Tag: data sovereignty

Article

EU wants to build its own DNS infrastructure with built-in filtering capabilities – The Record by Recorded Future

My Comments

Europe is working on another Internet-focused effort to maintain some sovereignty over its online affairs.

The DNS is the Internet’s equivalent of the traditional White Pages telephone book where when you would look up someone’s name in that book to find their phone number. Here, it is about looking up the domain name part of a Web address like “homenetworking01.info” and identifying the IP address of the Webserver that hosts the Website. This process is very similar for looking up the IP address for the email server that is listed after the “@” part of an email address.

Here, the European DNS4EU effort is about creating a network of DNS servers that are based in Europe. It is essentially about European data sovereignty where this Internet-essential function is in European hands and fully subject to European laws and norms rather than in the hands of a few non-European companies.

For example, this DNS effort is run compliant to the European Union GDPR user-privacy directive and avoids issues to do with the USA’s CLOUD Act which can place online data use subject to US authorities’ investigative requirements even if it is used overseas as long as the servers are owned by a company based in the USA.

The DNS4EU DNS service will also have powerful filtering abilities to work against cyber attacks. This can include blocking DNS name resolution for domains associated with malware or phishing sites. But there are questions about which kind of Internet user this would be mandatory for like the public sector, financial services or essential services or whether EU-based or all European based ISPs will be required to take advantage of this new DNS4EU infrastructure.

This same project also assures compliance with court orders against access to prohibited content like child-sexual-abuse imagery or pirated content. But this kind of protection may be limited to the European Union or a wider area like the Euripean Single Market or even the countries under the Council Of Europe’s scope.

Another benefit often seen with this is increased speed for European DNS queries due to the proximity of the DNS4EU servers to European citizens and businesses. It is also a way that Europe can carve out its own online identity amongst their own citizens rather than relying on other areas for its IT needs.

As I have said before, there could be questions raised about the kind of geopolitical reach that the European Union’s new DNS infrastructure would have. But it could be seen as one of many attempts for Europe to have its own IT infrastructure and work in a manner independent of countries like the USA.

Article

Europe to have one or more public cloud services that respect European sovereignty and values

France, Germany want more homegrown clouds to pick from | ITNews (Premium)

My Comments

Germany is instigating a European-wide project to create a public cloud-computing service.  As well, France is registering intent in this same idea but of creating another of these services.

Both countries’ intention is to rival what USA and Asia are offering regarding public-cloud data-processing solutions. But, as I have said before, it is about having public data infrastructure that is sovereign to European laws and values. This also includes the management and dissemination of such data in a broad and secure manner.

… which could also facilitate European software and data services like what is offered through the Freebox Delta

The issue of data sovereignty has become of concern in Europe due to the USA and China pushing legislation to enable their governments to gain access to data held by data service providers that are based in those countries. This is even if the data is held on behalf of a third-party company or hosted on servers that are installed in other countries. The situation has been underscored by a variety of geopolitical tensions involving especially those countries such as the recent USA-China trade spat.

It is also driven by some European countries being dissatisfied with Silicon Valley’s dominance in the world of “as-a-service” computing. This is more so with France where there are goals to detach from and tax “GAFA” (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) due to their inordinate influence in consumer and business computing worlds.

or BMW’s voice-driven assistant for in-car infotainment

Let’s not forget that Qarnot in France has designed computers that put their waste heat to use for heating rooms or creating hot water in buildings. This will appeal to a widely-distributed data-processing setup that could be part of public cloud-computing efforts.

Questions that will crop up with the Brexit agenda when Europe establishes this public cloud service will include British data sovereignty if data is held on the European public cloud or whether Britain will have any access or input into this public cloud.

… just like this Airbus A380 superjumbo jet shows European prowess in aerospace

Personally I could see this as facilitating the wider creation of online services by European companies especially with the view to respecting European personal and business values. It could encompass ideas like voice-driven assistant services, search engines, mapping and similar services for consumers or to encourage European IT development.

Could this effort that Germany and France put forward be the Airbus or Arianespace of public-cloud data services?

Articles 

Windows 10 preview build protects your files from ransomware | Engadget

Windows 10 will hide your important files from ransomware soon | The Verge

Microsoft previews new ransomware protection feature | Bit-Tech

From the horse’s mouth

Microsoft

Windows Experience blog post

My Comments

If you have heard the news over the last few month, you will have heard about ransomware activity in the form of the WannaCry and Petya ransomware variants getting at major installations including the NHS and the Victorian traffic-camera infrastructure.

But Microsoft has attacked this problem in a different way by providing application-level control for the next major update for Windows 10 – the Fall Creator’s Update. It is part of refining the Windows Defender security software that is part of the operating system for improved business-tier data security.

It is a very similar process to what Android and iOS do in relation to allowing the user to control what apps have access to what resources and features on their smartphone or tablet. It is also in contrast to how regular-computer operating systems work when it comes to controlling the level of access granted to a computer’s file system, where users or groups of users are typically granted particular levels of access to folders or files.

Here, once you enable the Controlled Folder Access function, applications can’t add, modify or delete files in folders where this control exists unless the app is part of a user-defined whitelist.  The routine for adding an app to the whitelist will be very similar to what you do on your iPhone or Android phone when it comes to allowing that app you newly downloaded to have access to a particular resource on your smartphone and could occur during installation or when you first use that app after enabling Controlled Folders.

By default, this feature would be enabled for the Documents, Desktop, Pictures and Videos folder trees but you can enable this feature for other folders such as “ad-hoc” work folders created on the system disk or other fixed storage on your system. I am not sure is this is also to apply to removable storage like USB hard disks, USB memory keys or SD cards, or whether this can also apply to network and online storage like your NAS shares or your Dropbox folder.

A question that can also be raised is whether the Controlled Folder feature will also provide a way to limit access to other system resources by apps. Here, it could range from access to network and Internet resources to prevent spyware from “phoning home” or to limit access to your computer’s Webcam and microphone to limit use of these resources as a surveillance tool.

Article

Microsoft will host data in Germany to hide it from US spies | The Verge

My Comments

Edward Snowden has raised a very significant issue concerning the confidentiality and sovereignty of your data when he leaked what went on with the NSA. This has affected how individuals and organisations do business with American-chartered IT organisations like all of Silicon Valley.

The data sovereignty question is even being extended towards data held within nations that implement a federation or similar geopolitical structure like the USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland or Australia. This situation could even apply to the United Kingdom thanks to the devolved countries like Scotland and Wales acquiring independent powers similar to a state in a federation. Here the question that come in to play is which state’s rules govern the data that is being created. It has come in to play since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade and placed women at risk of trouble if they seek abortions within the USA’s “Red” states, because of the increased computerisation of our business and personal lives.

But what has happened was that Microsoft took up a new model for setting up data storage which is in the form of a “data trustee”. This model is similar to how a trust fund operates where a third party who is known as a trustee, is tasked to control funds and assets that come in to that fund for the benefit of the recipients.

In this case, Microsoft is setting up data centers in Germany and delegating Deutsche Telekom, a telco entirely chartered in Germany, to control these data-storage facilities as a “data trustee” for them. But the data stored on these facilities will be Microsoft’s and their customers’ data.

Why Germany? Warum Deutschland? This is because Germany, a country which has been passed through some horrible periods of history where big government abused citizens’ privacy in the form of the Third Reich and East Germany, have enacted some of the world’s tightest privacy laws.

What I see of this is that a person who signs up to a Webmail service, online storage service, Webhost or similar online service could be given the option to have the data held on servers in a nominated country, most likely rated according to the country’s standard of privacy and data sovereignty. Similarly, companies chartered in countries with rigorous data privacy and confidentiality standards could end up doing valuable business in renting data center space or providing online services to local and foreign individuals and companies wanting stronger privacy.

On the other hand, these countries could end up with the same reputation that Switzerland had with its banks. This was where Switzerland’s financial-secrecy laws were abused by people and companies who were laundering or concealing ill-gotten gains in Swiss banks to avoid official scrutiny. In relationship to data, this could allow for data associated with criminal activity such as child-abuse imagery or pirated software to be concealed in countries with high data-privacy standards.

But the authorities in those countries can act as a legal filter to make sure that any official data requests are for legitimate crime-fighting and personal-safety reasons rather than to suppress internationally-recognised core freedoms and liberties.

Created 13 November 2015. Updated 8 July 2022 to encompass the reversal of Roe vs Wade and the ramifications associated with countries that implement a federation or similar geopolitical structure.