France’s deepening reliance on US tech giants is raising alarms about digital sovereignty and exposing public data to foreign jurisdictions. In a French Senate report on economic and digital sovereignty, Senators accused the French State of “political fault”. That was in regard to outsourcing essential data infrastructure to US companies subject to US extraterritorial laws, including Microsoft, despite repeated warnings and alternatives. “France is subject to US extraterritorial law,” the report stated, warning that public data, including from health, education and critical sectors, was exposed to foreign surveillance under US legislation such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD). This legislation allowed the US Government to demand that companies subject to US law disclose the data they stored, simply by obtaining a judge’s authorisation. The Senate report cited Microsoft France’s legal director, Anton Carniaux, as admitting the company could not guarantee that French data it hosted would not be handed over to foreign authorities. “Carniaux … was asked by the [French Senate] commission to guarantee that French citizens’ data hosted by Microsoft would never be transmitted to foreign authorities without the agreement of the French authorities. He replied: ‘No, I can’t guarantee that,'” the report stated. In March 2025, the Ministry of Education signed a €74 million deal with a US company for equipping its departments and universities. The country’s elite school for engineers, École Polytechnique, also decided earlier this year to move the school’s IT system to Microsoft. That was done despite earlier instructions from the French Government urging school districts to avoid deploying Microsoft or Google collaborative tools due to sovereignty risks. The CNLL (National Council for Free Software) warned that “legal, technical, and strategic risks are being deliberately ignored.” Speaking with Brusse...
First seen: 2025-07-20 14:32
Last seen: 2025-07-21 11:36