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Software Freedom / Digital Sovereignty Leftovers
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FSF ☛ FSF Blogs: GNU Press Shop open now through July 19
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FSF ☛ FSF Events: 30 years of XaoS: Past, present and future
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FSF ☛ FSF Events: Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, June 19, starting at 12:00 EDT (16:00 UTC)
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The Guardian UK ☛ Europe is starting to break up with US big tech. But it’s still abiding by the Silicon Valley rulebook
The ICC judges’ ordeal is an extreme instance of a reality Europe is starting to reckon with: the Trump administration’s confrontational political approach towards the EU has exposed the continent’s dangerous dependence on US technology.
The US tech market’s dominance is nothing new; increasingly, the danger is that this technological power could be turned against Europe politically. Elon Musk has already used his respective ownership of X and Starlink to interfere in European public debate and influence the war in Ukraine. And the US government has ordered the AI company Anthropic to limit foreign nationals’ access to its products on security grounds.
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The Strategist ☛ Australia just learned an old lesson from the AI age
For a decade, the argument about technological sovereignty has turned on where data is stored. The more important question was always who controlled the system and who could switch it off. Australia has met that question before. When it barred Huawei from its 5G network, it judged the risk by who could reach into the system and disrupt it, wherever the hardware physically sat. The same questions now hang over artificial intelligence, and they have just been answered the hard way.
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FSF ☛ GNU Press Shop open now through July 19
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Bert Hubert ☛ EU & Civil Society need to progress on Digital Autonomy
I often attend events, often in Brussels, on how to improve Europe’s autonomy/sovereignty, and lately these events have left me feeling somewhat frustrated. Although a lot of ground has been covered, it appears we are stuck. Our talking is no longer getting us closer to digital sovereignty.
Getting actual “boots on the ground” digital sovereignty requires work by European government technical staff, who need to have management that approves of that. That in turn requires a ministry that has decided to work like that. And that also requires a procurement department that is VERY on board, and willing to suffer lawsuits over their efforts to procure European services. Also, there need to be software/services companies willing and able to deliver such services to governments.