Trump accelerates, AI in hyperdrive: U.S. government can access EU company data
US government has access to data from EU companies, even if the data is stored on servers within the EU.
Be aware
Few companies are aware of it, but the US government has access to data from EU companies, even if the data is stored on servers within the EU.
This is possible due to laws that apply in the US, including the CLOUD Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
I note that as EU companies, we massively use American applications and Cloud storage.
The most dominant US applications
Cloud storage and infrastructure
Microsoft Azure
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Productivity and collaboration tools
Microsoft 365: Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, SharePoint, OneDrive
Google Workspace: Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Calendar
Slack
E-commerce and online payments
Shopify
Paypal, Stripe
AI and data analytics
OpenAI: ChatGPT
Google Analytics
Marketing, Automation & Email Platform
Mailchimp
Heads up, there are alternatives
So to be clear again, even if an EU company stores its data on European soil, using US-based software means that the data itself is still subject to US legal access.
If you want to limit this risk, you can switch to EU-based software and cloud providers.
But what are those EU-based alternatives?
We are not as strong digitally as the US (just like our Belgian army) but we heads up, there are alternatives!
Cloud storage and infrastructure
Combell in Belgium
Hetzner in Germany
OVHcloud in France
Productivity and collaboration tools
ONLYOFFICE in Estonia
Proton Mail in Switzerland
Mattermost in France
E-commerce and online payments
Open Source application such as Statamic + Simple Commerce set up by Sevendays (Belgium) and hosted on EU servers
Mollie (Netherlands) is now an established name for online payments
AI and data analytics
As an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot you can also use Mistral AI from France
for analytics, Matomo from France is a solid player
Marketing, Automation & Email Platform
Mailcoach is a solid Belgian alternative to Mailchimp
What is the best approach for this?
You obviously don't have to panic and you clearly notice that the EU alternatives are not that numerous, but for some applications it is quite easy to switch, I am thinking, for example, of the Mailchimp => Mailcoach switch.
In addition to the major applications, it is important to remember that for very business-specific data, applications or links, you can always contact an EU agency that uses open-source software and implements it on EU infrastructure (such as Sevendays).
The US government does not have direct access to the data contained in your own application!
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