decision. The EDPS has also decided to order the Commission to bring the processing operations resulting from its use of Microsoft 365 into compliance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. The Commission must demonstrate compliance with both orders by 9 December 2024.
Probable course of action is MSFT implementing a hotfix in the next 3-6 months, that will be nowhere near to address the topic.
Another 2 years of EDPS investigation.
Then MSFT will release another patch 3-6 months after that actually solves the issue.
But in the meantime, they would have implemented another mechanism to spy on users.
Rince and repeat.
I don’t think, you can hotfix this. Microsoft is a US company and therefore by US law (PATRIOT & CLOUD act) required to violate EU data protection laws (unless they retract from the EU market, of course).
I mean, that it took the EU this long to react to something that’s clearly been amiss since the GDPR went into force, that certainly doesn’t have my hopes high, but I don’t think Microsoft needs to be involved to filibuster the enforcememt of this.
