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.
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.
