Discussion
Seems Merz doesn't understand the difference between data-residency and data-sovereignty. Nor does he understand the scope of Trump's 2017 CLOUD act, which expressly states any data in any datacenter that is the property of a US corporation, regardless of where it physically resides in the world, can ultimately be accessed by US statecraft, on demand.
There is no 'data sovereignty' with GAFAM. Ever.
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@JulianOliver given merz‘ background as a former associate with blackrock, I think its absolutely possible that merz indeed understands this very well and that this is just part of some strategy to keep the US taps on germany and europe.
@JulianOliver It’s really quite amazing how incompetent one person at the top of the pile can be.
@JulianOliver He doesn't have a clue when he makes statements like that. #ADigital ..
@JulianOliver There's a lot that this guy doesn't understand. This is just the tip of the iceberg
@JulianOliver Blackrock-Merz is quite uneducated in so many sectors of knowledge. He's interested in money and himself, so listens more to lobbyists than experts.
Unfortunately, it's in vain to wait that he changes for the better.
@JulianOliver look at him how he's using his smartphone. Tells everything we need to know about his expertise regarding this topic.
@JulianOliver I am afraid that he does understand as well as all the politician and military people in every EU country who decided to use US software and tech in part where it should not.
@JulianOliver Understanding has never been his strong suit.
Seems Merz doesn't understand the difference between data-residency and data-sovereignty.
Merz very obviously understands nothing except airy words, treading on the vunerable and ensuring profits for arms companys, continuing Genocide in Gaza and actions ensuring the further rise of afd.
afd sponsored by usa israel russia and probably uae.
Hi @JulianOliver
a universal moron. About the same knowledge of everything. But very enthusiastic about money and a natural talent in insulting people.
Of a breathtaking naivety…
The French gov learned that lesson in July last year, when the director of public and legal affairs for Microsoft France, Anton Carniaux, was asked to testify before the French Senate whether he could guarantee that the data of French citizens stored in Microsoft's Azure servers, **in France**, is safe from access by US statecraft.
He replied that he cannot.
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@JulianOliver And even here in Belgium schools are pretending to be safe by using Microsoft because they have servers in the EU. They just don’t listen do they?
@TomDB Apparently not. Perhaps a way of explaining it to them, is that a Microsoft Azure data center in an EU member state is as 'European' as the US Embassy in Brussels.
I'll break my n/n to add that we need to understand & remember the US would never, ever accept having its public/edu/mil/gov sectors hosted on foreign owned infra, lest of all abroad. Even that of a close ally.
Meanwhile, most of us, in some way, are taxed peasantry in the infrastructural equivalent of the Roman Empire, where the US gets to have its sovereignty and eat it too (at least the corporate Maxim of it), while the rest of the world does not.
This is an abject 'normal'.
@JulianOliver Merz is lying. Not misunderstanding.
@JulianOliver And the Cloud Act is, after all, just one part of the “underground empire” that can strike at any moment, as the ICC is currently experiencing, for example.
@JulianOliver realpolitik. - and now what?
@JulianOliver "US would never, ever accept having its public/edu/mil/gov sectors hosted on foreign owned infra, lest of all abroad. Even that of a close ally."
I like the thread, but you make a kinda big mistake here. True that FedRAMP High or DoD IL5 doesn't exist (yet) on foreign soil. I've had to deal with this many times over.
However, that's more a novelty exception than any kind of rule. Every single overseas base and embassy runs on host-nation telecom and power. Just look at DISA's Stuttgart office buying commercial leased circuits for Wiesbaden and Ramstein from the German carriers.
I could give a huge long list of the US depending on foreign soil and infrastructure but the point here should be something else.
Google (like Oracle) has swung hard into being a US military/intelligence contractor, meaning a front for Israeli intelligence, operations in Tel Aviv. Look up Unit 81 (I know them personally and I wouldn't give them the time of day let alone a state document). No joke, Merz is outclassed and played like a fool, as Germany foolishly hands national secrets to Israel.
@flyingpenguin Fair point. Perhaps I ought to have been clearer, 'server and PaaS/cloud infrastructure' .
For sure you can scrape L2/L3 on the wire, and yes carriers are a big part of sigint picture, but nonetheless that's skinny pickings next to the bounty of vast storage clusters of actual intelligence data, esp in this era. Arguably incomparable I reckon.
@JulianOliver
This reminds me of the Galileo satellite initiative that ended up being absorbed by the US GPS array in return for some intel crumbs from the empire. EU have a serf mentality.
@JulianOliver It wasn't until Trump that I truly realized the extent of Europe's subservience—especially that of the European right-wingers, and most notably Germany.
Historically speaking, Germany is a vassal state of the U.S., and that pushes the EU into a kind of subservience as well.
The fact that Merz was an executive at Blackstone further confirms what is known as the acculturation of political elites, making them more susceptible to—or more easily manipulated by—the dictates of the dominant country.