Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns(tutanota.com)
tutanota.com
Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/denmark-bans-google-email-and-cloud-services-due-to-privacy-concerns/
213 comments
Actual statement:
https://www-datatilsynet-dk.translate.goog/afgoerelser/afgoe...
Title seems dramatized, not surprising when it’s a blog post from a competitor eager to sell a replacement to said schools. Probably should switch to a better source.
https://www-datatilsynet-dk.translate.goog/afgoerelser/afgoe...
Title seems dramatized, not surprising when it’s a blog post from a competitor eager to sell a replacement to said schools. Probably should switch to a better source.
If it isn't, it should be. School is obligatory, we really shouldn't employ commercial products in schools to begin with.
In Portugal, some years ago, kids were given computers with a Linux distro pre-installed for *free*, and LibreOffice was used as a word processor replacement. Argentina did the same thing, hell there were others too.
You think the government builds desks, blackboards, buildings, directly.
Everything is outsourced to private companies. That's how economics works.
Everything is outsourced to private companies. That's how economics works.
Those things are also not proprietary to any one company. Outsourcing labor to make generic things we could obtain elsewhere is not the same thing as teaching tools only one company controls.
We should not use schools to further the vendor-lock-in of corporations.
We should not use schools to further the vendor-lock-in of corporations.
Using those things doesn't require that the students enter into a contract with the contractor, doesn't seem comparable.
Private companies can develop software with government data rights. Hosting isn’t free but they pay for an n-year contract with support and can find another vendor for the software and hosting in n years if they want. That’s a good collaboration between govt and industry, governments should insist on stuff like this so they retain ownership over what they paid for, as much as possible.
Except the pesky difference that in other cases the school/gov purchases a product for students while in this case it pays nothing and supplies students as the product.
> School is obligatory, we really shouldn't employ commercial products in schools to begin with.
I think a better formulation of this would be following. School is obligatory, we should not employ products that collect private information of students.
I think a better formulation of this would be following. School is obligatory, we should not employ products that collect private information of students.
Well, yeah I didn't mean to sound so extreme. I was just implying that a product intended for public use shouldn't mean "commercial", in the sense of an end consumer product. Your customer isn't the end consumer.
The same applies to profucts sold to other companies.
That's cool, but you can't give out mailboxes for free like you can give away computers. It needs to run somewhere, the servers maintained by someone. Do you have a better solution than Gmail? I know only about Microsoft, is that even an improvement?
I host email for hundreds of people with a $10/mo VPS.
Schools classically self hosted their network services and they can do so again. It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too.
Schools classically self hosted their network services and they can do so again. It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too.
It's great that you do, but that's not a typical school admin skillset. People who know this have zero reason to slave for a school.
> Schools classically self hosted their network services
Back when encryption wasn't even needed, hackers were a curiosity and deliverability wasn't a concern. This is never coming back. School is a very important part of people's lives (parents, children, teachers, other staff), deliverability and security must be perfect.
Schools also manage loads of very private data. As a parent, I don't want the school admin to touch it with a 10-meter pole, I want them to use a managed service that they can't screw up even if they tried very hard (and sometimes school admins look at data themselves - the less opportunity they have the better).
> It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too.
The point is to have working email that everyone can rely on, not to groom kids/teachers to become sysadmins. It's better for everyone if the school admin focuses on solving things no one else can solve (e.g. handing out the free computers and installing Linux on them) rather than wasting time tinkering with email hosting for public money.
> Schools classically self hosted their network services
Back when encryption wasn't even needed, hackers were a curiosity and deliverability wasn't a concern. This is never coming back. School is a very important part of people's lives (parents, children, teachers, other staff), deliverability and security must be perfect.
Schools also manage loads of very private data. As a parent, I don't want the school admin to touch it with a 10-meter pole, I want them to use a managed service that they can't screw up even if they tried very hard (and sometimes school admins look at data themselves - the less opportunity they have the better).
> It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too.
The point is to have working email that everyone can rely on, not to groom kids/teachers to become sysadmins. It's better for everyone if the school admin focuses on solving things no one else can solve (e.g. handing out the free computers and installing Linux on them) rather than wasting time tinkering with email hosting for public money.
You can Google free email services rather than use bing.
Protonmail is one. Free version includes much more than what a student needs. Students can sign up themselves.
Protonmail is one. Free version includes much more than what a student needs. Students can sign up themselves.
The point here is data privacy. Freemail means you explicitly hand over your (meta)data as a payment. Students are not going to go for Protonmail, they're going to use their already existing Gmail.
You can't rely on students having their own inboxes anyways. They will claim they forgot the password, it doesn't work, they are not getting teacher's messages, etc etc. You need a place where you can deliver critical information and be sure it arrived, and have a way of proving it was/wasn't read, a way of restoring lost access (without losing the messages), a way of proving that access is possible and happened, a way of recovering deleted messages...
You can't rely on students having their own inboxes anyways. They will claim they forgot the password, it doesn't work, they are not getting teacher's messages, etc etc. You need a place where you can deliver critical information and be sure it arrived, and have a way of proving it was/wasn't read, a way of restoring lost access (without losing the messages), a way of proving that access is possible and happened, a way of recovering deleted messages...
They can _choose_ to use whatever they want, as long as the school doesn't force them to use proprietary stuff. It is responsibility of the school system to create an ethical learning environment and not to promote proprietary service providers. Gmail probably doesn't finance schools in Denmark either, so even less of a reason for schools there to do no-cost promotion of Gmail. And that is just one example.
Edit: After choosing something different than the school suggests, the pupils then themselves become responsible for making sure it is a suitable alternative to the non-proprietary ethical solution, that the school suggested.
Edit: After choosing something different than the school suggests, the pupils then themselves become responsible for making sure it is a suitable alternative to the non-proprietary ethical solution, that the school suggested.
Email inboxes are one of the many services schools buy, it's not about any promotion and of course Google doesn't promote them, this is a service they provide for money, not some barter. This is like saying they promote a catering provider, furniture manufacturer or paper factory by buying from them... It's not like people aren't capable of using other email providers after using Gmail - email looks just the same regardless of the company (usually works worse though), and people have their own email too, their school inbox is usually not their first nor last contact with it.
Pupils' personal email inbox is their own stuff and completely out of the question. We're talking about school-managed inboxes with addresses ending with the school's domain.
Pupils' personal email inbox is their own stuff and completely out of the question. We're talking about school-managed inboxes with addresses ending with the school's domain.
>not about any promotion
You sure? Last I checked Google, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments have aggressive business deals with the educational sector to make sure no other company gets an edge there. I had to buy a nspire calculator for example, since teachers received commissions for the damn things (while in obligatory school).
In university, we had our own servers for various services such as email, until Microsoft came wavering their money around and literally "offering for free" their products for that university.
The sheer market manipulation these companies do is obscene, there really isn't competition, and our kids aren't offered the high quality and respectful services they deserve. In the case of Texas instruments, parents will have their pockets robbed. Thing cost my parents 200 bucks, and the only thing it was used for, was rendering some fancy parabolas.
Anyways, I didn't mean to throw private contracts out the window completely. And, have since clarified that in another reply to this thread.
The sheer market manipulation these companies do is obscene, there really isn't competition, and our kids aren't offered the high quality and respectful services they deserve. In the case of Texas instruments, parents will have their pockets robbed. Thing cost my parents 200 bucks, and the only thing it was used for, was rendering some fancy parabolas.
Anyways, I didn't mean to throw private contracts out the window completely. And, have since clarified that in another reply to this thread.
> You sure? Last I checked Google, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments have aggressive business deals with the educational sector to make sure no other company gets an edge there.
That's because it's a lucrative market you can take with much less negotiation than individual small companies. Every company does that, only few are dealing with the government on the level of Microsoft/Google though.
> I had to buy a nspire calculator for example, since teachers received commissions for the damn things (while in obligatory school).
That sucks, but this is about schools buying Gmail for students' school managed inboxes on the school domain, not about students being forced to use Gmail. This is just like internal company email for example. Students still have their own personal inboxes at whatever service they please.
> The sheer market manipulation these companies do is obscene, there really isn't competition
If there isn't competition, then it's not market manipulation, it's just that they're the only market.
> and our kids aren't offered the high quality and respectful services they deserve
Gmail (and Outlook365) is the highest quality service currently on the market, and since the school is paying for the inbox, Google is not reading the data for ads. You can go for smaller companies with worse offers and much less software included in the subscribtion... But I don't think that's going to be a benefit to the students.
> Thing cost my parents 200 bucks, and the only thing it was used for, was rendering some fancy parabolas.
Again, that sucks, but this is not about parents paying Gmail.
That's because it's a lucrative market you can take with much less negotiation than individual small companies. Every company does that, only few are dealing with the government on the level of Microsoft/Google though.
> I had to buy a nspire calculator for example, since teachers received commissions for the damn things (while in obligatory school).
That sucks, but this is about schools buying Gmail for students' school managed inboxes on the school domain, not about students being forced to use Gmail. This is just like internal company email for example. Students still have their own personal inboxes at whatever service they please.
> The sheer market manipulation these companies do is obscene, there really isn't competition
If there isn't competition, then it's not market manipulation, it's just that they're the only market.
> and our kids aren't offered the high quality and respectful services they deserve
Gmail (and Outlook365) is the highest quality service currently on the market, and since the school is paying for the inbox, Google is not reading the data for ads. You can go for smaller companies with worse offers and much less software included in the subscribtion... But I don't think that's going to be a benefit to the students.
> Thing cost my parents 200 bucks, and the only thing it was used for, was rendering some fancy parabolas.
Again, that sucks, but this is not about parents paying Gmail.
>If there isn't competition, then it's not market manipulation, it's just that they're the only market.
The USA, Europe, and some European countries are already filling antitrust cases against Google and others like it. It's unfair competition. And if you can't see it, then I'm sure that there's nothing I can say to dissuade you.
This isn't just like an internal company email, and I am not saying this is their personal email. Like you're trying to imply.
These companies are trying to create habits and gain trust from naive kids. Making them their future clients. This creates a neverending circle, and the ones inside of it are so blinded, that'll always turn an eye to alternatives. In a space like this, its near impossible for other companies yo gain an edge, even if their product is better. It forms a rather powerful emotional allegiance to them, and their products.
Our kids should never be their clients, simply by the fact that their moral compass doesn't adhere to the simplest of market rules, and common sense. They undermine capitalism, they undermine freedom. And if you can't see this, you're blind.
This isn't just like an internal company email, and I am not saying this is their personal email. Like you're trying to imply.
These companies are trying to create habits and gain trust from naive kids. Making them their future clients. This creates a neverending circle, and the ones inside of it are so blinded, that'll always turn an eye to alternatives. In a space like this, its near impossible for other companies yo gain an edge, even if their product is better. It forms a rather powerful emotional allegiance to them, and their products.
Our kids should never be their clients, simply by the fact that their moral compass doesn't adhere to the simplest of market rules, and common sense. They undermine capitalism, they undermine freedom. And if you can't see this, you're blind.
So no books then? Most of them are published commercially.
Textbooks should really be public domain. They're paid for by public money anyway, it's just we currently also pay 10x the cost to make them directly to elsevier or pearson.
What do you mean, they're paid for by public money? I don't think that's true at all - at least in EU. Some of them get public donations (to support the independence of the authors, usually), and some of them are written by people paid by a university, but there's so much more completely independently funded textbooks...
I might be reading into the previous poster's comment more than originally intended, but basically, most US textbooks, are basically written for use by US public schools. They are effectively being paid for by public money, because the only customer buying those textbooks are public schools funded by public money.
> For the years ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, K-12 traditional print represented 59% ($353 million) and 63% ($357 million) of total K-12 revenue, respectively.
> In the K-12 market in the United States,...We sell our learning solutions directly to school districts across the United States.
This is less true at the university level, since students typically have to pay for their own textbooks, but scholarships, grants, and loans, and other public money sources that go to students are used to cover those costs.
Source: McGraw Hill's 2020 Annual Report https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReports/PDF/N...
> For the years ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, K-12 traditional print represented 59% ($353 million) and 63% ($357 million) of total K-12 revenue, respectively.
> In the K-12 market in the United States,...We sell our learning solutions directly to school districts across the United States.
This is less true at the university level, since students typically have to pay for their own textbooks, but scholarships, grants, and loans, and other public money sources that go to students are used to cover those costs.
Source: McGraw Hill's 2020 Annual Report https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReports/PDF/N...
I'm also European, from Portugal specifically. Our taxes pay for mandatory schools textbooks, just like in the US it seems.
I don't think this is the correct view of the system.
Individual schools in Portugal (as well as where I live, and in the US) are buying books on the market, and the books are competing on it - just writing a textbook doesn't guarantee any school will buy it, it's a risk - and that's great because it means the writers have to make good books and there's a lot of choice and many different styles and price levels.
That's very different from "textbooks paid for by public money" as if the state funded its creation and thus owned the copyright while de-risking it for the authors - meaning paid their salary. EU occasionally provides funding to authors and they're explicit about the writers owning their copyright, because the point is to support their independence. So suggesting moving a work into public domain just because a public school bought it is... weird. Why books and not other education equipment, e.g. chemistry/physics/electronics sets? What about educational software?
Imagine a school bought a book you wrote about programming/whatever you do (the school where I went did that a lot with many different books from small-time authors that were used as textbooks during lessons), should it suddenly become public domain just because some of the money someone spent on it came from taxes? I think that's very broken.
Public schools aren't the only ones buying textbooks anyways. There's a very healthy market of private schools, and I know of textbooks catered specifically to them, some of them even funded by them, that are then also bought by public schools. There's also homeschooling, alternative non-public non-profit schools, etc. Sometimes people buy textbooks by themselves, e.g. adults who want to (re-)learn, parents who think the books provided by school are inadequate, children who destroyed the copy they received at school...
That textbooks are "paid for by public money" is reductio ad absurdum. The system is much more complex. However, I think that the state/EU (or US) should also fund textbooks and put them into the public domain, as long as using them isn't mandatory - that's a great idea and it never hurts to have one more option.
Individual schools in Portugal (as well as where I live, and in the US) are buying books on the market, and the books are competing on it - just writing a textbook doesn't guarantee any school will buy it, it's a risk - and that's great because it means the writers have to make good books and there's a lot of choice and many different styles and price levels.
That's very different from "textbooks paid for by public money" as if the state funded its creation and thus owned the copyright while de-risking it for the authors - meaning paid their salary. EU occasionally provides funding to authors and they're explicit about the writers owning their copyright, because the point is to support their independence. So suggesting moving a work into public domain just because a public school bought it is... weird. Why books and not other education equipment, e.g. chemistry/physics/electronics sets? What about educational software?
Imagine a school bought a book you wrote about programming/whatever you do (the school where I went did that a lot with many different books from small-time authors that were used as textbooks during lessons), should it suddenly become public domain just because some of the money someone spent on it came from taxes? I think that's very broken.
Public schools aren't the only ones buying textbooks anyways. There's a very healthy market of private schools, and I know of textbooks catered specifically to them, some of them even funded by them, that are then also bought by public schools. There's also homeschooling, alternative non-public non-profit schools, etc. Sometimes people buy textbooks by themselves, e.g. adults who want to (re-)learn, parents who think the books provided by school are inadequate, children who destroyed the copy they received at school...
That textbooks are "paid for by public money" is reductio ad absurdum. The system is much more complex. However, I think that the state/EU (or US) should also fund textbooks and put them into the public domain, as long as using them isn't mandatory - that's a great idea and it never hurts to have one more option.
Yeah, you're right. Even my reaction at Google software finding it's way into public schools is too extreme.
I guess that my knowledge of these companies manipulative business practices does fire me up.
As long as there is a public competition, and the decision is well formed, intended and transmitted transparently, there shouldn't be a problem.
As long as there is a public competition, and the decision is well formed, intended and transmitted transparently, there shouldn't be a problem.
I think GP means schools buying the books are typically using public funds to do so.
Physical volumes are still easier to secure than computer systems. They might trust the physical copies more.
"Use nothing commercial ever" is probably too extreme.
I'd agree with the parent that schools shouldn't be getting kids to use things like GSuite, but not solely because it's commercial - the problem is the data management practices of these companies, which the state should not be supporting by forcing children to use these services to complete their education and inevitably giving companies like Google huge amounts of personal data.
This isn't a problem with textbooks, commercial or otherwise.
I'd agree with the parent that schools shouldn't be getting kids to use things like GSuite, but not solely because it's commercial - the problem is the data management practices of these companies, which the state should not be supporting by forcing children to use these services to complete their education and inevitably giving companies like Google huge amounts of personal data.
This isn't a problem with textbooks, commercial or otherwise.
So kids now have to learn bad products like LibreOffice they will use in their life? Fantastic.
What's so bad about LibreOffice? If they want they want, they can use another word processor out of their own volition, the problem here is Word being the default.
The ruling is "the first in a series of cases regarding the use of Chromebooks and the G-suite for education". So likely this is just the beginning.
There have been two rulings regarding this particular municipality. First, they were investigated due to a data breach (personally-identifiable information was shared between G-suite and Youtube). This breach lead Datatilsynet (the Danish Data Protection Agency) to investigate the municipality and conclude they hadn't done their due diligence in investigating privacy implication of the setup.
This forced the municipality to perform a through investigation of the privacy issues. Their findings in turn lead Datatilsynet to ban further use of G-suite an Chromebooks (in the municipality) because they found more serious issues, for example they couldn't guarantee private information was not shared with unsafe countries.
The choice of software and hardware is decided by each municipality, so there will be no nationwide ban as such. But underlying privacy problems will be the same for other municipalities which use the same software.
There have been two rulings regarding this particular municipality. First, they were investigated due to a data breach (personally-identifiable information was shared between G-suite and Youtube). This breach lead Datatilsynet (the Danish Data Protection Agency) to investigate the municipality and conclude they hadn't done their due diligence in investigating privacy implication of the setup.
This forced the municipality to perform a through investigation of the privacy issues. Their findings in turn lead Datatilsynet to ban further use of G-suite an Chromebooks (in the municipality) because they found more serious issues, for example they couldn't guarantee private information was not shared with unsafe countries.
The choice of software and hardware is decided by each municipality, so there will be no nationwide ban as such. But underlying privacy problems will be the same for other municipalities which use the same software.
But that was due to misconfiguration. For example the kids could access and comment on youtube videos with their school accounts and when it did that the comments was posted with their full name and school/class name.
Oh, so that's why Youtube doesn't show comments on my school account anymore. Makes sense I guess.
That misconfiguration is what triggered the investigation, but the investigation uncovered more severe problems, for example the municipality could not guarantee that private information was not transferred to unsafe countries.
Google have some setup where the data is stored in the EU (Ireland) and allegedly the encryption key is only available to the Ireland branch of Google and not the US branch. But the setup is still accessed by personnel from the US branch.
Google have some setup where the data is stored in the EU (Ireland) and allegedly the encryption key is only available to the Ireland branch of Google and not the US branch. But the setup is still accessed by personnel from the US branch.
Google has a blog post that says the same thing: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/goo...
Excerpt of summary paragraph for the lazy:
> Recently, Datatilsynet (the Danish Data Protection Authority) issued a ruling emphasizing the importance of conducting proper due diligence before implementing cloud services. We agree due diligence is an important step for customers since privacy assessments and outcomes can vary significantly based on the way customers have configured their system. Although this ruling is limited to Helsingør Municipality, it may be of interest to other Danish controllers. To be clear, the ruling does not apply to Google directly or to other customers, nor does it prohibit use of Google Workspace for Education or Chromebooks in Denmark.
> Recently, Datatilsynet (the Danish Data Protection Authority) issued a ruling emphasizing the importance of conducting proper due diligence before implementing cloud services. We agree due diligence is an important step for customers since privacy assessments and outcomes can vary significantly based on the way customers have configured their system. Although this ruling is limited to Helsingør Municipality, it may be of interest to other Danish controllers. To be clear, the ruling does not apply to Google directly or to other customers, nor does it prohibit use of Google Workspace for Education or Chromebooks in Denmark.
Elsinore's mayor seems to be of a different opinion:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benediktekiaerhelsingor_educa... (in Danish)
Long story short, she claims this will have far-reaching consequences not just for Elsinore, but for other school districs as well.
Elsinore did, indeed, do an analysis, which is clearly stated in the report: https://www.datatilsynet.dk/afgoerelser/afgoerelser/2022/jul... (also in Danish -- translator link in a sibling comment)
The main points are that Elsinore concluded that the risks with using Google Workspace are low, but that it cannot be guaranteed that US authorities won't be able to get hold of the data. In order to be allowed to use Google Workspace, Elsinore must re-evaluate that position and be absolutely sure that such leaks cannot happen. This is the part that might have far-reaching consequences, since Elsinore -- and many others -- don't see that as possible.
I'm in no way an expert when it comes to GDPR, but there's a lot of people who're quite upset about this, since it means any school using Google Workspace is expected to prove data transfer to non-EU entities isn't possible without adequate protection.
Long story short, she claims this will have far-reaching consequences not just for Elsinore, but for other school districs as well.
Elsinore did, indeed, do an analysis, which is clearly stated in the report: https://www.datatilsynet.dk/afgoerelser/afgoerelser/2022/jul... (also in Danish -- translator link in a sibling comment)
The main points are that Elsinore concluded that the risks with using Google Workspace are low, but that it cannot be guaranteed that US authorities won't be able to get hold of the data. In order to be allowed to use Google Workspace, Elsinore must re-evaluate that position and be absolutely sure that such leaks cannot happen. This is the part that might have far-reaching consequences, since Elsinore -- and many others -- don't see that as possible.
I'm in no way an expert when it comes to GDPR, but there's a lot of people who're quite upset about this, since it means any school using Google Workspace is expected to prove data transfer to non-EU entities isn't possible without adequate protection.
I think the mayor is correct.
GDPR is EU law. And unless some super lawyer shows up from Helsingørs kommune or more likely from Google then this goes not only for Denmark but the rest of the EU as well.
Normally a seller of a piece of software to an institution would provide the documentation, if nedeed, that the piece of software follows GDPR.
Now with Google, Helsingør likely gets the software for free. And Google takes the data and use it for targeting advertisement and maybe other things.
Personally I think the school system in Denmark should only use suppliers with a straight-forward pay and use business model.
Much in the same way I don't think our children's text books should contain advertisement or be sponsored by business or political interests.
GDPR is EU law. And unless some super lawyer shows up from Helsingørs kommune or more likely from Google then this goes not only for Denmark but the rest of the EU as well.
Normally a seller of a piece of software to an institution would provide the documentation, if nedeed, that the piece of software follows GDPR.
Now with Google, Helsingør likely gets the software for free. And Google takes the data and use it for targeting advertisement and maybe other things.
Personally I think the school system in Denmark should only use suppliers with a straight-forward pay and use business model.
Much in the same way I don't think our children's text books should contain advertisement or be sponsored by business or political interests.
If anyone needs a good example of the: 1. click bait title 2. primitive advertisement, all in one place, this article is a great example.
Was Gmail banned in Denmark schools? Obviously not, there is some regulation in one of the counties and it was about chromebook usage because of some privacy concerns. One. County.
Article is written by a company which is a direct competitor of Gmail (they are email service too) and are apparently searching for some topic they can use to get some publicity. Nothing bad in itself, but lies are lame.
And no, nobody is going to switch from Gmail to tutanota, because nobody wants mediocre user interface, be unable to search emails and force others to use some particular service to decrypt emails.
Even with encrypted emails, that's just the beginning of the privacy story. If I am sending encrypted email to Bin Laden or to abortion clinics it does not help much that the content is encrypted.
Was Gmail banned in Denmark schools? Obviously not, there is some regulation in one of the counties and it was about chromebook usage because of some privacy concerns. One. County.
Article is written by a company which is a direct competitor of Gmail (they are email service too) and are apparently searching for some topic they can use to get some publicity. Nothing bad in itself, but lies are lame.
And no, nobody is going to switch from Gmail to tutanota, because nobody wants mediocre user interface, be unable to search emails and force others to use some particular service to decrypt emails.
Even with encrypted emails, that's just the beginning of the privacy story. If I am sending encrypted email to Bin Laden or to abortion clinics it does not help much that the content is encrypted.
"nobody wants mediocre user interface"
Is Gmail your idea of a good user interface? How many ordinaty people can setup filters to direct email from a prticular sender to a particular folder? Why can't I right click on an email and add it to a specific rule?
"be unable to search emails"
The mobile Gmail app fails at search, if my latest email has a word in it, typing in that word into searchbar returns nothing. I had to switch to outlook, ironically
"Even with encrypted emails, that's just the beginning of the privacy story."
I can get bank statements or medical records by post, they are confidential and are accepted by every court in the land.
I can't get a bank statement by email and every email will be subject to 'is this real, did he really send it'. Its bear i possible to prove.
so I think we've failed as an industry here
Is Gmail your idea of a good user interface? How many ordinaty people can setup filters to direct email from a prticular sender to a particular folder? Why can't I right click on an email and add it to a specific rule?
"be unable to search emails"
The mobile Gmail app fails at search, if my latest email has a word in it, typing in that word into searchbar returns nothing. I had to switch to outlook, ironically
"Even with encrypted emails, that's just the beginning of the privacy story."
I can get bank statements or medical records by post, they are confidential and are accepted by every court in the land.
I can't get a bank statement by email and every email will be subject to 'is this real, did he really send it'. Its bear i possible to prove.
so I think we've failed as an industry here
> so I think we've failed as an industry here
Yeah, actually. Mail storage/search is not a solved problem. I recently trained an executive assistant to use ediscovery tools because the person she supports has too many mails to be indexed.
Do yourself a favor and delete as much as possible before it all runs away from you. Stop using email as a system of record now or you will really wish you did later on. Sounds like you might have crossed that point recently.
Do you keep your paper bank statements directly in your mailbox or do you move them to a filing cabinet? Likewise, you should download your records from the bank's site and store them in a real filesystem, not some subfolder of your inbox.
Yeah, actually. Mail storage/search is not a solved problem. I recently trained an executive assistant to use ediscovery tools because the person she supports has too many mails to be indexed.
Do yourself a favor and delete as much as possible before it all runs away from you. Stop using email as a system of record now or you will really wish you did later on. Sounds like you might have crossed that point recently.
Do you keep your paper bank statements directly in your mailbox or do you move them to a filing cabinet? Likewise, you should download your records from the bank's site and store them in a real filesystem, not some subfolder of your inbox.
but a bank statement is a legal document. Its counts as 'proof' for legal matters.
If I take an email and save it to a file system, and delete ir from the mailbox, there is no evidence of anything.
If I take an email and save it to a file system, and delete ir from the mailbox, there is no evidence of anything.
That's what retention and archive and document management sytems are for. Even my FOIA-able government clients are able to keep their mailboxes manageable.
& you might actually be surprised. I used to have an insurer on my roster that ran all policyholder emails through a pdf printer into their DMS and that apparently was good enough for the courts to accept as policyholder statements.
& you might actually be surprised. I used to have an insurer on my roster that ran all policyholder emails through a pdf printer into their DMS and that apparently was good enough for the courts to accept as policyholder statements.
And it's so slow. I miss Inbox.
Now let's ban MSFT Office365 too. It's of zero use to teach whatever to the kids.
Schools have no place supporting or teaching proprietary software in the first place. They should teach concepts using publicly available software and sponsor students who wish to patch bugs that impact school operations.
Should need to teach how to think. Part of that means the ability to adopt to whatever tool. Thus schools should require students to use each of 4 different office system. O365 is only one of them, and LibreOffice is an obvious section choice (I'm have no idea what the others might be). tools come and go, but the concepts you are using the tools for stick around. I wasted a lot of time learning WordPerfect F-keys back as a kid a useless skill. Microsoft introduced the Ribbon and changed the way you use their office 20 years ago. I haven't even used a word processor in the last few years, but by focusing on good writing (well as good as I can do) I can figure out how to make tools submit, and that is what is important.
> Should need to teach how to think.
Do you know if there is any sort of consensus on this topic on how to do it?
It looks like a very popular belief, but do anyone actually knows how to think, and even more, how to teach how to think without making it just a different kind of propaganda?
Do you know if there is any sort of consensus on this topic on how to do it?
It looks like a very popular belief, but do anyone actually knows how to think, and even more, how to teach how to think without making it just a different kind of propaganda?
So not really. There are broad strokes ways to teach critical thinking skills, but (believe it or not) critical thinking is a very higher order skill that is difficult to transfer across domain areas.
It follows a few steps: teach the scientific process, analyze analogies to whatever it is you're approaching, identify appropriate and relevant sources for information and how to assess their reliability/trustworthiness, identify biases including self-biases, and fostering open-mindedness and an ability to evaluate points from multiple perspectives.
When you are critically thinking about things, these are the steps you take - quickly, and not in any order that you can identify. But you are doing that.
That being said, because these are higher order, abstract skills for the most part, they are very hard to apply across disciplines. You need a level of base knowledge of the area to be able to sort through these steps appropriately. For example, it is easy for me to analyze statements and assess articles related to farming, education, and depression, because I have massive experience with these things. Whereas, I absolutely could not even get through evaluating appropriate sources when it comes to programming languages; I have no experience with them.
In other words, it is possible, but it takes a concerted effort in nearly every aspect of the child's life. This is not something we can do JUST in the classroom, especially when parents, often, do not want true critical reasoning in their children; my experience is that if a child can do this effectively s/he is very difficult to keep 'under control'.
It follows a few steps: teach the scientific process, analyze analogies to whatever it is you're approaching, identify appropriate and relevant sources for information and how to assess their reliability/trustworthiness, identify biases including self-biases, and fostering open-mindedness and an ability to evaluate points from multiple perspectives.
When you are critically thinking about things, these are the steps you take - quickly, and not in any order that you can identify. But you are doing that.
That being said, because these are higher order, abstract skills for the most part, they are very hard to apply across disciplines. You need a level of base knowledge of the area to be able to sort through these steps appropriately. For example, it is easy for me to analyze statements and assess articles related to farming, education, and depression, because I have massive experience with these things. Whereas, I absolutely could not even get through evaluating appropriate sources when it comes to programming languages; I have no experience with them.
In other words, it is possible, but it takes a concerted effort in nearly every aspect of the child's life. This is not something we can do JUST in the classroom, especially when parents, often, do not want true critical reasoning in their children; my experience is that if a child can do this effectively s/he is very difficult to keep 'under control'.
Here I'm focused on the skills of making an easy to read/nice too look at paper, and not the much more broad skill of critical thinking in any situation. (though that is the real goal of school, I have no idea how to teach it - see the other reply) As such what we need to teach is when to change font size, when bold/italic is good, when column layouts are good, how to format table of contents, and many other things that you would do. Any word processor can do all of the above. Then a similar list of things for the other tools in an office suite.
That is how to think about office documents. Once you know what you want to do any tool can do that.
That is how to think about office documents. Once you know what you want to do any tool can do that.
Teaching is always propaganda. What matters is what you are propagandizing.
Robert Fulghum figured it out decades ago.
The teacher should were two message buttons on their shirt:
"Trust me; I'm the teacher"
"Question Authority"
Robert Fulghum figured it out decades ago.
The teacher should were two message buttons on their shirt:
"Trust me; I'm the teacher"
"Question Authority"
> Should need to teach how to think.
The goal of school is not to derail kids’ education by making them wrestle with self hosted sys admin nuances and failures.
The goal of school is not to derail kids’ education by making them wrestle with self hosted sys admin nuances and failures.
ca. 2000, my elementary school put me and my class in front of some PCs running windows 98 (proprietary), and connected to the internet, made us open internet explorer (proprietary), made us type "google.com" (proprietary) and showed us how to find things on the internet.
This was actually extremely unique - in france at the time, finding schools teaching any sort of computer skills, especially to young children, let alone *online*, was basically impossible. But I remember it very vividly. I don't know if the skills "learned" at that time had any influence on me, or ended up being useful (I probably would have figured them out eventually), but… I can't be sure, and the point is, it was I think a great thing.
I am an open source activist whenever I can. But saying schools have "no place supporting or teaching proprietary software" is extremely off-base, simply because the world is made of proprietary software and schools should be able to teach the reality of the world to children, teenagers and young adults.
This was actually extremely unique - in france at the time, finding schools teaching any sort of computer skills, especially to young children, let alone *online*, was basically impossible. But I remember it very vividly. I don't know if the skills "learned" at that time had any influence on me, or ended up being useful (I probably would have figured them out eventually), but… I can't be sure, and the point is, it was I think a great thing.
I am an open source activist whenever I can. But saying schools have "no place supporting or teaching proprietary software" is extremely off-base, simply because the world is made of proprietary software and schools should be able to teach the reality of the world to children, teenagers and young adults.
"Schools have no place supporting or teaching proprietary software in the first place. They should teach concepts using publicly available software"
Schools teach using proprietary books, and every piece of equipment in a school, from a projector to a powertool is proprietary too.
I am not against the idea, but I am just pointing out it gors against the grain of current customs and norms.
Schools teach using proprietary books, and every piece of equipment in a school, from a projector to a powertool is proprietary too.
I am not against the idea, but I am just pointing out it gors against the grain of current customs and norms.
I specifically said software. Appliances like a drill or a projector can be readily replaced with any other drill or projector. These do not have anywhere near the privacy and lock-in problems of proprietary software.
Honestly it would be amazing if schools started using Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux for students, but the MS monopoly is entrenched.
I'd have to disagree here. Teaching kids how to use Word and Excel will help them for the majority of office jobs out there.
Should we teach kids to use TikTok and Facebook so they will be better prepared to help with future office marketing tasks too?
This line of thinking is poison and will only amplify the monopolisic power of whatever select companies make the taught-in-schools list.
Proprietary technology has no place in educational institutions.
This line of thinking is poison and will only amplify the monopolisic power of whatever select companies make the taught-in-schools list.
Proprietary technology has no place in educational institutions.
No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.
I have had a long career with many office jobs all across the US and never once has anyone taken issue with me using LibreOffice or similar as long as I got my job done and documents were exported in compatible formats.
Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.
Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.
Not to mention, Microsoft Office has supported the LibreOffice native formats nearly perfectly for almost a decade now, because some governments mandate OpenDocument formats over Microsoft ones. In fact, since at least Office 2013, you can configure Office to use those formats by default.
Excel is a far different beast than what Libre Calc offers, and then what Google Sheets offers. It has some formulas that are exclusive (mind you Liber likely has some that Excel no longer has), outside of startups it is effectively the industry standard as well and is used in all kinds of industries and roles.
Libre also has different features than Excel which has different features than Sheets, etc, but Excel is the "standard". You're going to see Excel far more than Sheets in the workplace and I've never seen a job listing mention Libre Calc.
I know Excel, I started at a startup 4 months ago using Sheets, the first few weeks I had to 'unlearn' half of what I knew and try and figure out how to do similar in Sheets. If I only knew sheets, I'd probably have been even more lost going to Excel because Microsoft doesn't hold your hand like Sheets does with every formula you start to type. I'm guessing something like Libre Calc is worse than Excel and Sheets in that regard.
>Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible
Sure, but teaching someone to drive a 4-cylinder automatic driver's ed car doesn't prepare them to say operate a manual tri-axle or a an excavator. Sure they understand steering, acceleration and stopping, but all of the unique mechanics of say Excel are different than random free software.
Libre also has different features than Excel which has different features than Sheets, etc, but Excel is the "standard". You're going to see Excel far more than Sheets in the workplace and I've never seen a job listing mention Libre Calc.
I know Excel, I started at a startup 4 months ago using Sheets, the first few weeks I had to 'unlearn' half of what I knew and try and figure out how to do similar in Sheets. If I only knew sheets, I'd probably have been even more lost going to Excel because Microsoft doesn't hold your hand like Sheets does with every formula you start to type. I'm guessing something like Libre Calc is worse than Excel and Sheets in that regard.
>Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible
Sure, but teaching someone to drive a 4-cylinder automatic driver's ed car doesn't prepare them to say operate a manual tri-axle or a an excavator. Sure they understand steering, acceleration and stopping, but all of the unique mechanics of say Excel are different than random free software.
And that's why you only learn to drive an excavator if you get a job that requires it.
Nothing at the level students do spreadsheets is different between spreadsheet programs
Nothing at the level students do spreadsheets is different between spreadsheet programs
My wife is a high school teacher, the stuff those kids are doing now in class is
beyond anything I did the first decade I worked in an office. I'm 37, high school education of today in no way resembles the high school experience I had - a subset of kids are even graduating high school and simultaneously completing an associates now.
Fair enough, turns out my student who's just finished a GCSE (age 16) in Computer Science had never used a spreadsheet
Google Sheets also has formulas Excel doesn't (QUERY, IMPORTHTML, IMPORTDATA, etc.), and IIRC it does arrays differently. (I haven't used Excel much, so I'm not entirely sure about that one.)
You must’ve been lucky, because using existing formatted spreadsheets and docs with Libreoffice always has and always will be a hit or miss proposition. It’s not LO’s fault, but you are clearly an outlier.
Teach them LibreOffice. Or better yet, teach them how to learn themselves.
Exactly, my teacher always said:
The hard thing is to find the book (with the information you want) and not reading the book itself (that was before google/inet)
The hard thing is to find the book (with the information you want) and not reading the book itself (that was before google/inet)
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> Should we teach kids to use TikTo
The mostly pro TikTok comments here when news of it being banned indicates YES.
The mostly pro TikTok comments here when news of it being banned indicates YES.
Teach LibreOffice for all we care, but the principles are important
"Office proficiency" is a useful thing to have, and while it is taken for granted by the older generations, it is being a challenge for people joining the workforce now (it's an actual issue, hiring managers are having trouble with this)
As in: people can't write a simple text, set a phrase in bold, set the title with a different font size, etc. Or how to do some basic spreadsheet with simple calculations
"Office proficiency" is a useful thing to have, and while it is taken for granted by the older generations, it is being a challenge for people joining the workforce now (it's an actual issue, hiring managers are having trouble with this)
As in: people can't write a simple text, set a phrase in bold, set the title with a different font size, etc. Or how to do some basic spreadsheet with simple calculations
1. If basically all office jobs dealt with online marketing, then yes, we should teach facebook and TikTok in school. But almost no office jobs are related to marketing and so no we shouldn’t teach those tools. It’s an apples and oranges comparison.
2. Schools shouldn’t be trying to be in charge of shaping corporations. That isn’t and shouldn’t be a goal of teaching children.
3. That’s an arbitrary opinion you have. No text books either then? No published novels? No proprietary informational videos? Yes you COULD teach without these, but you would deliver a subpar experience. I’d again argue that schools shouldn’t be focusing on trying to push these moral ideals, they should be focusing on preparing our children for contributing to society in adulthood as much as possible.
2. Schools shouldn’t be trying to be in charge of shaping corporations. That isn’t and shouldn’t be a goal of teaching children.
3. That’s an arbitrary opinion you have. No text books either then? No published novels? No proprietary informational videos? Yes you COULD teach without these, but you would deliver a subpar experience. I’d again argue that schools shouldn’t be focusing on trying to push these moral ideals, they should be focusing on preparing our children for contributing to society in adulthood as much as possible.
Pretty much all marketing jobs involve those social networks. The office job you once knew, no longer exists. Hell, the office doesn't even exist, everything is going remote.
In a marketing class, you absolutely would have to involve social media, otherwise your class would be outdated bunk. Traditional advertising doesn't work on new generation platforms. And billboards, TV ads, and magazine ads are expensive, inefficient, poorly targeted advertising, for all but the wealthiest behemoths of companies.
The same methods behind TV ads don't translate to social media ads. Social media ads aren't just trimmed down traditional ads.
In a marketing class, you absolutely would have to involve social media, otherwise your class would be outdated bunk. Traditional advertising doesn't work on new generation platforms. And billboards, TV ads, and magazine ads are expensive, inefficient, poorly targeted advertising, for all but the wealthiest behemoths of companies.
The same methods behind TV ads don't translate to social media ads. Social media ads aren't just trimmed down traditional ads.
Plenty of open source options that will teach them 90% of what most people will need to know. Taxpayer money should not be going to these corporations.
Nothing really compares to Excel.
(Nothing really compares to Excel in some of its most terrible bugs either).
(Nothing really compares to Excel in some of its most terrible bugs either).
What does Excel do that something like LibreOffice Calc does not? I'm genuinely curious because I've not run into any issues with the latter that the former would've solved so far.
Excel has FlashExtract and FlashFill[1]
Excel has COM automation going back to the old days; from many programming languages on Windows you can instantiate "Excel.Application" and then script it as if you were using the GUI - and have the GUI visible and showing you what is happening. Add workbooks, worksheets, select ranges, copy/paste, enter formulae and get their results, apply formatting, etc. Because it plugs into Windows' COM system, you don't need to download an Office SDK or Excel-specific library for your language to use it, any language which can talk to COM can do it, including VBScript, PowerShell, Python with PyWin32, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, etc.
If you save an Excel document on a SharePoint (Office365) site, then multiple people can open it. When they do that, it's a multiplayer spreadsheet - you see who else has the document open, which cell(s) they are looking at, changes betewen all people are propagated in approximately realtime.
If you save an Excel document on an (Office365) site then Office365 has visibility into it, which means if someone else opens it, @tags you in a comment on a cell, Office365 will pick that up and email it to you for your attention.
Excel documents saved on O365 can be opened in a web browser, in a JavaScript version of Excel which has fewer features but can still join in with the above.
Excel documents saved on O365 are visible in the MSGraph API, for scripting with REST endpoints[2]
People who have been working in Silicon Valley, for FAANG companies, as software developers, pushing us all to the cloud for ten to twenty years, still thinking that Excel vs LibreOffice is a matter of a desktop program showing a grid you can put some numbers in and do sum or average, and whether you can bold or align the text, are experiencing some kind of cognitive dissonance.
Your CRUD app can now be a spreadsheet someone in HR opens, enters an employee code, and a script against the MSGraph API which offboards them, and if it hasn't worked the HR person can @ you in a comment. There goes all your custom CRUD UI, database backend, network connectivity, compiling, deployment, authorization, there's your "no code" or "low code" Excel as frontend for a small business.
Want to script a report for HR to look at? Thinking of downloading a JDK and PDF library for Java and asking for SMTP relay settings? Script MSGraph to make an Excel spreadsheet directly in a folder HR can see. A poor solution for a big business, a quick and relatively easy solution for a small business with an admin and a PowerShell script.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116088#32129830
[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/excel?v...
Excel has COM automation going back to the old days; from many programming languages on Windows you can instantiate "Excel.Application" and then script it as if you were using the GUI - and have the GUI visible and showing you what is happening. Add workbooks, worksheets, select ranges, copy/paste, enter formulae and get their results, apply formatting, etc. Because it plugs into Windows' COM system, you don't need to download an Office SDK or Excel-specific library for your language to use it, any language which can talk to COM can do it, including VBScript, PowerShell, Python with PyWin32, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, etc.
If you save an Excel document on a SharePoint (Office365) site, then multiple people can open it. When they do that, it's a multiplayer spreadsheet - you see who else has the document open, which cell(s) they are looking at, changes betewen all people are propagated in approximately realtime.
If you save an Excel document on an (Office365) site then Office365 has visibility into it, which means if someone else opens it, @tags you in a comment on a cell, Office365 will pick that up and email it to you for your attention.
Excel documents saved on O365 can be opened in a web browser, in a JavaScript version of Excel which has fewer features but can still join in with the above.
Excel documents saved on O365 are visible in the MSGraph API, for scripting with REST endpoints[2]
People who have been working in Silicon Valley, for FAANG companies, as software developers, pushing us all to the cloud for ten to twenty years, still thinking that Excel vs LibreOffice is a matter of a desktop program showing a grid you can put some numbers in and do sum or average, and whether you can bold or align the text, are experiencing some kind of cognitive dissonance.
Your CRUD app can now be a spreadsheet someone in HR opens, enters an employee code, and a script against the MSGraph API which offboards them, and if it hasn't worked the HR person can @ you in a comment. There goes all your custom CRUD UI, database backend, network connectivity, compiling, deployment, authorization, there's your "no code" or "low code" Excel as frontend for a small business.
Want to script a report for HR to look at? Thinking of downloading a JDK and PDF library for Java and asking for SMTP relay settings? Script MSGraph to make an Excel spreadsheet directly in a folder HR can see. A poor solution for a big business, a quick and relatively easy solution for a small business with an admin and a PowerShell script.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116088#32129830
[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/excel?v...
Thank you for the explanations! Other than multiplayer spreadsheet editing this doesn't sound too relevant to students though or what they will be taught.
I realise my comment sounded like I was saying the features of Excel are not comparable. What I really meant was simply that, like MS Word (which I hate with a passion), it's so ubiquitous that guaranteeing compatibility between businesses is often worth a significant amount of dollars in time saved.
That’s true in the same way that it’s true of Visual Studio, but how many people really need all that functionality in their job?
I’m sure there are some genuine Excel experts out there doing important work but I’ve got to assume most of what’s being done is formulas, charts and pivot tables.
I’m sure there are some genuine Excel experts out there doing important work but I’ve got to assume most of what’s being done is formulas, charts and pivot tables.
Maybe what you need to know, but not how to use the programs. I was very anti Microsoft in my school days but had to learn Excel and Word in school. It helped me so much in my first job.
If you had learned OpenOffice calc or write, would that have made much of a difference? Takes a few hours to move 80% from one to the other. Maybe if very specific functions it may take a few minutes more.
Would you prefer we mandate Vim or EMacs for kids? Both are free, so it’s a deliberate choice to be made. And how do you suggest we support this decision and their potential inability to use an IDE in the real world?
I guess I'm not working in the real world, because I get to use whatever I want as long as I deliver... And so I use VIM.
I have 25 years of software engineering experience in a dozen languages and vim and the supporting plugin ecosystem cover everything I could ever need.
Modern IDEs are not at all required for success in this industry. They can sometimes even be a crutch.
I still teach people Vim. Some learn other things later but the important thing is they have a fast and free baseline available in every package manager.
Modern IDEs are not at all required for success in this industry. They can sometimes even be a crutch.
I still teach people Vim. Some learn other things later but the important thing is they have a fast and free baseline available in every package manager.
If you grew up with emacs and vim there is not so much chance you cannot use an ide in the real world? I mean: vim/emacs are considered harder to use and going to something easier is, well, easier? I am not really sure what you are saying?
Someone who can write elisp macros and have muscle memories for complex actions won’t be bothered with VS or VS code at all.
The other way around however…
Someone who can write elisp macros and have muscle memories for complex actions won’t be bothered with VS or VS code at all.
The other way around however…
People won't learn the underlying principles, they will rigidly learn the menu structure of the tool at hand. As such, their time will be wasted learning LibreOffice instead of getting a grip on the latest ribbongate spectacle from MS.
Google Workspace is free to schools. Therefore it 'costs' significantly less than running the infrastructure to service accounts for several 100's to 1000's of staff and kids using a FOSS solution. Of course, there are other email providers, but they are rarely free. They'll also still need to put security solutions in front of it, or indeed Exchange Online, because the offerings are rudimentary to say the least, but they are more solid out-of-the-box than OSS solutions and provide for a lower overall TCO and cost-to-serve. Pragmatism, where technology decisions and tax-payers money are concerned, should trump ideology every time.
It's pragmatic to not continue the monopolies that cost the taxpayer money on an ongoing basis.
The point is to not pay Microsoft money to promote Microsoft's continued monopoly, which will mean you have to pay them money again next year.
Any school paying for closed source software when they could be funding a company to make open source software is doing it wrong. Same with textbooks.
100s of 1000s of schools all paying for something they won't own and will have to pay for again in the future.
The point is to not pay Microsoft money to promote Microsoft's continued monopoly, which will mean you have to pay them money again next year.
Any school paying for closed source software when they could be funding a company to make open source software is doing it wrong. Same with textbooks.
100s of 1000s of schools all paying for something they won't own and will have to pay for again in the future.
You bring up a good point, which is other costs beyond financial. Mindshare, attention, and privacy costs also need to be considered and a case can be made that the people should not be funding these costs for corporations. Especially with very little oversight or insight into what they are paying for.
And 90% of people probably could continue to use these.
Schools should not use the non-free products even if Microsoft provided them for free to them (which they did or do), because it is a Trojan Horse into kid's minds in order to create soft dependencies. People who learned to use one office suite are rarely motivated to learn yet another one.
Schools should not use the non-free products even if Microsoft provided them for free to them (which they did or do), because it is a Trojan Horse into kid's minds in order to create soft dependencies. People who learned to use one office suite are rarely motivated to learn yet another one.
It's the other way around, teaching kids how to use Word and Excel will help Microsoft for the majority of office jobs out there, that's why everything MS is free for kids.
Just use LibreOffice Calc or some equivalent. The main things you want them to learn is to use formulas, charts and filters anyway. LibreOffice Calc does all of that in a pretty similar way to what Excel does.
I'm actually not even sure what I would gain by switching to actual Excel.
I'm actually not even sure what I would gain by switching to actual Excel.
I used to know excel pretty well but spent the last 8? Years using Google spread sheets.
Excel is really difficult to use now.
I don’t imagine moving from libreoffice calc to excel would be easy.
Excel is really difficult to use now.
I don’t imagine moving from libreoffice calc to excel would be easy.
However Denmark has a long history of being heavy into MS and being abused by the company, so I would like to see it ditched, which the way Denmark works is once you lose 50%, another 46% will jump on board with what that 50% are doing, so I'm just looking forward to Denmark as a Microsoft free country.
Should school really be for job training though? Certainly knowing how to use word processors and spreadsheets is a useful general computing skill, but there's no reason it needs to be MS-specific.
Spreadsheets aren't just useful for jobs. Budgets, keep an inventory of digital purchases, making a directory of contact info/birth days/anniversaries, dietary tracking, fitness logs, etc, etc, so on and so forth. Not to mention if they go on to college/university they'll almost certainly have multiple classes where they have to create/manipulate spreadsheets and write a heck of a lot of papers in a word processor.
There is a difference between teaching students how to use a product and teaching students through the use of a product. The latter intentionally teaches them transferrable skills. The former does not, and runs the risk that any change in the product (nevermind using a different product) will leave the student without the necessary skills to adapt.
The approaches to teaching can vary quite wildly. My mother was doing some resume padding when I was in middle school, so I got to compare what they were teaching with what my school was teaching. They were teaching rote skills with a separate book directed towards each product, which is to say Word had a book full of screenshots illustrating procedures and WordPerfect had its own book full of screenshots illustrating procedures. They were not laying down the foundations for transferrable skills, nor did they expect students to pick it up. In contrast, my middle school was using obsolete computers and had no expectation the software would be used in business. The emphasis was directed towards laying out and formatting documents instead, which had a much longer lasting impact.
The approaches to teaching can vary quite wildly. My mother was doing some resume padding when I was in middle school, so I got to compare what they were teaching with what my school was teaching. They were teaching rote skills with a separate book directed towards each product, which is to say Word had a book full of screenshots illustrating procedures and WordPerfect had its own book full of screenshots illustrating procedures. They were not laying down the foundations for transferrable skills, nor did they expect students to pick it up. In contrast, my middle school was using obsolete computers and had no expectation the software would be used in business. The emphasis was directed towards laying out and formatting documents instead, which had a much longer lasting impact.
That's what I was always told growing up. But after 10 years of working office jobs at various companies, I've yet to have to use either.
You mean vendor lock in is going to reinforce the existing monopoly. Good thinking there to get kids as early as possible
It will also ensure that competitors in that space have a hard time, because people are now conditioned to use these exact products instead of alternatives. Nothing is harder to break than habits.
[deleted]
If we teach them tools that aren't awful, then offices can use those instead.
And windows with the rampant telemetry and online accounts being mandatory
junaru(2)
Do you have any reason to say this other than “big corporation bad”?
I would argue it is far more helpful for 80%+ of kids to learn excel than to learn advanced maths.
I would argue it is far more helpful for 80%+ of kids to learn excel than to learn advanced maths.
The fact that the word "excel" is nowdays synonymous with "spreadsheet software" is exactly the reason why we should NOT teach kids how to use MS Excel.
There are many free implementations of spreadsheet software. Kids can get even more experience using different kinds of software, teaching them ways in which software can differ while still being able to do the same things. Ironically, this would probably make kids more skilled with MS Excel, if they were ever forced to use it.
There's no reason to teach kids MS Excel in particular, unless you think memorizing positions of buttons is a useful skill in the real world.
There are many free implementations of spreadsheet software. Kids can get even more experience using different kinds of software, teaching them ways in which software can differ while still being able to do the same things. Ironically, this would probably make kids more skilled with MS Excel, if they were ever forced to use it.
There's no reason to teach kids MS Excel in particular, unless you think memorizing positions of buttons is a useful skill in the real world.
math skills are transferable and universal. Teaching excel specific functions is like teaching to drive by using one single car model. And cars have almost identical interfaces. So one should tech concepts not functions.
imagine a market for 3D animation software - Maya, 4D studio, etc. like 4 companies.
If 100% of a country's schools start teaching software from company A, thats a massive subsidy - basically 100% of the population will know how to use their software and prefer it to their competitors. Businesses will buy that software because everyone already knows it. You are massively distorting free market.
With a conoany thats already a monopoly, thats doubly unfair.
If 100% of a country's schools start teaching software from company A, thats a massive subsidy - basically 100% of the population will know how to use their software and prefer it to their competitors. Businesses will buy that software because everyone already knows it. You are massively distorting free market.
With a conoany thats already a monopoly, thats doubly unfair.
I've been thinking of ditching Gmail for myself and my business, but what true alternatives are there? I already have O365, but am not particular keen on using Exchange. I'm basically only using Gmail and Calendar.
Any e-mail providers based out of the EU, worth mentioning?
Any e-mail providers based out of the EU, worth mentioning?
Fastmail is great and has been great for many years.
I use and am very happy with Protonmail (Switzerland, so not quite the EU)
And for documents, LibreOffice is quite good these days.
And for documents, LibreOffice is quite good these days.
I was a big fan of Protonmail but there recent outages have been far from ideal. Might be worth considering other alternatives if 24/7 access to emails is a must
You mean the outages from like... last week/this week? That was the first outage in like years of service, and it was resolved pretty quickly, with good communication throughout and an apology. The discussion on Reddit is worth looking at[0].
What alternatives are out there without service degradation/outages?
Also not to undermine my own point (Protonmail is wonderfully stable for me) who is getting life or death emails these days? I could take whole days of downtime (hasn't ever happened) and probably be OK.
Why do we all pretend that we are all so important that we need services with bulletproof reliability and as many 9s as we can get?
Bit of a rant, but not directed at you so much Cxckers!
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/w0vcge/email_fr...
What alternatives are out there without service degradation/outages?
Also not to undermine my own point (Protonmail is wonderfully stable for me) who is getting life or death emails these days? I could take whole days of downtime (hasn't ever happened) and probably be OK.
Why do we all pretend that we are all so important that we need services with bulletproof reliability and as many 9s as we can get?
Bit of a rant, but not directed at you so much Cxckers!
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/w0vcge/email_fr...
Personally, I don't rely on it 24/7 and just use it for my personal use but some people use it for business purposes and not having access to your emails for a day or two can be expensive down time.
But you are right, no service is bulletproof
But you are right, no service is bulletproof
Migadu or the company that put out this blog post, tutanota, are great if you lack the time to self host.
I've had good luck with Tutanota. It's based out of Germany, and one of the few big providers that doesn't require your phone number to sign up.
https://tutanota.com
https://tutanota.com
Depends on what you consider a true alternative. Self-hosted open source is still and always has been available, but companies like Google have changed what people expect of software and so traditional email software (both clients and servers) is no longer viable unless people are willing to change their expectations to leave the large providers.
I asked myself the same question a while ago and wrote up the options then.[1] I used Runbox[2] for a while, but ended up switching to Soverin[3] and have been mostly happy with them. You certainly don’t get the spam filtering that the big companies have, but generally life is good.
[1] https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/
[2] https://runbox.com/
[3] https://soverin.net/
[1] https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/
[2] https://runbox.com/
[3] https://soverin.net/
As someone in a similar position, the biggest challenge is both Google and MS 365 offer waaay more than email.
Like, if I ditched MS 365, I would have to find alternatives for:
- Exchange (Email)
- Azure AD (Directory Service with SSO integration)
- SharePoint/ OneDrive (shared / personal file server)
- Teams (chat / conferencing)
- Intune (MDM)
For about 20 USD/user/month* .That's just the surface, I'm definitely forgetting about many other features. M365 is just too good for small business.
And even then, I would have to pay for some O365 subscriptions as many of my users rely heavily in Excel.
*That can be made cheaper by buying through a MS partner + yearly commitments.
Like, if I ditched MS 365, I would have to find alternatives for:
- Exchange (Email)
- Azure AD (Directory Service with SSO integration)
- SharePoint/ OneDrive (shared / personal file server)
- Teams (chat / conferencing)
- Intune (MDM)
For about 20 USD/user/month* .That's just the surface, I'm definitely forgetting about many other features. M365 is just too good for small business.
And even then, I would have to pay for some O365 subscriptions as many of my users rely heavily in Excel.
*That can be made cheaper by buying through a MS partner + yearly commitments.
Fastmail is good but more if you don't use it in bigger team (my opinion). Why don't you want to use exchange? Shouldn't be too bad as long as it's configured by MSFT?
Fastmail were US-only hosting, last time I looked.
Fastmail, protonmail.
Mailbox has been awesome to me
migadu
posteo.de
Having until August 3 to entirely complete the transition seems incredibly rough? How can that possibly be a reasonable situation?
I'm absolutely all for privacy, but I also wonder if the EU alternatives (e.g. Tutanota as per article) will be able to withstand e.g. state sponsored attacks as well as Google.
I'm absolutely all for privacy, but I also wonder if the EU alternatives (e.g. Tutanota as per article) will be able to withstand e.g. state sponsored attacks as well as Google.
These blog articles from companies that tries to sell alternatives for American cloud services should be taken with a grain of salt. They always make things sound more urgent and at larger scale than it really is.
How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns?
I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads).
Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?
I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads).
Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?
It is an open secret if you talk to any Google employee that Gmail data is heavily used to enrich other Google services, including ad placement, even if indirectly. They also can and will give it to authorities thanks to bulk keyword sharing agreements with or without individual warrants.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl...
US citizens should take careful note of the fact their data is only usefully constitutionally protected if it is hosted at home.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl...
US citizens should take careful note of the fact their data is only usefully constitutionally protected if it is hosted at home.
Going to take that first part with a grain of salt since I feel like any "open secrets" at Google end up with many whistleblowers and feature articles
Google is not a charity. They are not giving you gmail without charge without somehow generating profit from your data. You do not need an insider leak to work that much out.
Google Workspace makes money from Gmail by charging business users for it. Gmail is the freemium version to make employees demand their employers buy Workspace over Office 365.
It's a similar model to GitHub.
It's a similar model to GitHub.
That link doesn’t support your claim
It is a publicly known example of a blanket keyword search warrant. How is this not relevant? This sort of order could apply to any Google service.
> is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?
Yes, the Snowden leaks.
It doesn't matter whether Google themselves takes privacy seriously, they are a US company and therefor when handling personal information we must always assume that everything that is uploaded to their servers is sent straight to the NSA as well. Because that's what US law allows for.
I'm not even exaggerating, according to the latest rulings by EDPB, storing personal information on US servers is pretty much always forbidden unless you store it in encrypted form and control the encryption key.
Yes, the Snowden leaks.
It doesn't matter whether Google themselves takes privacy seriously, they are a US company and therefor when handling personal information we must always assume that everything that is uploaded to their servers is sent straight to the NSA as well. Because that's what US law allows for.
I'm not even exaggerating, according to the latest rulings by EDPB, storing personal information on US servers is pretty much always forbidden unless you store it in encrypted form and control the encryption key.
Pretty sure all the big players are working around that by hosting European things in their European data centers. But maybe the US government can pressure them to give that information up too in which case it would mean US companies that have or use private data shouldnt be allowed to operate in Europe
The CLOUD ACT was passed explicitly because Microsoft argued that data hosted on European servers was out of reach of the US government.
What does the CLOUD ACT do?
Just read the TOS of gmail. Looks like you are not aware what you allow them to do with your email.
Could you share the relevant part of the TOS here? Others may appreciate the education as well.
> We also collect the content you create, upload, or receive from others when using our services. This includes things like email you write and receive, photos and videos you save, docs and spreadsheets you create, and comments you make on YouTube videos.
[deleted]
It is not really a question of how much you trust Google.
The issue is that the US government is entitled access to all data hosted by US companies. This means data hosted by a US company is not safe according to GDPR.
The issue is that the US government is entitled access to all data hosted by US companies. This means data hosted by a US company is not safe according to GDPR.
Google has lost the PR war in Europe they are now a political punching bag there. Practically Gmail is probably one of the best choices for privacy with a good track record including attempted breach by China playing a role in their exiting the country. But in principle Google as an ad company will never be acceptable to those who want privacy to be more valued
You might be confusing privacy with security here
Privacy implies security as well
But just because an application is secure does not necessitate that it is respecting privacy laws
Exactly, which is the case for Google in general. Probably one of the most "secure" places to put your data, but from a privacy point of view self-hosting would be better, but then the security will be lower.
About time - many schools in Denmark is now offering free Chromebooks to students. Wonder what they'll do with them now.
Maybe that presents possibility for Linux on Chromebook migration project.
Oddly, Linux is hard, if not impossible, to run on many Chromebooks as root. A lot of Chromebooks only support “linux beta” (aka Crostini) as a subsystem of ChromeOS and the hardware doesn’t support running Linux as root from boot; frequently the low end models.
> Oddly, Linux is hard, if not impossible, to run on many Chromebooks as root. A lot of Chromebooks only support “linux beta” (aka Crostini) as a subsystem of ChromeOS and the hardware doesn’t support running Linux as root from boot; frequently the low end models.
Does any one know the reason for this -- was there ever a good description given by someone technical on the project as to why it worked out that way? All I can imagine is malice/ill-intent and I'd like to be wrong. It just seems so unlikely that somehow it was cheaper/easier to have the hardware not boot linux.
I remember seeing the chromebook story on HN lately[0][1] and I was kind of disgusted by it. The technical aspects might be great, but completely beside the point that those machines are basically on-ramps to google's surveillance ecosystem.
I can only think of them as the hardware version of Facebook's internet.org push -- If a whole generation grows up to think that running programs is launching domains that end in google.com, who benefits? Maybe a whole new generation will have easier access to VS Code and be able to build cool new stuff, and they'll run linux in VMs/crostini or whatever, but I can't fight the nagging feeling that a bunch of people will just stick with consumption. Figuring out how to install a program was hard, but it engendered a feeling of self-determination and control. Seems like Google wants to build the WALL-E future.
All that said, in recent memory this world has also produced:
- System76
- Framework
- Pinebook
- RISCV
- Tons of SBCs that are more and more performant and can function as full blown computing devices for cheap
And Google makes huge contributions (monetary and otherwise) to open source software and hardware, organizations, and projects.
Are things good or bad? Yes, I guess.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32198762
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/timsneath/status/1550598445248811...
Does any one know the reason for this -- was there ever a good description given by someone technical on the project as to why it worked out that way? All I can imagine is malice/ill-intent and I'd like to be wrong. It just seems so unlikely that somehow it was cheaper/easier to have the hardware not boot linux.
I remember seeing the chromebook story on HN lately[0][1] and I was kind of disgusted by it. The technical aspects might be great, but completely beside the point that those machines are basically on-ramps to google's surveillance ecosystem.
I can only think of them as the hardware version of Facebook's internet.org push -- If a whole generation grows up to think that running programs is launching domains that end in google.com, who benefits? Maybe a whole new generation will have easier access to VS Code and be able to build cool new stuff, and they'll run linux in VMs/crostini or whatever, but I can't fight the nagging feeling that a bunch of people will just stick with consumption. Figuring out how to install a program was hard, but it engendered a feeling of self-determination and control. Seems like Google wants to build the WALL-E future.
All that said, in recent memory this world has also produced:
- System76
- Framework
- Pinebook
- RISCV
- Tons of SBCs that are more and more performant and can function as full blown computing devices for cheap
And Google makes huge contributions (monetary and otherwise) to open source software and hardware, organizations, and projects.
Are things good or bad? Yes, I guess.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32198762
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/timsneath/status/1550598445248811...
All I know is the motherboard was the filter given on this site:
https://mrchromebox.tech/#devices
No reasoning is provided. If you’re curious, I sure you could contact the author for clarification.
https://mrchromebox.tech/#devices
No reasoning is provided. If you’re curious, I sure you could contact the author for clarification.
Thanks for this link, what ac detailed resource
I think it’s time for those executives in public sector who approved the purchase of those laptops to “please explain” why they procured them without checking data sovereignty compliance first.
This is about privacy and only privacy. However corporate interests in the US will interpret the EU banning Google Docs/Workspace and Office365 as protectionism and lobby for retaliatory protectionist measures against EU companies.
Which EU company will soon get a multi-billion dollar fine by the US government?
Which EU company will soon get a multi-billion dollar fine by the US government?
Sadly, too often data protection authorities just ban stuff before providing viable alternatives? I do understand there are issues with privacy shield or gpdr.
For all those people suggesting OSS alternatives, it is difficult. Finding talent (yes, the govt jobs do not pay like private) to install, run, maintain suite of office-based is close to impossible. They tried at our school - as the board tried to ban Teams while they chat in WhatsApp or zoom meetings. We tried SoGo (OSS) calendar - it just sucks. Sync does not happen. The solution always is to restart phone or try later.
These may work for individuals. Not for organisations unless huge number of talent moves to OSS type organisations (tutanota or etc).
For all those people suggesting OSS alternatives, it is difficult. Finding talent (yes, the govt jobs do not pay like private) to install, run, maintain suite of office-based is close to impossible. They tried at our school - as the board tried to ban Teams while they chat in WhatsApp or zoom meetings. We tried SoGo (OSS) calendar - it just sucks. Sync does not happen. The solution always is to restart phone or try later.
These may work for individuals. Not for organisations unless huge number of talent moves to OSS type organisations (tutanota or etc).
It is not the job of the data protection agency to provide alternatives. That would lead to serious conflicts of interest.
Denmark has alternatives, thats why this is done rather easily. The biggest problem is a slew of chromebooks bought by schools that will now be scraped, but the schools hated them anyway because of poor performance. Source Danish Guy with a daugther in 5th grade in Denmark.
Is this going to be a daily thread? I swear the comments are the same too
“Co” seems to be Google cloud services… is that just a translation issue?
Translation issue. In German, the expression "... und Co" is a synonym for et cetera.
Also a popular expression in English; there is no translation issue. More of a synonym for “et al” than “et cetera”.
Trust me, it is far far more popular in German, and would never be written as "and Co" in English.
In English, "& co." is used pretty much exclusively about people, whereas in German it's used literally everywhere, basically meaning "a category of things of which [this] is a famous example."
In English, "& co." is used pretty much exclusively about people, whereas in German it's used literally everywhere, basically meaning "a category of things of which [this] is a famous example."
Yeah I think the hard thing for me being in a headline is were they saying “Gmail and other gmail like email services”, or “gmail and other Google services”
I would sub “all Google cloud services” in for “Gmail and Co” if I were writing this headline (or just “Gmail” and mention the other stuff that was banned in the article.)
I would sub “all Google cloud services” in for “Gmail and Co” if I were writing this headline (or just “Gmail” and mention the other stuff that was banned in the article.)
Except the language spoken in Denmark is Danish, not German.
Tutanota is a German company
The author of this article is German. Really if you've read a lot of German news, the "and Co" is a huge tell.
It exists in danish as well. Where it's actually picked up from English.
https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=co
https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=co
Along these lines -- would love to know what the marketplace for all of the data collected on students from the myriad of online-learning platforms schools rushed to implement over the past couple years while homeschooling replaced in-person education. Target the smartest kids, who may go to the best schools, and earn the highest salaries and buy the most stuff. You've got to figure there's a huge market of buyers for this data.
Well, if they are legit and compliant with US law, there’s COPPA (1) to protect against this. Eg, TikTok was recently (2) fined for violations.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...
(2) https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/27/18243312/tiktok-ftc-fine-...
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...
(2) https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/27/18243312/tiktok-ftc-fine-...
I can imagine there is a large market for advertising to people who did bad in math.
I think back at my days in college, when a bunch of the computer science lab professors and postdocs had basically unaudited root access by design to all of the college's email and Unix logs... Or later, when I worked at an ISP and saw nominative clickstream data being casually handed over on USB sticks... I don't miss local control.
[dupe]
Like the 4th post about this news from almost 2 weeks ago
Like the 4th post about this news from almost 2 weeks ago
I'm under the impression that we (Denmark) are pretty random in what we think is important about privacy and IT security.. These ideas were probably strongly influenced by lobbyists from the main IT service providers, which are privately owned, and yet runs a large amount of out infrastructure. It'd be very much in their interest to have the goverment order some bespoke, insanely complicated/delayed/expensive system to be made.
> These ideas were probably strongly influenced by lobbyists from the main IT service providers
What is your evidence for that? It could be any privacy-conscious individual which have raised the issue to Datatilsynet. Believe it or nor, some people actually care about the safety of their kids' private information.
What is your evidence for that? It could be any privacy-conscious individual which have raised the issue to Datatilsynet. Believe it or nor, some people actually care about the safety of their kids' private information.
What's the replacement?
Unless Denmark or the EU want to setup an actual competitor, there is no private alternative out there.
But there are, there's even a site categorising them:
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers
But they didn't just ban GMail. The banned the entire Google Docs/Workspace portfolio.
And Chromebooks, by definition.
Will be fun if you're a school that just bought 1000 Chromebooks.
Will be fun if you're a school that just bought 1000 Chromebooks.
There alternatives to the Google Docs part too, like Collabora.
It will probably require some work and won't be as polished, but there are totally ways have all of that within the EU.
It will probably require some work and won't be as polished, but there are totally ways have all of that within the EU.
That's great, except now you need an army of IT people to stitch all these services together into one actual program and make them work. Before you just called google. And you need hardware. And fun as all this hard work might sound for tech people like us, your average teacher or principle doesn't actually know how any of this will work and has basically no budget. Meanwhile the same kids are setting up their own gmail accounts, google groups, facebook messenger etc so any hope of actual privacy is gone...
This is basically European protectionism under the guise of privacy.
My guess is that within a few years (or even sooner), you will be reading about a massive breach of student data from whatever alternative they choose to go with.
My guess is that within a few years (or even sooner), you will be reading about a massive breach of student data from whatever alternative they choose to go with.
> This is basically European protectionism under the guise of privacy.
if if it's just that, it's pretty easy to solve, don't you think so? The EU is leading on privacy, no doubt, or better: the EU is (finally, and really a bit too late) doing something while, afaik, the US is almost doing nothing (except for CA).
I hope the EU is able to slowly write down easy to implement rules other countries can just cut & paste
if if it's just that, it's pretty easy to solve, don't you think so? The EU is leading on privacy, no doubt, or better: the EU is (finally, and really a bit too late) doing something while, afaik, the US is almost doing nothing (except for CA).
I hope the EU is able to slowly write down easy to implement rules other countries can just cut & paste
In my little experience the EU is rather incapable of rolling out easy to implement rules.
The EU members get all of the privacy downsides and none of the financial upside from the American behemoths hence the legislative gymnastics to find them for $N millions every quarter and now further protectionist moves.
The EU members get all of the privacy downsides and none of the financial upside from the American behemoths hence the legislative gymnastics to find them for $N millions every quarter and now further protectionist moves.
Probably, but doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is a big improvement on doing the wrong thing.
Not really. It actually is about privacy.
If Google set up a subsidiary in Europe, that ran the service for european users and was the only entity that had access to the data, this would not be a problem. The problem here is Google's insistence that US entities will be allowed to access european data.
If Google set up a subsidiary in Europe, that ran the service for european users and was the only entity that had access to the data, this would not be a problem. The problem here is Google's insistence that US entities will be allowed to access european data.
>This is basically European protectionism under the guise of privacy.
Same can be said of American protectionism. TikTok being the prime example.
Same can be said of American protectionism. TikTok being the prime example.
protectionism is allowable for EU countries don't you know. I hope the next batch of US legislators isn't afraid to 'regulate' EU products
Agree, I don’t understand how a non-judicial branch can attest that Google is not compliant. If they think so, they should sue. Otherwise it sounds as if a minister invested in a local alternative…
Because that’s not how it works in continental Europe. Our system is a lot less litigious and relies on regulation rather than litigation.
ICOs, which are executive and non-judiciary, are responsible for compliance and enforcement. In the same way that if you're polluting, the respective executive agency will fine you and order you to stop. With, of course, you having the option to appeal to the judiciary branch.
But only one local county have been forbidden from processing personal data on school chromebooks as they did not do any analysis of the consequences.