It really is a shame how spineless european politicians are, to not give Edward Snowden protection in europe. I bet a whole bunch of politicians are happy that he faded out of the collective mind, so they don’t have defend their indefensible standpoint of not giving Snowden amnesty.
It also sucks that there is no recourse against politicians that are clearly biased in their decisionmaking.
If he had citizenship in a EU country he would be safe. EU countries don’t extradite EU citizens to the US. It would be a whole can of political worms to not extradite a US citizen to the US.
His flight to the USA for extradition would be safe. Julian Assange is also just lucky that he won’t be extradited. Especially as you shouldn’t forget 5/9/14 eyes, for example. But Snowden wouldn’t be 1 day safe in europe
I know that it is a can of worms politically, but now the man the whole world owes the wake-up call that were his leaks to, is forced to live under Putin.
Estonia sometimes gives out honorary citizenship for some stuff and if it was up to me one would go to Snowden. I have doubts that Russia would let him go at this point though.
It was a wake up call for average people, I think less so for leaders of governments with their own intelligence agencies (regardless of public comments).
Not many going to jeopardize a close political relationship over that.
Hey thanks for posting this. I’ve bookmarked it to watch within the hour.
I’m interested to see if these are really businesses under threat from Microsoft or if it’s businesses looking to eliminate competition from USA and push their own products. I’m not a fan of MULAFAANG pushing a monopoly but I’m also realistic that politicians will always be motivated to do what politicians do best.
EDIT: Not even that far into the video yet…So I live in the USA and I’ve visited a Microsoft campus when I was in Washington. And the premise of what is being presented is laughable. I said as a system administrator back in 2015 that going into the Microsoft cloud azure was bullshit and not a good idea, and turns out today that is still the answer. If these departments wanted to use Linux that is an internal decision not one reflective of Microsoft. LLDAP (easy managed LDAP service) exists in FOSS. So does Mailcow. Everyone loves to masterbate to how “bad these companies are”, dude you CHOSE them. There are parts of Microsoft’s footprint that are good like their ability to staff teams to work on security, keeping NPM, github, and pypi safe. But they also have a lot of malware-like components in their services/OS that collect data in the same way a virus would.
I just don’t like this premise of purchasing someone’s product and then vilifying that product as if they had no other choice. I understand that its not entirely with that intent, its more to start a conversation about it, but damn does it ring that way when I saw self hosting in 2015 & IT departments as the answer.
EDIT2: Why are talking about the cloud, then pivoting to saying that Microsoft won’t release the source code for Windows? Lol. These are two separate topics, and the author of the video didn’t attempt to pose it as one. I am disappointed by the author to present the information that is reasonable and understanding of both their own culture and display a lack of effort in their own administration to use existing FOSS products. No one has a gun to your head. I’ve migrated between 5 different clouds and solutions over the last few years for my own company’s infra.
Everyone loves to masterbate to how “bad these companies are”, dude you CHOSE them.
I think the point of the video is that there are backroom deals that secure Microsoft being chosen. The new mayor of Munich is a clear example of conflict of interest. Microsoft is clearly lobbying the French government as well.
And I think these parts are fair to say but they lose me within the first few minutes by jumping to disassociated bold points like the cloud to windows being proprietary.
We need well reasoned arguments that are cohesive and the moment you lose that, you basically damage your own cause.
Again though it’s a discussion. I’m just saying that it’s disappointing and quickly frustrating that this is how things get framed: with facts and arguments that are leading. Don’t show your hand. Let people arrive at these things as a logical conclusion based on a pile of evidence.
Very interesting doc! Its sad how this is the state of things, but something must be done. I hope with the news weve been receiving from Germany recently that this will change long term, and not just for the current government. Hopefully it will snowball and have a ripple effect on other EU countries.
Interesting, I like the concept of digital sovereignty. I didn’t see anything about actually maintaining the software they use, though. Seems like that would be a good way to ensure success and they could influence the development to meet their needs.
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