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European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

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Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#141
post #8
post #4

A European digital ID system that is entirely dependent on 2 US companies. Wasn't there some talk about the pressing need for European digital sovereignty recently? Or was that just performative nonsense?

The US can call Austria in 5 minutes and with no burden of proof get the airspace permit for a head of sovereign state revoked and the plane swatted instantly upon landing, because someone might have been on board (he wasn’t) whose only real crime was embarrassing the USA by exposing their fundamentally unconstitutional lawbreaking. Same goes with the prosecutors in Sweden; a phone call and the US got, not charges (a…

> I really don’t know what the fuck the Europeans are thinking by playing the US’s stupid games. As we see time and time again, it won’t be repaid in kind.

I feel like the European relationship with the US can really be summed up by the 30 permanent military bases and 84,000 military personnel stationed in their borders and the underlying faith that it's for their own protection, except we better never ask them to leave just in case. Everything else sort of follows from that point.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#142
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> building a worse version of AWS just so that it is "European" makes no financial sense Unless it becomes necessary because of EU regulation?

Can you mention a single decent product that came out "because of EU regulation"?

Hetzner seems to be a pretty good example. It wasn't solely because of EU regulation, but once GDPR made it a worthwhile investment to companies to segregate their data, European data centers have been growing steadily.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#143
In the last 5 years so much of the legislative pressure is coming down to remove anonymous Internet access to save the children or protect us from some harm.

In the end it is all being used to track and control us.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

Never truer words ever spoken. And yet we keep slipping down this slope again and again and again and it seems there is never a way to climb back out.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#144
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't just the technical dependency. It's also the fact that it forces each citizen to pay a few hundred Euros to companies which then campaign against their very rights. Citizens get no support of any kind in case of issues, and has to enter a contractual agreement which is ridiculously asymmetrical, where the company has little to no responsibility of any kind, but has very ample rights to track the other…

But ... the alternative is that the government actually pays a bit of money to fix the situation! To support their solutions. To actually develop them for enough devices. To secure them ... Plus the services the government made are way more invasive than the Google/Apple ones. In addition to the money, actually using them would be hundreds of times more complex, and they don't have the provisions Google has, for exam…

or, not force people into mandatory digital ID wallets at all.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#146
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorola/GrapheneOS, and FairPhone/e/OS.

Yes

Oh and Sailfish OS [0], Postmarket OS [1], and whatever Purism runs [2].

[0] https://sailfishos.org/

[1] https://postmarketos.org/

[2] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#147

Even relying on Android's hardware attestation API instead of Play Integrity is an attack on digital autonomy in my opinion. Any security feature which relies on remote attestation of the users entire platform is government overreach as it ultimately gives the government the power to choose what operating systems are acceptable. It is only a matter of time before this power will be misused to put pressure on OS devel…

Exactly, I'm not sure what benefits hardware attestation offers to the government. Sure, it's potentially useful for the customer that they can trust their keys are secure on their device, but it kind of misses the point. It should really be an open-source specification that defines a standard protocol, but where the device just signs a request that it knows has come from a trusted source (so maybe signed by the gove…

I think the reason these systems require device bound keys is because the government is concerned with easily mass-produced forged age certificates. With software keys you can get an age certificate which can be copied instantly to a large number of devices, with hardware keys the government knows that the certificate is tied to a single physical unit.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#148
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money did the EU finance towards alternatives last year then? I hear them complaining but for now, the alternatives are mostly run by hobbyists. We're starting from so low that even a few dozen millions would help a lot.

> €2 billion over seven years to fund alternatives to proprietary software

For context, as yearly spending of 285 million €, that compares to building roughly 20 km of motorway, or 0.5% of EU's agriculture subsidies, or half what the German federal government pays Microsoft per year.

Edit: 2000m/7 is 285m, not 466m.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#149
Europeans do a lot of stupid things, but I believe in light of all the scandals we saw in recent times, you can't explain EU behavior and choices without accounting for corruption. EU division and different level among the different countries of wealth, integrity of political sphere, and different cultural biases make us the perfect target for bribes in order to control votes and choices. Not just promoted by external actors. The Chat Control is a great example: everybody understands how bad this is, the arguments are mostly a shield to avoid revealing the real agenda.

Re: European digital ID wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple

#150
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> €2 billion over seven years to fund alternatives to proprietary software

For context, as yearly spending of 285 million €, that compares to building roughly 20 km of motorway, or 0.5% of EU's agriculture subsidies, or half what the German federal government pays Microsoft per year. Edit: 2000m/7 is 285m, not 466m.

> if they just spent a little, maybe as much as a couple of million it would make a huge difference, but they refuse to ...

they do.

> 250 million isn't much ...

sigh.

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