Large majorities of consumers in the UK, Germany, and France believe their countries have become dependent on US tech companies, and more than 8 out of 10 are concerned about that dependence, according to a Proton survey of 3,000 people across the three countries.
In the UK:
55% of respondents want stronger data privacy protections
52% of respondents want greater trust in how personal data is handled
47% want data stored under European laws
In Germany:
44% of respondents want stronger data privacy protections
43% want data stored under European laws
37% of respondents want greater trust in how personal data is handled
In France:
54% of respondents want stronger data privacy protections
53% of respondents want to support the European economy and employment
49% want data stored under European laws
Overall, the findings show that Europeans want privacy, accountability, and control. Across all three countries, consumers overwhelmingly favor stronger protections for their personal information, reflecting fears about hackers, AI training, and leaks.
Three thousand people across all of the UK, Germany, and France is not that large, to be frank.
Depending on how they select the sample and get answers to the questions that’s actually quite a large sample size from a statistical standpoint. If the sampling process was garbage then that would be another issue though.
I do find the “US vs Private” false dichotomy to be pretty funny when there’s many European offerings that fail to offer even basic privacy protections. Proton is not one of them but I just find the idea of using software because of what country it’s from instead of the actual features bizarre.
I agree with you except for the part about it being a bizarre idea. The EU needs to get its act together because it has no digital sovereignty whatsoever, and therefore no political sovereignty either. Public debate takes place on social media platforms driven by algorithms that steer it however they want. Not to mention privacy issues and so on, because obviously most software (from the kernel, through the OS, all the way to Gmail) is American.
I certainly understand why Europeans feel this way. I probably would too under the present geopolitical circumstances.
However, real tech sovereignty would require a real European tech industry. Yes there are a few European tech companies but they are the exception not the rule, and even they have critical dependencies on the U.S. tech industry. ASML for instance gets their fancy UV lasers at the heart of their lithography machines from a company in California.
Even Proton’s products are largely running on Windows, Apple, and Android devices. Even Linux is American.
Until or unless Europe addresses its policies preventing the rise of its own tech giants, tech sovereignty is just a buzz word.
Even Proton’s products are largely running on Windows, Apple, and Android devices.
Wouldn’t say Proton is relying on US products just because their products also run on Windows and Apple devices. But I agree that they probably rely on some piece of US tech.
Even Linux is American.
That is something that has really bothered me during this whole debate. People boycotting FOSS products like Signal or Linux just because an NPO that is based in the US is managing them. Doesn’t make too much sense to me. Especially since Linux is “only” the kernel.
Big FOSS products like Linux which is the biggest by far afaik are not the product of one country. They’re the product of a lot of people all over the world working together. Everyone is allowed to use it and a lot of people have copies. Huawei for example was also mostly fine after it had to fork Android after the US ban.
What a waste of bandwidth, but at least Proton is in a reasonably good position to grandstand. A multitude of other EU providers publishing similar hogwash would be better off improving their products instead. As usual with these types of “analyses”, market behavior is the only true reflection of our desires, and anything we say is just cheap talk.
A market riddled with monopolies that torpedo countless small and medium-sized projects, whether deliberately through illegal monopolistic practices or simply because small companies can’t compete. The idea that the market is always right is utter nonsense. The market is constantly being interfered with, and the American one first and foremost. You only need to take a look at what’s happening with Intel. The free market doesn’t exist, although I suppose some people still believe in Santa Claus.
PD: Desires are manufactured through advertising and political propaganda. Best regards.
I find this article very ironic as Proton is also relying (at least partially) on US big tech, such as Atlassian and Cloudflaire. Cant recall if they also uses AWS.
Is Proton ready to move away from US big tech? If so, what’s their progress? *popcorn*
I didn’t say it was fair or that it isn’t the result of gaming the system, legislative failure, or other factors in one way or another. I only said it is a good approximation of what people want.
The Atlassian Statuspage that Proton is using is hosted on Amazon CloudFront, which is the content delivery network operated by Amazon Web Services. There are other various subdomain endpoints that are also hosted in the US or elsewhere other than Switzerland.
Yeah hate that they use zendesk too. Honestly dont get it. Hope they will once make their own business solution for this. But yeah my main hope for them is to build a good equivalent of EntraID.
I suggested to ditch M365 E5 subs, Windows OS along with MS Office and replace them with SUSE / Redhat Enterprise Desktops and Libreoffice to my manager and his first response was how to handle compliance and data leak protections with another software. Microsoft is providing all of them in one bundle, and so far it works. If anyone knows a better EU based solution(s) for around 330k employees, I am happy to listen and forward it to my management.
I kind of agree with you here, however I think it is not that simple.
All US server providers are not directly bound to the GDPR. Of course the ECJ can sue a US company for violating the GDPR, but this is only possible as long as Trump and the US administrations agrees to enforce the decision of the ECJ.
If you now have a company inside the EU, especially Germany or Netherlands, they are directly bound to the GDPR.
In addition, besides the GDPR there are countless surveillance laws (like FISA Section 702) that allows Intelligence services to snoop on the data of forgein users pretty easily.
And especially for services that can not work E2EE/Client Side Encryption like NextDNS, where NextDNS sees everything you do with them, it gets more relevant to which jurisdiction the service is bound.
I agree with you that if you have two services one in the US and one in Germany. And the one in the US is way more privacy respecting, you should use the one in the US.
