Maybe twelve twenty seventeen overnight a dangerous computer virus spread around the globe one a crime was the name cyber criminals gave to the trojan which they used to blackmail their victims and encrypt that Computer Data the ransom between three hundred and six hundred dollars to be paid into an anonymous bitcoin account more than two hundred thousand computers on all continents were affected by this attack from the German Railway to the ministry of the interior in russia and the japanese car manufacturer a honda. In britain some hospitals even had to implement their emergency plan how could a single piece of malware similar taney asli Cripple Companies hospitals and even Intelligence Services all over the wild the answer involves microsoft all the victims use. At the same software they were all vulnerable in the same way and they all relied on a Single Company namely microsoft the same applies to every state administration in europe. Whats the impact of this dependence journalist Khaled Shulman and colleagues from investigate europe wanted to find out the results are alarming. The di lemma affects the data belonging to all of us and out of pendants on microsoft goes far deeper than just our use of word or excel software almost every governmental and public off already in the e. U. From city halls to vehicle registration offices and tax offices in software that was specially designed for that work. These many thousands of special programs were designed for the windows operating system and the more complex Information Technology becomes the more our Public Institutions become dependent on the microsoft monopoly. Its a problem that Martin Charbel the former german director general for Information Technology knows well. Planned and defined the german off orators are today facto dependent on microsoft because with very few exceptions microsoft products are used in every Government Office and. That means its not easy to use different software. All documents exist in microsoft format. Employees are all trained to use microsoft programs the corresponding servers also run with Microsoft Software so of course theres also results and economic dependence to guide thats what will happen if its continuous for another ten or twenty years hes already physically how is my personal concern is that the dependency of various manufacturers and. The virtualization of our entire i. T. System meaning the relocation of i. T. Systems into the cloud into some distance. The servers that could be anywhere which would mean our governments ability to control and manage its own ninety is constantly diminishing and in that sense our public agencies are no longer able to determine how secure their writing is now secure the data of its citizens it can say how long it will take to implement new functions how expensive their ideas how much they could save and so forth will be less and less able to provide this information. This dependency is the result of a Business Model with which the Major Software manufacturers and in particular microsoft have created monopolies a world wide keeping the source code the secret. Modern software is written in programming languages the source code is the recipe for each Software Program or operating system. Every i. T. Specialist can understand this source code but the computers dont understand source code it has to be transformed into binary machine code which only computers can read and understand. This is the source code for the command display hello world one of the first things you might learn in your first programming class. And this is what the command looks like translated into machine code. Microsoft only makes the machine code available to its customers but we cant decipher it ourselves microsoft keeps its source code a secret and to protect itself from copycats. This is whats called the proprietary Business Model only the manufacturer is able to change improve correct and fix security gaps in the software for better or worse the users are completely at the mercy of the manufacturer. The data belonging to every citizen from tax returns to parking fines flows through the enormous data centers maintained by our governments. We pay a visit to one of the high security server farms in hamburg were not permitted to reveal its location let alone film it from the outside but all its security arrangements offer little protection against microsofts vulnerabilities. So this is just one of several data point Data Center Facilities data port is a Public Corporation owned by the state. We belong to the northern German Federal states including lower saxony and its municipalities we only handle Public Sector data and ill show you one of our cooling rooms where the computers are camped. You can see them working away on both sides and theres enclosed spaces chemical. Proof of a door what role does microsoft play. We use both proprietary and open Source Software in some areas proprietary software is used almost exclusively that includes actually pay for example also proprietary software but of course microsoft is used a lot of people are used to working with it and it has an almost a factor of monopoly position. We know that we have to reduce our dependency and use various strategies to minimize his dependancy on a case by case basis but its a balancing act. Which hasnt been working out with microsoft over the past ten years the German Government has doubled its outlay for microsoft licenses. Microsoft microsoft is indeed a real challenge its not only public agencies that use microsoft products but also industry and the private sector universities and so on. You could say weve created a culture that accepts those mechanisms so its a real challenge to create alternatives that i do not even. Alternatives to microsoft have been around for a long time theyre based on a fundamentally different principle called open source. In contrast to the proprietary software sold by microsoft and other Companies OpenSource Software uses a source code thats publicly available. Thats why hundreds of thousands of programmers around the world can improve it expand on it and fix bugs. The collective work carried out by a swarm of programmers identifies and closes security gaps and efficiently produces state of the art Software Including the worlds most widely used operating systems linux and android unlike microsoft linux is available free of charge. Any organization or administration can customize it for its own purposes without asking a corporation for permission but most government i. T. Managers believe that there is no alternative to microsoft in Public Administration even though open Source Software has become a profitable industry. I know that its no longer true that alternatives dont exist that may have been true twenty years ago when you had to install the software on your windows p. C. So why arent european states making the switch to free themselves from this dependency. It reminds me of the Renewable Energy debate people said solar power was impossible it didnt work it was too expensive look at what we have no on some days germany produces nearly one hundred percent of its electricity from renewables so how did that change come about because they made it easier provided incentives then all of a sudden people realized hey it does work its the same with software. Why such resistance from the authorities and if i get a microsoft monopoly arose thirty five years ago an entire industry has developed around it and many people are. Vested in maintaining it many are sitting in government and Public Agency i. T. Departments they dont want things to change because they know it will cut into their business as the. Modern open Source Programs can compete with microsoft products as the company open exchange demonstrates. Deezer so can this software replace the entire office package. In this office to think you can do everything with this software that you can do with microsoft for example heres the email program and then we have an address book thats of course you can manage appointments tasks to do lists and keep track of all your files schools thats the human. Mind is the software also allows you to edit text. Create spreadsheets and of course create presentations on your own so there has to be a. What do you do with all the documents from other People Public agencies constantly have multiple people working on a single document then the boss has decided theres a lengthy workload you cant handle that can you. Show your family or you make it sound like using Office Software from the cloud instead of having it installed on your computer is completely normal but most people have never heard of it. You dont realize youre already using it if youre a one plus one or Telecom Vodafone arc or France Telecom costumer and use their mail program or calendar youre already using our system you know what about your profit that we earn a living by offering professional support services to keep these systems up and running you know we only get paid by about one in every ten thousand users. But theyre very big and we earn enough from them that we can provide our services to the other ninety nine point nine nine nine percent free of charge that has to go to Good Business it is yes we are growing forty five percent per year for the last night. And for the. Open Source Software has long been standard in private corporations but global giants of the Digital Economy such as facebook Amazon Google pay pal only use open source they would never give their competitor microsoft access to their Information Technology. But european governments continue to submit to the old monopoly signing one contract after the next. Contract stipulate the terms and conditions for the Government Agencies use of microsoft programs the German Ministry of the interior is legally obligated to allow inspection of such contracts but the ministry has blackened out all the key elements such as prices conditions and security requirements they say the reason is that microsoft is in forcing trade secrets in other words the corporation is permitted to decide what the public may learn about its dealings with taxpayers money. With this framework contract the German Government permits all state institutions from local authorities to parliament to obtain software directly from microsoft resellers. Its a business worth billions of euros. But its legally questionable because agreements of this sort override the European Union law it says that public authorities are prohibited from buying products and services exceeding the value of one hundred thirty five thousand euros from a single supplier without first issuing a public invitation to tender. That doesnt seem to worry peter but whos head of i. T. At the German Interior Ministry how does he justify circumventing e. U. Public procurement law. All the tender dance takes place microsoft doesnt sell its products directly and uses intermediaries who put in bids and compete with one another. This is what that would be like if it were just rationed buying new cars for its fleet and only inviting v. W. Dealers to put in a bid excluding all other manufacturers thats not competition. The tenders are initially open to everyone but the clear majority of the german Public Sector decides in favor of the Industry Standard rather than an open Source Solution which they regard as an experiment. Experiment. So every municipality every state administration puts out a call for tender in accordance with the framework contract and we need new microsoft licenses who can give us the best deal. That may often be the case here but not necessarily in every case. Its not that simple either law doesnt allow Public Tenders to give preference to a specific company it also prohibits the specification of brand names and calls to tender but when it comes to microsoft states appear to be flouting that law at the university of groningen in the netherlands part just a lawyer specializing in anti and public procurement has studied this practice so do Framework Agreements with microsoft violate e. U. Law. Yet. Theres very clear it violates european law and when you ask organizations you know why are you doing this the people responsible for they usually know that european law but they will say well even the European Commission itself is doing its. Is the top of the e. U. Are far to breaking its own rules my colleague maria majority from the investigating. Journalist team has been a long time correspondent in brussels and knows who to ask. Ok who are we going to meet now we are going to meet. The sponsors to entice people to get them to sign with microsoft i was already told they are going to start a new contract with microsoft so good luck to both of you to. The. Next. With microsoft. The plan is to go for a negotiated procedure with microsoft for the top layer. And for full for tender with a reseller. For microsoft doesnt the practice to negotiate this framework contract violate the rules of procurement which demand open competition no doubt that are different procedures foreseen by the picture of materials and of course the default procedure is called for tender but then the negotiated procedure is a procedure that exists in their own and its fully legal and the conditions are that there is only one provider that can provide this particular solution the technical solution so there is no other possibility and what weve seen is that we if we did do call for tender in open court for tender for provision we would land with microsoft anyway and it would be much more expensive because what theyre doing now is negotiating a price list together with microsoft directly which gives us huge discounts well it sounds very reasonable but this actually means that they have a problem within their organization. Because they are obviously locked in. They are in a sub optimal situation because they are so dependent on working with microsoft that they are even thinking that they cant function without the Microsoft Software itself more about their own organization then. The topic of law because it basically means that they have internal problem that they have to fix. That doesnt mean that there cant be this regard for human what does the procurement law exactly say for the procurement law describes. Several situations in which you can ask for a brand name being locked in is not an excuse to disregard the procurement rules. There are alternatives. Back in two thousand and four a social democratic mayor of munich christiane decided the City Administration would switch from Microsoft Windows to the open source Linux Operating System the project called the mox was considered a Great Success and was also copied in other european cities. In twenty twelve details writer who was the citys Economic Advisor at the time negotiated an agreement with microsoft to relocate its german headquarters to munich. In twenty fourteen and i took became unix mayor since then the social democratic mayor has joined forces with the conservatives on the city council to bring the munich administration back into the microsoft fold. Many of us in the c. S. U. Were against that decision back then. It was a decision based purely on. Cost far more than one hundred million a monopolist always wants to make sure it gets off a follow up contract. Its a huge waste of money please reconsider those thank you. But the mayor rejected these Data Security and anti monopoly arguments in his closing statement he also gave another reason to abandon linux one of those was weve tried to create workarounds but what weve been able to achieve doesnt compare to what ive seen in my private business dealings these past ten or fifteen years that is why i personally believe it would make sense to switch so can i call for the votes against the motion to. The greens the liberals the left and other opposition parties vote against a majority decide in favor thank you. Its to look at is the return of microsoft as payback for the company relocating its german headquarters to munich which is no negotiating a few years ago. No it certainly is not what i initiated and what we have voted for todays to improve our i. T. Modernize it and make it more effective and reliable for users in the administration and for our citizens. However a report showed that a large majority of City Employees were happy with a limit system the report did find fault with munichs i. T. Administration but the problem was not with the Linux Software the problem was that the city gave i. T. Administrators in the various departments too much leeway to chart their own course according to the former head of munichs i. T. Department it was this lack of uniformity that was the problem not the underlying linux system City Employees were not permitted to grant us an interview but an expert from the city i. T. Department was willing to speak with us anonymously so is there some truth to the claim that the open source system in the munich City Government didnt work properly isnt others into are all very disappointed we have always tried to make sure it all works smoothly and weve been quite successful in that in our training courses people are saying why should their system be changed it works for others. Thousand forms were adapted to work with open Source Software what will happen to them now. The new template system will have to be created from Microsoft Office that will be expensive every single template will need to be converted for every department will have to manually create their own templates the way they used to do will have an explosion of days which will become unmanageable at some point this isnt about technology its about politics linux was just a bargaining chip. Of course politics plays a role munich was ruled by the social democrats and greens for twenty four years and limericks was their project in twenty fourteen a new coalition came into power a grand coalition the Christian Social Union the conservatives have always opposed the limits project and open Source Software and favored microsoft and now we have a new maam the former americas favorite the linux system during the election dieter ita outed himself as a microsoft fan all of a sudden linux became the scapegoat when the new district heads had trouble using their cell phones they blamed it on linux unix had nothing to do with it but it was a convenient scapegoat for the incident. Switching back again is going to be very expensive for munich a preliminary calculation estimated that the return to microsoft will cost ninety Million Euros by twenty twenty not counting license fees. Meanwhile the city of rome wants to move from microsoft to open source. Even the italian army has begun to break away from microsoft its already replaced Microsoft Office some thirty thousand computers with the open Source Program affluence. We saw that leave the office and Microsoft Office were both equivalent for our purposes. We carried out a case study. We analyzed how people used Microsoft Office and realized that labor office was just as good. When they compared the two programs we found no loss of productivity. That. This is a document in right or that one is in in work. This. Is. This is a medium term project which will take from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty to complete changing from work to labor offices saving us twenty eight Million Euros thats a considerable saving. The French National gendarmerie has gone a step further it switched Office Software and like the city of munich it switched from the windows to Linux Operating System resulting in some twenty Million Euros in savings over eighty years but the National Gendarmerie is now coming under massive pressure our Investigative Team was shown an order from the French Interior ministry instructing those around armory to return to microsoft. So who is really behind this demand is the Microsoft Corporation wielding behind the scenes influence. From the french n. G. O. S which advocates for open Source Software has been observing this struggle for some time. Two or three years ago bill gates the founder of microsoft came to france with his foundation and was received by the president of france a few months later we found out about a partnership with the ministry of education. They definitely have Privileged Access for example lobbyists from microsoft have email addresses ending with intraday the same domain ending used by government ministries. So the employees there regard them as colleagues. Microsoft microsoft employees how email addresses in the ministries not only do they have access to the buildings they also have email addresses ending with intraday f. R. Theres no separation between the two. You give an example the top lobbyist for microsoft even worked for a while as a Parliamentary Assistant so there are many Revolving Doors as they call it when someone has a parliamentary position or a ministry job and then starts working for microsoft or the other way round theyre very networked. No one in the French Ministry of defense was willing to provide us any information about the cooperation with microsoft. But our Investigative Team has found an i. T. Expert from the french government who is prepared to speak with us we have an appointment in a neutral location the i. T. Expert wants to remain anonymous so that he wont risk his job. Paris colleagues know has also found documents that show how closely the french government cooperates with microsoft. You work for the french government we have a document here that shows an employee using a ministry of defense email address. But this other document shows that the very same person is also a microsoft employee. How is this possible that microsoft and the state is. Unfortunately the exploit the carelessness of administrators who often Register Service providers with the email address of the administration they work for. Thats a huge advantage for a technician or project leader who is tasked with circulating microsoft technology. That they can pretend theyre an employee of a government agency. When theyre actually just a service provider. It appears that the French Ministry of defense has had a secret agreement with microsoft for the past ten years even the French Parliament wasnt informed of the agreement or its content. Its the contract between the French Ministry of defense and microsoft and we have no doubt that amount of money or. It was all black if you can see the all blacks and what is important in this country is the amount of money. Spent on that and its all like in the amount of money it was not even here in front of the senate because. They are asked directly to the minister of defense we should definitely because she just doesnt. Demand for a commission of inquiry. Yet another rejected contract once again a private corporation has prohibited a government from fulfilling its legal obligation to inform the public the French Parliament has resolved to investigate how much the state actually pays microsoft in licensing fees some sources believe its two hundred euros per workstation per year if the same applied to the anti e. U. That would amount to ten billion euros a year and thats money that could go a long way to underwriting an e. U. Wide open Source Solution will frances parliamentarians succeed in breaking this conspiracy of silence. And. This seemed to me absolutely the senate. I asked for this committee of inquiry because we didnt have to size figures it was the right and duty of a member of parliament to know how much a contract costs especially such an important one. Parent me there was no tendering procedure experts were against this program and there are other solutions for example that he has decided not to use microsoft and to subscribe to a specific contract with free Linux Software for economic and other reasons and this example was not followed by the ministry of defense. Force. There was the leagues someone who said it was at least one hundred thirty Million Euros but we fear that the figure is much higher. So theres been some pressure from the ministry of defense to ensure that there is no Investigative Commission so its evident there was a form of lobbying excuse the ugly word which came from microsoft. Because under the entire french army uses microsoft programs what does this mean for National Security and the sovereignty of france and frankly i think. Thats very serious because a potential attack on microsoft in the network of the ministry of defense theoretically endanger our soldiers and a whole series of military actions that brought. The. Microsoft systems are also a Security Risk that overly complex and vulnerable and only the experts at microsoft know the source code its something that the Chaos Computer Club europes largest association of hackers has long been criticizing they have factors can. Cause have saidst stuck. In the office and i know that and. Microsoft office is far more vulnerable than the open source libor office the Italian Military looked into this and its also easy to demonstrate. Every Text Processing Program stores a document in the form of lines of code that the user normally never sees in libra office this sentence weve typed generates ten lines of code data. That very same sentence in microsoft word generates more than one hundred lines of code data. So microsoft generates much more data that viruses can use to infiltrate a computer. Thats confirmed by the German Office for Information Security or b. S. I. They say that the microsoft format offers a cyber attack of far more opportunity for attack. The security gap exploited by the wanna cry malware demonstrates the extent of the risk for microsoft Security Experts failed to notice the error for ten years even as it borrowed its way into a decades worth of operating systems or they were aware of the vulnerability but kept it a secret for u. S. National Security Agency or n. S. A. Had already discovered the vulnerability and used it to develop its own espionage tool which it used until it was apparently leaked to cyber criminals so given this risk shouldnt the German Government insist on the disclosure of a source code for all its software. After having read snowdens revelations over the past four years about how vulnerable we are and what methods the u. S. Secret service is you are an essential part of snowdens publications is about the close elaboration between the corporations and the secret services and the fact that the corporations also blige to work with the secret services they should have drawn the necessary conclusions from this. Data security expert your highness caspar is also concerned about the risk from the u. S. Intelligence services. The german constitution says the state must protect the data of its citizens. There is a fundamental right to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of Information Technology systems. Subject to american law. Yeah the consequences yes the implications are of course very far reaching. We know that under the Prism Program the major American Internet Companies granted access to their data so. That was microsoft part of this program. Yes among others. And this shows of course how risky it is to enter into a dependency that you cant just suddenly get out on. The last call we wanted to speak with microsoft about our investigation including questions related to Data Security and u. S. Intelligence services but over four months they didnt grant us an interview our written inquiries also remain unanswered. My colleague elissa semantic a came across a secret document from the German Office for Information Security the b. S. I. According to the documents its experts are also suspicious of microsoft as early as twenty fourteen before the current contract with microsoft was concluded they issued forty six requests for the company to fix security gaps in its software and to compel the company to meet its obligations to German Governmental and public agencies. But wait till you see whats written on page twenty. From the b. S. I. To microsoft we ask the ministry of the interior about this in their beer size catalogue of demands it says inquiries from the b. S. I. To microsoft sometimes go unanswered or are answered only with significant delay an increase in this behavior has been observed especially regarding questions that microsoft presumably finds uncomfortable with those questions are usually ignored. That this sounds like a large American Corporation is giving the german Data Security off the already the runaround its. Nice to know thats not what is happening its understandable that the b. S. I. Would employ Strong Language in order to strengthen its own negotiating position Microsoft Microsoft might not necessarily want to provide information about problems and vulnerabilities when they may not believe there exist or when they think they can fix them very quickly. Or. The requirements fulfilled. Hes fulfilled not under the contract itself. Yes thats correct not all demands were met and we did indeed have to renegotiate. Your welcome to speak to colleagues from the b. S. I. About the modahl it is they agreed on. Process. We try to do just that but the German Office for Information Security replied unfortunately we are not currently available for an on camera interview but you are welcome to send us your questions in writing. We did that too but no reply was forthcoming. The European Parliament has drawn its own conclusions from the snowden affair and has taken a tough stand government i. T. Systems need to end their reliance on the americans. We need the commission we need the parliament to urge clearly on the Member States to deliver rules and standards for nearly ten years young philip was an advocate for strong Data Protection laws in the European Parliament. If we ask europeans can break free of the closed source codes that microsoft and others insist on and switch to our own open source code were taking a risk because the European Union and the European Market could just become a kind of colony for these companies so of course we wont be able to control what happens to our data. Its only going to get rooted in the start of the e. U. Commission disagrees. With microsoft thats the alternative on the market that. Works. Im sorry but thats a flat out lie of course its feasible to switch to open Source Software to process the files and danger of government organizations like the European Commission those alternatives exist of open Source Software. No there are enough suppliers and better is good does that and the providers the suppliers do exist they just arent competitive thats the only difference to solve this problem the European Union just needs to say in Public Tenders we want to open source to be the basic standard if we genuinely want to create an alternative it should be worth our while to fully invest in a european model of open standards a kind of air bus project for digitalisation made in europe. To bring. In twenty thirteen e. U. Commission adopted a program that would enable european institutions and Member States to liberate them. From that dependence on a handful of us software companies. Why have the commissioners abandon this policy. I dont think abundance is this police but the only solution is to invest more to catch the critic is that by using this microsoft monoculture in public i t systems these public systems are being held very vulnerable that same change our operating systems and then and no Cyber Threats anymore so maybe i also agree but theres a big difference in proprietary software you dont know the source code isnt that such a Security Risk when you have a black box operating in the public id whats a solution not to use microsoft your pink microsoft is like a black box this window is full of enemies and then lets proceed to use each of those Microsoft Software really in the interview you want to follow for the story came from the European Parliament itself to make the public source code a precondition in procurement for software for public eye teeth. Physical European Commission has failed to respond despite the calls made by people like john cole younker and uncle americal who have gone on record to urge the e. U. To achieve digital sovereignty but we see no moves in this direction. Its possible it was the parliament completely wrong. I dont think so but were using procurement systems to buy from your software its an open competition for sorry for Desktop Software for Office Automation and for mail there is no competition i dont think its so simple but we can just prohibits the uses from some pride of software and then no problems anywhere no Cyber Attacks and no Cyber Incidents anything oh no we will be happy oh yes sorry sorry sorry i didnt nobody nobody had. Claim this and not now not ever not even really i would like to say youre saying this no no these are the only problem we have in the european you are now there are a lot of other problems but the microsoft issue is the elephant in the room which nobody wants to talk about and that is the reason why we do this film i dont think we have to intervene early in economical use shows so we have to invest war if we make open source of credit and public procurement of software for the public Information Technology systems this would create exactly this kind of alternative youre looking for and this would overcome this one up early to make open source the criterion would be a big bang for the European Software industry in the short period of time we would have Great Solutions for the public id independent of the united states. Thats will. Take time for europe as a whole to move in a different model promising direction. There. Is a call for trustworthy and open standards into operability sustainability and a maximum security and a reduction of the dependence on monopoly structures in hardware and software this was a parliamentary resolution whats being done to meet those demands of the default these demands didnt just spring up overnight. Under discussion for a while just in case of principles weve always followed for the. New framework contract is currently under negotiation with microsoft. Of course but what else can we do and. Again name and tradition sometimes the technological twist propose that mike has courage to try to sound the same play polo first she needs to live the theory. And take the driving lessons before shes ready for the competition the kook how will she face trade day in training her. Thirteenth spawn w. Place you can tell a lot about a society by its garbage. The future merciless for the rich the for many poor people it offers their own chance of survival and i could be lunch for today just like. Our reporters travel to nairobi and so forth and know the true value and courage. It has created a surprising paralleling claim what does all this mean for economic inequality around the world you guys are starting class war pia the response to that statement should be yes we all stand in class walk here because were tired of. Actually destruct an economy play the rich play tricks losers reporter starting june eleventh on t w. Place to place blame. Investigators say a Russian Missile was used to shoot down flight m h seventeen over ukraine prosecutors leading the probe say a Russian Military unit fired the missile that took down the commercial airliner nearly four years ago killing hundreds of people on board. China opened its doors