AVOIDING AMERICA AND AMERICAN SOFTWARE
There are two main reasons that someone might want to avoid American computing. The long standing issue is that the EU has privacy laws whereas the US does not. Spying on you is just fine in America. The more recent development is that the US is marching towards dictatorship and existing laws are, at times, ignored.
April 19, 2025: This un-American life: can you really divest yourself of everything from the US? by Jeremy Ettinghausen for The Guardian. The article is on much more than just technology. For example, he points out that in Football/Soccer, ten Premier League clubs are American-owned. As for tech:
March 19, 2025: Privacy-Respecting European Tech Alternatives by Jonah Aragon of Privacy Guides. Quoting: "There is a growing sentiment that the US shouldn't be relied upon for the technologies that many people and businesses use every day ... the United States certainly does not have a monopoly on the best technologies, and many of our favorite recommended tools come from Europe and all over the world. Tools from the European Union also generally benefit from much stronger data protection laws, thanks to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)." Some of the recommendations in the article: Tuta and Proton for email, LibreOffice of offline Office apps, CryptPad for online office apps and Nextcloud as an alternative to Google Drive or OneDrive. For Instant Messaging the recommendations are SimpleX, Element and Briar.
March 16, 2025: European tech industry coalition calls for 'radical action' on digital sovereignty - starting with buying local by Natasha Lomas for TechCrunch. Quoting: "A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for 'radical action' from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc's economic prospects, resilience, and security ... The plan pushes for reducing reliance on foreign-owned Big Tech ... The rallying call to put European tech first ... follows the shock of the Munich security conference, where U.S. Vice President JD Vance tore into Europe like an attack dog, leaving delegates in no doubt that the post-war international order is in tatters and all bets are off when it comes to what the U.S. might do under President Donald Trump."
March 6, 2025: Handpicked list of privacy-focused European alternatives to big tech products for your business by Hricha Shandily at Plausible.io. Sixteen recommendations. Among them: Element rather than Slack or Microsoft Teams, Mistral AI rather than ChatGPT, Mullvad VPN, Passbolt for passwords, ProtonMail rather than Gmail or Outlook, Tally Forms rather than Google Forms and Whereby rather than Zoom.
February 27, 2025: How I’m Building a Trump-Proof Tech Stack Without Big Tech by Joan Westenberg at JoanWestenberg.com.
As to why write this article, she says: "If you care about your rights, if you care about your data, if you're paying attention to U.S. decline, it's time to start looking for alternatives to American tech domination. ... The world can no longer trust American tech ... The United States is a nation in the thrall of authoritarianism, owned and operated almost completely by a far-right doomsday cult intent on betraying every alliance, every contract, every promise it has ever made ... its decision-making is either erratic and illogical or dictated by interests that cannot and will not align with any reasonable principles of freedom, social progress, or ethical governance. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and other tech companies operating on American soil can talk a big game about their sovereignty, independence, and encryption. But talk may be all it is; there can be no guarantee that an authoritarian U.S. government will not compel American cloud, email, productivity, and messaging providers to open their databases and records to partisan law enforcement."
This is a long article with many recommendations. She seems to be a macOS user, and personally uses ToDoIst for task management, iA Writer for writing, the Proton suite and Joplin for note taking. Othere non-US software she cites are the web browsers LibreWolf, Vivaldi, Mullvad and Iridium. For cloud storage and file synch there is Nextcloud and Cozy Cloud. For messaging, there is Element and BigBlueButton for video conferencing. For password managers there is KeePass and KeePassXC. For searching SearxNG and Qwant. Again, long article worth reading.
The European alternatives for digital products website lists European alternatives for digital services and products.
STORAGE TOO
March 24, 2025: Trump's Aggression Sours Europe on US Cloud Giants by Matt Burgess for Wired. Quoting: "Companies in the EU are starting to look for ways to ditch Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cloud services amid fears of rising security risks from the US ... more than 100 organizations signed an open letter to European officials calling for the continent to become 'more technologically independent' and saying the status quo creates 'security and reliability risks.' Two European-based cloud service companies, Exoscale and Elastx, tell WIRED they have seen an uptick in potential customers looking to abandon US cloud providers over the last two weeks ... the CEO of Swiss-based hosting provider Exoscale [said] '... customers from Denmark being very explicit that they want to move away from US hyperscalers because of the US administration and what they said about Greenland.' "
March 19, 2025: MPs urge government to stop using 'unsafe' US cloud services in DutchNews.nl. Quoting: "MPs have urged the government to stop migrating confidential information about tax returns, contracts, and medical records to US cloud services, saying they are a threat to Dutch cyber security. In addition, the government should work on developing its own cloud for keeping digital records, MPs said during a debate on Tuesday ... Under the US Cloud Act, cloud service providers can be required by law to make information available to government authorities, even if the storage is in Europe."
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