Back around 25 years ago....Bill Gates of Microsoft came to Germany. In a fairly short period of time, Bill 'roughed up' and irritated a number of intellectual and big-name Germans. Yes, we American, have that amazing power.
His comments that Germans crazy? He basically said that the university system of Germany needed to quickly (over the next two or three years) put together an educational system to assemble computer-science, coding, and technology engineering under their umbrella. They 'blasted' Bill for not understanding the German system. Bill told them in simple terms....the future was going to arrive on their doorstep, and they'd have to bring in non-Germans to do the bulk of this work, if they failed on his advice.
That silly Bill Gates.
Well.....it took basically two years from that visit, for the politicians to be handed a demand by German industry....they needed a bulked-up 'Green-card' program, and thousands of software/hardware experts brought in. In simple terms, Bill wasn't just right.....he actually missed the boat and should have told them this three years prior to his 'warning'.
I sat this morning and was reading through a ARD (public TV in Germany, Channel One) piece. Basically, a massive security problem has arrived and facing the German police, the CDU-SPD coalition, and public scrutiny.
When the major crime frustration arrived upon the German public in 2017....one of the big pieces which Chancellor Merkel and the coalition was agreeable upon (all the way down through the 16 German states).....was bringing police cam-systems into being. First through.....they wanted this reviewed in a through manner. They wanted rules. They wanted structure. They wanted the cooperation of the police.
One of the rules that they developed as they allowed cam-systems to be deployed....there had to be a cloud structure existing, which had strict rules about security and the handling of video storage. Whoever got the storage deal had to be absolutely certified by the German Federal Office for Information Security, This was a big deal.....not just for the information security, but for the contract involved.
So, who won? Basically, it led back to Amazon. You know....the American company. They were, and still ARE the only company who has been able to meet every single requirement by the German Federal Office for Information Security.
For some reason.....no one in the public, and probably half the members of the Bundestag....had no idea that it was Amazon. This was a question driven by the opposition party, the Greens....which led to an admission of Amazon holding this certificate.
Yes, massive anger came from this chatter from last week.
Well....no, from the general public, other than security freaks, the Green Party, the Linke Party, and journalists....no one really cares. As far as anyone can say.....the information is still protected by the only company that can provide a secure cloud situation, and be certified.
Where are the cloud servers sitting? That's the curious thing about this five-star report from ARD, and the rest of the journalists throughout Germany covering the story. None of them know where the cloud servers sit.
So, I'll go and lay out this missing story from ARD, and the worriers.
There are fifty-four cloud server locations from across the globe....that Amazon operates. Two years ago, Amazon publicly admitted that they make in the range of 17-to-18 billion dollars a year, from cloud revenue....globally.
The European locations: Paris, Stockholm, London, Frankfurt, Ireland. Milan, for the record, is on the soon-to-open list.
Why is Amazon the only certified company to meet all of the security rules driven by the German Federal Office for Information Security? I would suggest two reasons: (1) they themselves wrote the requirements to such a degree, and then handed it to security freaks in the German system, who maintained that the certification could only go to people who meet X, Y and Z conditions.....(2) no German company can see a sum of profit coming out of this cloud situation for the amount of work required (meaning that they'd have to hire American hardware/software engineers and pay them way more than you'd typically do).
So, in this response....the Interior Ministry had to go and make a promise to the opposition parties. Yes, they will code or encrypt the police video, and yes....it'll be kept within Germany. The second promise will still work with Amazon, because the cloud servers do exist.....in Frankfurt. I would imagine that some Amazon folks are standing there and ready to sell encryption software to the Interior Ministry to make the first requirement happen. And yes, in six months.....the Greens will ask about encryption and if it's still Amazon servers, and find it to be yes, and yes.
In some ways, that moment in the mid-1990s with Bill Gates was this reality situation which should have spread out the problem that German culture and society has.....that this vast technology delivered since the 1990s....is way beyond cultural or intellectual thought processes. It's not an insult...it's just the way that this culture has stepped through history, and the necessity that everything needs to be in order for step two to occur. Evolution can only be occurring if you give it the thumbs-up. And those silly Americans are on some reckless hellbent scheme to let evolution go 'unchecked'.
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