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Microsoft Office 365: Banned in German schools over privacy fears
Schools in the central German state of Hesse have been have been told it's now illegal to use Microsoft Office 365.
The state's data-protection commissioner has ruled that using the popular cloud platform's standard configuration exposes personal information about students and teachers "to possible access by US officials".
That might sound like just another instance of European concerns about data privacy or worries about the current US administration's foreign policy.
But in fact the ruling by the Hesse Office for Data Protection and Information Freedom is the result of several years of domestic debate about whether German schools and other state institutions should be using Microsoft software at all.
