T-Systems to keep Microsoft user data secure in Germany after US spying scandals

US TECHNOLOGY giant Microsoft said yesterday it was setting up centres to keep customer data in Germany, after a series of US surveillance scandals that have alarmed Europeans.

Deutsche Telekom would serve as “custodian” for Microsoft’s cloud-based services in Germany and keep data on its home turf, the companies said separately. “All customer data will remain exclusively in Germany,” Deutsche Telekom said, adding that the service would be available to European clients outside Germany.

“With this partnership with T-Systems, Microsoft customers can choose a data-protection level that complies with the requirements of German customers and many clients of the public sector,” said Anette Bronder, the director of the new digital division of Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems.

From the second half of next year, Microsoft would run its German cloud-based services through two data centres, where Deutsche Telekom would be responsible for “protection of customer data and access to it’’.

“Microsoft will have no access to the data if T-Systems or the customer do not allow it,” the Deutsche Telekom statement said.

The US group confirmed this, but neither made mention of the espionage revelations.

Trust in US tech companies has been shaken since former US National Security Agency (NSA) analyst Edward Snowden made public in 2013 a worldwide surveillance programme exploiting user data harvested from Silicon Valley giants.

The outrage was deeply felt in Germany, where memories of abuses under the Nazi and communist East German regimes loom large and where it emerged that the agency even snooped on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone.

Last month, the European Union’s top court issued a landmark verdict, striking down a key transatlantic data deal, saying internet firms could be barred from sending European citizens’ personal information to the US in the wake of the Snowden scandal.

The decision stemmed from a case lodged by Austrian law student Max Schrems, who challenged the 2000 “Safe Harbour” agreement between Washington and Brussels because it did not properly protect European data.

However, recent German media reports have pointed to sweeping secret co-operation between the NSA and Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service, and BND spying on German allies.

Berlin public radio said yesterday it had evidence the BND had kept tabs on French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, the US’s FBI, the United Nations children’s fund and a senior German diplomat.

Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has been shifting to offer more services through the cloud to adapt to a new landscape in which mobile devices have become more important.