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German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

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Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#311

Post by stephbook »

kouteiheika wrote: post #257
debazel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't even have to be a high profile target like a sanctioned judge. Simply getting your account banned by some automated process that marked you as "suspicious" will basically render you excluded from society. It is absolutely insane to put this amount of power in 2 foreign companies that will be able to destroy your life with zero reason, oversight, or due process.

This is not a hypothetical problem and you don't need to be deliberately targeted. It actually happens to normal people. And if it does you have absolutely zero recourse. Source: I have a banned Google account (it's over 20 years old at this point). I know the password, but Google doesn't let me log into it. Every few years I try to unsuccessfully recover it. If you have a Google account and having it banned would be…

Can't you just create a new account?

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#313

Post by Avamander »

elric wrote: post #286
userbinator wrote: post #134

ISO7816 (smartcard) has existed for nearly 4 decades as the standard secure identity card, widely used by the banking industry among others. Very unintrusive and not hostile beyond needing to carry a little chip. If governments want a national ID, they could just give everyone one of those.

Belgium has had exactly this for decades. But now they want to get on the hype train for smartphone based ID, because card reader support is still shit in browsers in 2026. Adding to this: anyone older than 12 years old is required by law to have their government issued ID on them at all times when in public. If your ID is suddenly your smartphone, you're essentially required to have that on you 24/7. Dystopian spywa…

> because card reader support is still shit in browsers in 2026.

Tragedy of the commons, nobody seems to have bothered to work on it. It's not like Chromium or Firefox wouldn't accept contributions.

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#314

Post by zajio1am »

webhamster wrote: post #155

German implementer here. We have to use some kind of attestation mechanism per the eIDAS implementing acts. That doesn't work without operating system support. The initial limitation to Google/Android is not great, we know that, and we have support for other OSs on our list (like, e.g., GrapheneOS). It is simply a matter of where we focus our energy at the moment, not that we don't see the issues.

Why not just use U2F or certificates on crypto-tokens?

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#315

Post by rcbdev »

sunshine-o wrote: post #294
rcbdev wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vienna is probably not food self sufficient No, but Austria is. And our farmers enjoy much support through subsidies - from the EU and our own budget - and social protections, often having better and cheaper health care than most other Austrians, since they are insured under their very own social insurance law (BSVG), contrary to other employees (ASVG) and self-employed (GSVG). Farmers also enjoy very high levels o…

> And our farmers enjoy very high levels of subsidies Yes, thanks. This was my original point "the agriculture sector hold by a string". It is by design unsustainable and if you cut those "high levels of subsidies" it collapses. > Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems d…

I do not understand what you're trying to communicate with "hold by a string" - we subsidize our farmers because we do not want to completely wreck our local agricultural supply chains just because food from, say Brazil, would be theoretically cheaper today. Another factor is that we actually have the ability to properly enforce quality standards if the food is produced within our jurisdiction.

This is no different to subsidizing public transport, because having this infrastructure local and autonomous is just strategically important enough for the tax payer to finance it. Would you say that public transport in EU capitals is "holding on by a string"?

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#316

Post by no_time »

RandomGerm4n wrote: post #99

I attestation should be abolished altogether. An app should have absolutely no way of knowing what kind of device it’s running on or what changes the user has made to the system. It is up to each individual to ensure the security of their own device. App developers should do no more than offer recommendations. If someone wants to use GrapheneOS, root their device (not recommended), or run the whole thing in an emulat…

This is the original sin of modern computing. Almost all anti user features are only made possible because we didn't pass laws against "secure elements" that serve the maker and not the owner when NGSCB got announced.

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#317

Post by [deleted] »

reddalo wrote: post #125
RandomGerm4n wrote: post #99

I attestation should be abolished altogether. An app should have absolutely no way of knowing what kind of device it’s running on or what changes the user has made to the system. It is up to each individual to ensure the security of their own device. App developers should do no more than offer recommendations. If someone wants to use GrapheneOS, root their device (not recommended), or run the whole thing in an emulat…

Exactly. It's my own device, I can do whatever I please with it. There shouldn't be an automated way for apps to check if my device has been blessed by the US tech giants or not.

[deleted]

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#318

Post by zajio1am »

zajio1am wrote: post #314
webhamster wrote: post #155

German implementer here. We have to use some kind of attestation mechanism per the eIDAS implementing acts. That doesn't work without operating system support. The initial limitation to Google/Android is not great, we know that, and we have support for other OSs on our list (like, e.g., GrapheneOS). It is simply a matter of where we focus our energy at the moment, not that we don't see the issues.

Why not just use U2F or certificates on crypto-tokens?

Note that for eIDAS 1, a Czechia e-identity provider uses U2F tokens.

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#319

Post by Avamander »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #153
ruszki wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with the current status quo, or the status quo 5 or 10 years ago? 20 years ago there were basically no cheating prevention, but nobody cared. We just didn't play with cheaters. There are still cheaters in all games. No matter what kind of DRM streaming platforms use, their movies are on torrent immediately. The only difference compared to 5-20 years ago is that user experience is worse. I need to i…

It's not just that "user experience is worse", it's an existential threat to Free Software. In the past, when you had a proprietary tool you needed to use to do something, people could analyze and reimplement it. The reasons to do that varied - someone needed "muh freedomz", someone else wanted to do the thing on an unsupported platform, someone else wanted to change something in the way the tool worked (perhaps anno…

> The ability for us as users to lie to the apps is actually essential to preserving our agency. Without that we're screwed, as now to connect ourselves to the fabric of the society we'll need to find and exploit vulnerabilities that are going to be patched as soon as they become public.

The same freedom is being abused by malicious actors. Even on Windows (like BlackLotus), but also on pre-infected phones emptying people's bank accounts. This is an incredibly unfortunate outcome, but what's the solution?

I see no other potential outcome than that free computing and trusted computing are going to be totally separate. Possibly even on the same device, but not in a way that lets anyone tamper with it.

Re: German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function

#320

Post by rep_lodsb »

izacus wrote: post #278
rep_lodsb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a problem with unmodified phones containing malware, namely an operating system made by an advertising company, which is designed to collect as much information about you as possible. And this malware is largely based on open source code (Linux) that was originally developed on open, documented hardware, where the firmware boot loader did nothing more than load the first 512 bytes of your hard disk to ad…

Yeah, randomly calling software that you don't like "malware" isn't making a strong case you think it does. Or helps in this discussion.

It's doing things that are against the interest of the user. But obviously, that's no longer an acceptable definition! According to our benevolent overlords, Android is definitely not malware, while yt-dlp is
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