The key facts

  • The Microsoft outage on November 12–13 disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot in several countries
  • Congresswoman Samia Bonfim stated: 'We cannot continue to be hostages of Big Tech'
  • The amendment PEC da Soberania Digital was introduced on October 29 and provides for AI regulation and open-source code

The Outage and the Political Reaction

A global outage at Microsoft, which began on Thursday, disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot and left users and organizations in several countries without access to part of the platforms. On Friday, the company said that recovery was progressing, although some users were still experiencing interruptions and delays.

The Demand for Digital Sovereignty

Brazilian congresswoman Samia Bonfim said on Friday that the outage exposed the risks of public services depending on large technology companies. 'We cannot continue to be hostages of Big Tech,' she wrote on X, mentioning her work in Congress on a digital sovereignty amendment. According to her, Brazilian government agencies use Microsoft services for critical operations, and outages of foreign platforms can affect the work of the government and basic services.

What the Amendment Provides For

Bonfim is promoting the constitutional amendment PEC da Soberania Digital, introduced on October 29. It aims to enshrine digital sovereignty in the Constitution and protect critical infrastructure from foreign interference. The amendment provides for transparency, audits and human oversight of digital services, algorithms and AI systems, the creation of a regulator accountable to the public, and greater use of domestic technologies and open-source code (data from the PSOL caucus).

Context

The incident once again intensified the debate about the vulnerability of government institutions and businesses when key digital infrastructure depends on a single private provider. The amendment so far remains a proposal: sources do not report on its adoption.