[HN Gopher] German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple...
___________________________________________________________________
German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account
to function
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 531 points
Date : 2026-04-04 22:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bmi.usercontent.opencode.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (bmi.usercontent.opencode.de)
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| what's eIDAS?
| ezfe wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS
|
| electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services
| whizzter wrote:
| EU digital identity law to make inter-EU signatures (And
| authentication) work.
|
| As an example, an EU citizen working in Sweden should be able
| to submit Swedish tax forms whilst living here by using a
| digital identity from the originating nation.
|
| There are also some standards in place like ETSI standardized
| extensions to PDF signatures so that you can verify that a
| signature inside the PDF was actually signed by a specific
| physical person (the standard is there but it's not fully used
| throughout the EU yet due to some legacies).
|
| Implementation is a bit of a mess still but things are
| converging.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The gold standard for digital signatures today is
|
| - someone sends you a docusign link
|
| - you sign up with your email
|
| - you sign with your name in a cutesy font
|
| Theres a dispute? Well it was going to end up in court no
| matter how you signed it anyway. This has all the hallmarks
| of a design by committee project by people whose salary is
| paid regardless of demonstrating market fit, productivity,
| usage, plain sensibleness...
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > Theres a dispute? Well it was going to end up in court no
| matter how you signed it anyway.
|
| The fact that it's ALWAYS a docusign is the ridiculous
| part. It is just a glorified where you enter your name and
| email. No need to pretend otherwise. Any other service
| would be just as good. This is basic human sheep-like
| behavior?
| martimarkov wrote:
| Can I use Docusign to provide my identity in Estonia online
| via my phone when I move there to buy a SIM card or open a
| bank account or file a document with the local authority?
|
| Can I also send the Docusign document via Signal without
| Docusign knowing the person who signs it?
|
| Because that is what the eIDAS is supposed to deliver on
| top of cryptographic validation of signatures.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Made me laugh then cry. I'm willing to bet your comment
| still stands in 2030 unless someone like Apple allows
| FaceID to be used to sign too (this seems like an obvious
| and easy thing to do as they already got more than half of
| the infrastructure in place)
| mzajc wrote:
| Is there a reason this user-hostile mess is preferred over an
| X.509 certificate (besides big tech lobbying)?
|
| Slovenia hands out certificates for online government
| services, including document signing, and it seems to be
| going fine, with the added benefit that Google can't take
| away my access.
| Maken wrote:
| eIDAS is about making the electronic IDs emitted by the
| different EU governments intercompatible, so you can use a
| Slovenian certificate to authenticate into the German tax
| system, if you want to.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| Most people wouldn't know what to do with a certificate, so
| governments build some stuff on top (like an official
| mobile app) which makes auth easier. It's usually just
| certificates underneath (not exposed to the user).
|
| Eidas tries to harmonize these implementations across EU
| member states.
| whizzter wrote:
| In the end it's mostly x509 certificates, an ETSI pADES PDF
| signature for example contains the signing x509 certificate
| (ETSI specifies extension OID's to the x509 certificates to
| contain personal numbers, country, etc).
|
| The big question is how to let users properly handle their
| certificates so they won't get abused into being useless.
|
| If I understood it correctly, the German current
| Ausweissapp seems to require NFC to read it from your
| personal id card together with a PIN code you got with the
| card, it's not entirely user-friendly since aligning the
| card with your phone seems to be prickly.
|
| Swedish BankID handles it internally in their app (unlocked
| via PIN's) but they don't have a good way to use it to sign
| things (It all relies on the infrastructure even if they
| give out signature documents it's not compatible with
| pADES).
|
| There's a new govt sponsored one that I assume will
| piggyback on the personal cards/passes that are readable
| via NFC.
|
| Norway and Denmark iirc supports proper signatures but I
| don't think the certificates are under user control
| (someone correct me if I'm wrong here).
|
| Now these things are mostly issues for document signatures,
| authentication is often handled via other flows.
|
| What I skimmed from the article, it seems to be more in
| line with Swedish BankID and is actually fairly smooth for
| end users even if less secure than what they have now with
| Ausweissapp.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > inter-EU signatures
|
| I assume this should be "intra-EU"? I'm not very familiar
| with eidas so I'm not sure, but afaik it's about signatures
| _within_ the EU, not _between_ different EUs (as there is
| only one in this world). (I hate this inter /intra wording,
| always have to translate it in my head to understand whether
| it's like internet (between networks) or like intranet
| (within a network). Would recommend using "within-" instead
| of intra whenever it's not already a well-established word,
| like intranet)
| whizzter wrote:
| Yes of course, a bit tired here since it's nighttime.
| ResearchAtPlay wrote:
| Do you happen to know if German citizens can obtain a
| certificate to sign PDFs (from the government / for free)?
|
| Several paid providers for X.509 certificates exist but
| document signing certificates cost around 80 EUR per year
| [0]. And if I want duplicate X.509 certificates for my
| redundant Yubikeys then the cost doubles.
|
| Other providers require an initial deposit and then charge
| per signature [1], which leads to intransparent pricing. In
| the interest of open commerce, I strongly believe that
| securely signing an electronic document should cost the same
| as my manual signature, i.e. nothing.
|
| A partial solution already exists because I can use my
| electronic ID card with the AusweisApp to prove my identity
| when interacting with German authorities. This feature is
| generally useful because I live outside of the EU, but I
| especially appreciate that I can have my OpenPGP key signed
| by Governikus (a government provider) to prove the key
| belongs to my name [2].
|
| Technically, I should be able to use my certified PGP key to
| sign documents, but in practice most non techies don't know
| how to validate my signature. For the average user opening my
| signed PDF in Adobe Reader, I would need an X.509 certificate
| from a trusted Certificate Authority for users to see the
| green check mark.
|
| [0] https://shop.certum.eu/documentsigning-certifcates.html
|
| [1] https://www.entrust.com/products/electronic-digital-
| signing
|
| [2] https://pgp.governikus.de/wizard/requirements
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| A mistake.
| stefan_ wrote:
| So what was the point of putting a crypto chip into every ID if
| you are gonna try and reinvent the entire trusted environment in
| the fucking smartphone?
| mr_toad wrote:
| ID cards don't connect to the internet.
|
| These days an ID system that doesn't work online is next to
| useless.
| haagch wrote:
| It's an NFC card that can be read with any NFC card reader,
| USB or smartphone based.
|
| https://www.ausweisapp.bund.de/en/open-source I just saw that
| it's available in alpine.
|
| So I tried installing it on my postmarketOS smartphone and it
| runs out of the box: https://i.imgur.com/nRIAyrq.png
|
| My Shift6mq is listed has not having NFC support in
| postmarketOS, so I can't _actually_ test it, but I assume the
| USB card reader option will work once it 's supported.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Is the link broken for anyone else? I'm getting
| ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Works for me in Germany. I wonder if it's some overzealous bot
| protection that's cutting off humans again, in this case from
| what looks like a government website, but without further
| testing that's hard to say. You could check if it works from
| another network, or if other people on your network range have
| the same issue (like if you're in 13.37.0.0/16 then maybe
| someone else at the ISP is also in that range and could check
| if it got blocked outright)
| lta wrote:
| That sounds like a very smart move at the time where Europe
| realize the US isn't such a gray partner and it's trying to
| reduce it's critical dependencies on foreign nations tech and
| infra. Good job. I'm actually very surprised to see this from the
| germans who have this reputation of great engineering culture
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Not in software. German software is awful. Think german cars,
| banks, telecoms etc
| fmajid wrote:
| Ah yes, the fabulous car engineering of Dieselgate.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| Well they got caught..
| CalRobert wrote:
| And then they successfully lobbied the EU to water down
| rules for transitioning to electric.
| newsicanuse wrote:
| While I agree, it'd be hard to say that SAP is not good
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| SAP software is the bane of most people, who have to use
| it, except for expensive consultants, who make bank preying
| on hapless clueless companies opting to use SAP software.
| c0balt wrote:
| As someone who has experienced a Migration to SAP, no it is
| quite hard to say it is good. Doesn't work on mobile
| (unless you toggle on "desktop" mode, at which point if
| kinda works), is slower than the preceding PHP solution and
| generally functions like a POS. Other SAP implementations
| did not seem to behave much better.
|
| They might have some great software _somewhere_ but I have
| yet to see it.
| gpvos wrote:
| [citation needed]
| herbst wrote:
| Strong =! Good
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| We had people formerly saying that in our org and going to
| a _decade_ of several failed ERPs. Now we run SAP. Still
| people are unsatisfied with SAP. Not even recognising that
| the failures are mostly self instricted policies. The
| organisation worked somehow before having an ERP, because
| people ignored the given organisation and improvised.
| That's close to impossible if you use digital processes
| from end to end. And yet, the ones with the poor
| organisational skills blame software.
| pepperoni_pizza wrote:
| SAP is very good at what it is trying to do, which is to
| define, standardize, automate and run a business process,
| and it is equipped with a large library of premade
| processes so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
|
| It does not have good UX because good UX was never the
| objective.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Nor in the physical world either. Crumbling planes, trains
| and automobile infrastructure. Collapsed bridges, airports
| that don't function properly etc.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| > from the germans who have this reputation of great
| engineering culture
|
| This was more than 30 years ago. Now we have a great culture of
| overregulation.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I think the reputation is fading. I know I'd take a Chinese car
| over a German one.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I wouldn't, as China being the largest single market for
| motor vehicles and the cutthroat competition there is what
| caused all this.
|
| Everyone is trying to cut costs so as to be able to compete
| there and Europeans are paying the cost of financing this.
|
| Personally I'm going to wait until the average car age in
| China crosses the 10-year mark to get a new vehicle. Until
| that happens there will be no incentive to think about
| longevity.
| livvy wrote:
| Can anyone point me to where in the MDVN page it mentions
| requiring Apple and Google account? Thanks
| weikju wrote:
| Because the attestations will only work on iOS and Google Play
| integrity attested devices. Meaning Apple and Google accounts
| required.
| livvy wrote:
| This is an assumption, but not confirmed.
| AppAttestationz wrote:
| I spent months designing a system, exactly like this. An
| account is not needed, at least for Apple.
|
| Play Integrity could the worst offender here, as it can be
| leveraged to force a user to have installed the app through
| the Play Store. Indirectly, requiring a Google account.
| blitzar wrote:
| A phone is also required then?
| raphman wrote:
| Mastodon thread on this topic:
| https://mastodon.social/@pojntfx/116345677794218793
|
| See also this issue from 2025 where the developers responded:
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/eudi-wallet/wallet-developmen...
|
| AFAICT, there is no mention of an Apple or Google account being
| required in general - the documentation just lists "signals" that
| are used to securely authenticate a person - such as
| Google's/Apple's security ecosystems. I am not sure what this
| means in practice. Can anybody with deeper understanding explain
| the actual implications and possible outcomes?
|
| (Note: BMI is the German Federal Ministry for the Interior)
| pojntfx wrote:
| Hey, Fel from the fedi thread here
|
| Explanation:
| https://mastodon.social/@pojntfx/116345725515845020
|
| There is in practice no known way around it for now, and even
| less so one for regular people, to use this on a device without
| a Google account
| zb3 wrote:
| > threats:
|
| > unknown system image (e.g. custom ROM)
|
| Oh no, what a horrible crime, somebody dared to modify operating
| system on their own device..
| AppAttestationz wrote:
| The title is misleading.
|
| App attestation does not require an Apple account nor a google
| account. For Android, it does limit the ROMs to Google certified
| ones and requires GMS to be installed if Play Integrity is used.
| An alternative option, would be to use the Hardware Attestation
| API directly, GrapheneOS would be thanking you.
|
| I've spent a good amount of time implementing exactly this type
| of system for a backup service.
|
| his document specifies a way to cryptographically attest the
| integrity of a HTTP request hitting a server.
|
| The attestation proves the request came from a device and attest
| the legitimacy of the bootloader, OS and app.
|
| Google and Apple are in a privileged position to be able to
| bypass the app attestation though, so depending on the threat
| model, it's not bulletproof.
|
| edit: Play Integrity could the worst offender here, as it can be
| leveraged to force a user to have installed the app through the
| Play Store. Indirectly, requiring a Google account.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > App attestation does not require an Apple account nor a
| google account. For Android, it does limit the ROMs to Google
| certified ones and requires GMS to be installed.
|
| To me, there is no difference between your sentences. You
| require the blessing of an American company to be able use
| eIDAS. Google has the power to disable eIDAS at a national
| scale by making the attestation services treat all devices as
| not certified.
|
| There should be NO reliance whatsoever on a private company not
| under the control (direct or indirect) of the government let
| alone a foreign private company.
|
| Edit: I just noticed your username and the fact that your
| account is very new. Are you astroturfing?
| AppAttestationz wrote:
| I agree, there is still a reliance on the tech giants that
| produce the phones, who are the o'es embedding the
| cryptographic keys, to make this end to end attestation work.
|
| But in pure technical & UX terms, you don't need to be logged
| in.
| AppAttestationz wrote:
| I made an account because I'm qualified to talk about this
| topic :-) I've spent a considerable time testing every corner
| case of UX, and DX of an app attested service.
|
| App attestation can fail on simulators, Graphene OS, dev
| builds, I've seen it all. There is one check you can do to
| see if an app was side loaded, so indirectly, can require
| Google account.
|
| Title is still misleading though, as it explicitly mentions
| accounts.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| Come September, there will be no side loaded apps on
| Android.
| gnabgib wrote:
| You're behind on your news!
|
| _Google details new 24-hour process to sideload
| unverified Android apps_ (1196 points, 16 days ago, 1262
| comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442690
| dugite-code wrote:
| Functionaly it's dubious if this will not cause further
| issues. Developer tools cause some security checks to
| fail. It's not yet known if the unknown apps setting will
| do the same
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| There's no such thing as "legitimacy of the bootloader, OS"
| that can be verified by someone who isn't the device's user.
| The bootloader that booted the phone I type this on is patched
| by me, which makes it more "legitimate" than any other
| bootloader that could be placed there.
| AppAttestationz wrote:
| You can bicker about the words all day long. Legitimacy, or
| perhaps better: authenticity, in this context, would be a
| bootloader or OS that doesn't allow tampering with the
| execution of an app.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Any bootloader or OS that doesn't allow the user to tamper
| with it or the other tools they're using on it is obviously
| illegitimate malware.
| AppAttestationz wrote:
| It's a funny comment, because actual malware, very much
| loves to tamper with the bootloader and OS.
|
| Which was the motivation for cryptographically attesting
| the boot process and OS, and in part paved the way for
| app attestation.
|
| There are alternatives though: The Android Hardware
| Attestation API enables attestation on custom ROMs, but
| the attestation verifier needs a list of hashes for all
| "acceptable" ROMs. GrapheneOS publishes these but there's
| nobody, to my knowledge, maintaining a community list.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Nothing funny in it, I'm afraid. Socially accepted
| malware is still malware. Caffeine is a stimulant,
| alcohol is a drug, a piece of software that works against
| the user is a malware.
|
| Cryptographic attestation is not a problem in itself, the
| problem is exactly what you already somewhat hinted at:
| it's who and how decides who to trust and who gets to
| make (or delegate) the choices. You _can_ make a secure
| system that lets the user be in charge, but these systems
| we 're discussing here don't (and that's by design;
| they're made to protect "apps", not users).
| izacus wrote:
| Sorry but this is nonsense - most users, even the Linux
| toting power users - don't have the time, ability or
| knowledge to verify the contents of their OS in a way that
| would catch issues prevented by attestation.
|
| The problem with modified phones containing malware is very
| real and unless you want a full on Apple "you're not allowed
| to touch the OS" model you need some kind of audited OS
| verification that you as a user or a security sensitive
| software can depend on.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| No, what you're saying is nonsense. I can burn a key into
| efuses of this phone to make it only boot things signed by
| me and make the whole boot path verified, OS image
| immutable etc. and all of this can provide me some value,
| but it's absolutely not in my interest to let applications
| be picky on what can or can't happen in the OS (even if
| they would accept my key being there rather than Google's,
| which they won't). The only thing it manages to do is to
| prevent me from using the device the way I want or need it
| to be used.
| izacus wrote:
| I agree about the part where apps shouldn't be able to
| see whether the OS is trusted.
|
| But to remove that incentive you first need to stop
| punishing app companies for compromised user OSes from
| legal perspective.
|
| Are you willing to absolve Google, Apple and Deutsche
| Bank from responsibility of damage that happens on
| compromised user OSes?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| The attested systems have vulnerabilities too, so how do
| they deal with that responsibility?
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| 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 address
| 0x7c00 and transfer complete control to it.
|
| Yes, there were viruses that exploited this openness, but
| imagine if Linus Torvalds would have needed a cryptographic
| certificate from IBM or Microsoft to be allowed to run his
| own code! This is basically the situation we have today,
| and if you don't see how dystopian this is, I don't know
| what more to say.
|
| I will never understand why such an overwhelming majority
| of people seem to just accept this. When frigging
| _barcodes_ where introduced, there were widespread
| conspiracy theories about it being the Mark of the Beast --
| ridiculous of course, but look at now where in some places
| you literally can 't buy or sell without carrying around a
| device that is hostile to your interests. And soon it will
| be mandated by the state for everyone.
|
| Google must be destroyed.
| izacus wrote:
| 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.
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| 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 </s>
| goblin89 wrote:
| The reason (or, depending on your inclinations, the excuse)
| for trusted computing to exist is not to guarantee that I
| didn't patch the bootloader of the phone on which I type my
| comment; it's to guarantee I didn't patch the bootloader of
| the phone on which _your grandma_ logs in to her bank without
| her knowledge.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| No, the reason is to let application providers decide which
| platforms you can run their software on. The reasons why
| they need that are diverse: DRM, preventing reverse
| engineering, shifting liability, "cheating" prevention - to
| name a few, but ultimately they're all about asserting
| control over the user, just motivated differently in
| various use cases. "Think of the grandmas".
| ruszki wrote:
| 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 install a lot of
| intrusive bullshits, and I cannot watch movies with
| proper resolution. For literally nothing.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| 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
| annoyed by paper jams)... Eventually you could end up
| with an interoperable FLOSS reimplementation. This has
| happened with lots of various things - IMs, network
| service clients, appliance drivers, even operating
| systems, and this is how people like me could switch away
| from Windows and have their computers (and later phones)
| remain fully functional in the society around us, perhaps
| with minor annoyances, but without real showstoppers.
|
| Remote attestation changes this dynamic drastically. Gaim
| (Pidgin), Kadu couldn't be made if the service provider
| like AIM, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu etc. could determine whether
| you're using the Official App(tm) from the Official
| Store(tm) on the Official OS(tm) and just refuse to
| handle requests from your reimplementation. They could
| still try and be hostile to you without it, and often
| did, but it wasn't an uneven fight. Currently we're still
| in the early days and you can still go by in the society
| by defaulting to use services on the Web, using plastic
| card instead of phone for payments etc. but this is
| already changing. And it's not just a matter of networked
| services either - I bet we're going to see peripheral
| devices refusing to be driven by non-attested
| implementations too.
|
| Secure boot chains have some value and are worth having,
| but not when they don't let the user be in charge (or let
| _the user_ delegate that to someone else) and when they
| prioritize the security of "apps" rather than users. 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.
| Avamander wrote:
| > 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.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| A lot of other freedoms are being abused and always have
| been, but somehow we don't go and ban kitchen knives, as
| having them around is valuable. This is a false
| dichotomy. Systems can be secure and trusted by the user
| without having to cede control, and some risks are just
| not worth eliminating.
|
| Most importantly - it's the user who needs to know
| whether their system has been tampered with, not apps.
| Avamander wrote:
| > but somehow we don't go and ban kitchen knives, as
| having them around is valuable
|
| Some countries do :) Though I think physical analogies
| are misleading in a lot of ways here.
|
| > Systems can be secure and trusted by the user without
| having to cede control, and some risks are just not worth
| eliminating.
|
| Secure, yes, trustworthy to a random developer looking at
| your device, no. They're entirely separate concepts.
|
| > Most importantly - it's the user who needs to know
| whether their system has been tampered with, not apps.
|
| Expecting users to know things does a lot of heavy
| lifting here.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I never mentioned users having to know things (what you
| quoted was about the user getting _informed_ whether
| their system is compromised, which is the job of a secure
| boot chain). The user being in control means that the
| user can decide who to trust. The user may end up
| choosing Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. and it 's fine as
| long as they have a choice. Most users won't even be
| bothered to choose and that's fine too, but with remote
| attestation, it's not the user who decides even if they
| want to. And we don't need random developers looking at
| our devices to consider them trustworthy, it's none of
| their business and it's a big mistake to let them.
| Avamander wrote:
| > what you quoted was about the user getting informed
| whether their system is compromised, which is the job of
| a secure boot chain
|
| User being informed means they have to know what a
| compromised system would entail. That alone is a huge and
| frankly impossible thing to expect from regular people.
|
| > Most users won't even be bothered to choose and that's
| fine too, but with remote attestation, it's not the user
| who decides even if they want to.
|
| > And we don't need random developers looking at our
| devices to consider them trustworthy, it's none of their
| business and it's a big mistake to let them.
|
| Then you can't demand those developers trust your device.
| goblin89 wrote:
| > somehow we don't go and ban kitchen knives
|
| False analogy. You can't have your kitchen knife
| exploited by a hacker team in North Korea, who shotgun
| attacks half of the public Internet infrastructure and
| uses the proceeds to fund the national nuclear program,
| can you? (I somewhat exaggerate, but you get the idea.)
|
| > Systems can be secure and trusted by the user without
| having to cede control
|
| In an ideal world where users have infinite information
| and infinite capability to process and internalize it to
| become an infosec expert, sure. I don't know about you,
| but most of us don't live in that world.
|
| I agree it's not perfect. Having to use liquid glass and
| being unable to install custom watch faces is ridiculous.
| There's probably an opportunity for a hardened OS which
| can be trusted by interested parties to not be
| maliciously altered, and also not force so many
| constraints onto users like current walled gardens do.
| But a fully open OS, plus an ordinary user who has no
| time or willingness to casually become a tptacek on the
| side, in addition to completely unrelated full-time job
| that's getting more competitive due to LLMs and whatnot,
| seems more like a disaster than utopia.
| ruszki wrote:
| > You can't have your kitchen knife exploited by a hacker
| team in North Korea, who shotgun attacks half of the
| public Internet infrastructure and uses the proceeds to
| fund the national nuclear program, can you? (I somewhat
| exaggerate, but you get the idea.)
|
| Isn't the status quo, that you need to intentionally
| choose to allow this?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Yes (well, kinda - attested systems can be and are
| vulnerable too), and remote attestation is completely
| orthogonal to that threat anyway. Securing the boot chain
| does not involve letting apps verify the environment they
| run in, it's an extra (anti-)feature that's built on top
| of secure boot chains.
|
| It's also really incredible how people can see "user
| being in control" and just immediately jump to "user
| having to be an infosec expert", as if one implied the
| other. You can't really discuss things in good faith in
| such climate :(
| ruszki wrote:
| How large is this preinfected phones problem? Is it large
| enough to sacrifice freedom?
| Avamander wrote:
| We have had a large discovery of pre-installed malware
| every year for the past decade so far. Seems like a
| fairly big problem.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| And how exactly did attestation help there?
|
| Securing apps from the user does not secure the user from
| malware.
| Avamander wrote:
| Now you can't bundle malware deep within the system "ROM"
| unless you want to break SafetyNet's attestation. It's a
| big change in that aspect.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| All these requirements for specific hardware and software are
| ridiculous. Let every citizen use whatever computer they want. It
| should be up to the user to secure themselves. Authentication
| should only require a password or a key pair. If the user wants
| more security, they can set up TOTP or buy a security dongle or
| something.
|
| It's also ridiculous how it seems we've forgotten computers other
| than smartphones exist and that not everyone even has a
| smartphone, let alone with an Apple or Google account.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| > let every citizen use whatever computer they want.
|
| That's just not possible, or should the system be legally
| required to run on an Apple II?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| It should be legally required to provide enough
| interoperation capabilities for a compatible frontend to be
| written for an Apple II by whoever would like to do that, as
| the government can't be expected to write and maintain
| clients for every platform that's now in existence or that
| will be created in future.
|
| If only currently popular platforms are to be supported, how
| could a new platform join them in the future if the use of
| existing ones is mandated by governments?
| Avamander wrote:
| > If only currently popular platforms are to be supported,
| how could a new platform join them in the future if the use
| of existing ones is mandated by governments?
|
| The viable solution for that is to provide a trusted
| hardware implementation that can be used with any computing
| platform that has a documented interface. It can't be a
| software-only implementation, basically.
| vslira wrote:
| Glad you mentioned this possibility
|
| Countries have centuries of experience providing
| attestation services through notaries. Germany is even
| infamous for requiring them for things that would sound
| ridiculous even in Brazil (both movie and country)
|
| I can't see why governments couldn't incorporate this
| existing infrastructure into the digital world. Make them
| sell hardware ID wallets, enforce the real identity owner
| to be present to invalidate a previous ID or whatever,
| and add legal restrictions for the government not be able
| to alter these registries
| cocoto wrote:
| Simple, provide a simple API, let the community build the
| clients for the machines they have.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| That's antithetical to the goal of a secure ID. It has to
| be really impossible to get stolen, or as difficult as a
| physical card. If the ID is just a password, you can tell
| other people your password, and it can be stolen, and it
| can be cloned. Germany is a strict liability country, and
| you _will_ be fined or imprisoned for anything that is done
| with your identity card that was cloned because your PC was
| infected by malware if you don 't report it stolen.
| inexcf wrote:
| And as we know it is impossible to give someone your
| physical card.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| > If the ID is just a password, you can tell other people
| your password, and it can be stolen, and it can be
| cloned.
|
| You can give your physical cards to other people or give
| them access to your computers, too.
|
| > Germany is a strict liability country, and you will be
| fined or imprisoned for anything that is done with your
| identity card that was cloned because your PC was
| infected by malware if you don't report it stolen.
|
| I don't see an issue with this.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| You don't see an issue with going to prison because you
| got a computer virus and didn't know you got a computer
| virus?
| AlBugdy wrote:
| It would be unfortunate, but we are grown adults living
| in a society where computers have existed for decades.
| Ignorance is not an excuse, especially if we have various
| options to choose from.
|
| If we are given the option to choose from doing
| everything in person in a government office or via a
| computer of our choosing, it would be up to each of us to
| decide the tradeoff between security and convenience,
| price, privacy, ethics and other factors.
|
| I can use an old laptop I keep in a drawer only for
| things related to IDs, banking and taxes.
|
| I can use my main desktop and choose to rely on the
| security provided by virtualization, not installing
| random crap and having a hardened system. I can choose to
| keep my desktop inside my building that has multiple
| security measures - a doorman, an alarm system, multiple
| cameras inside and outside and a kill switch for shutting
| off power if someone enters using brute force. That
| desktop may be booted up, but it will have a long random
| password on the lockscreen with timeouts for wrong
| guesses. Unless you're an extremely good social engineer
| and don't care about being recorded, or if you're a
| master ninja who can crawl the ceiling and somehow get in
| without being noticed, good luck. Even then, you'd have
| to manage not triggering any alarms or kill switches.
| You'd then have to use a cold boot attack to extract my
| LUKS keys.
|
| I can also choose to use a XingDong smartphone with a
| Google account where I have TikTok, Meta apps, LinkedIn,
| Tinder, Grindr, 100s of random games and a whole lot of
| other shady weather apps, news apps and so on. I can
| choose to bring that smartphone with me everywhere I go
| and leave it on the table in a restaurant when I go to
| take a shit with a common pattern lock (I've unlocked 4
| or 5 locked smartphones by just searching for "most
| common patterns lockscreen android") or with irrevocable
| easily-spoofed biometrics.
|
| In both cases (and in the infinite other cases) it's my
| responsibility. If I'm unsure of my security posture, I
| can buy a security dongle or rely on Google's attestation
| mechanisms for Android or decide that I don't understand
| enough - in which case I'd have to drive an hour to my
| government office once in a while to file my taxes or to
| the bank once in a while to move around some money.
|
| In the ideal scenario, nothing would prevent the
| uneducated people from using their smartphone. They might
| even get prompted by the government or banks - "You're
| using/downloading this app on a smartphone. Would you
| like to use whatever attestation is available to be more
| secure?".
|
| Citizens are not brain dead morons. They're not cats or
| dogs. They're not mentally retarded (those who are can
| receive assistance). They're not 13. We have education.
| We've had computers for decades. Computer security is not
| a novel idea. If a citizen wants the convenience of
| online banking or online tax filing or of any other
| online participation with the government, they should be
| able to do so on a computer of their choice. If they
| install Windows XP and random spyware, it should be on
| them if and when they get hacked. It's a choice they
| made. Even the proverbial grandma should be aware of
| computer security by now. It's not 1990.
|
| To say Android or iOS can't get viruses is plain wrong.
| They do and will continue to do so. Even if you restrict
| the smartphones to the latest models with the latest
| OSes, you'll still get viruses.
|
| About 2FA/MFA - I can setup TOTP on another VM or
| physical computer. It's prone to phishing, but I am an
| educated adult who can accept the risk of being phished.
| Put me in jail if I get phished. I most likely won't. I'm
| the one who knocks. It's more likely someone will come to
| you with a gun and make you wire them money from your own
| smartphone.
|
| I don't need a smartphone. I have enough desktops and
| laptops much more powerful than any smartphone on the
| market. If I have a smartphone, it won't be with a Google
| or Apple account. It might not even be with iOS or
| Android. There are many options and they will hopefully
| grow in the future.
|
| I'm getting tired from editing this comment, but finally
| - I have a few friends who are completely illiterate wrt
| computers. They somehow manage to install Temu and other
| crap. They don't know what an "app" is, what a "browser"
| is, what an "OS" is and so on. They've been scammed a few
| times. They know they don't know anything, though. Or
| even if they haven't considered it before, if they do,
| they'd admit they don't know anything. They are not
| mentally retarded otherwise. An analogy would be that I'm
| offered to go to the moon for free so I can file my taxes
| there if I can pilot the rocket. I am 100% illiterate
| about rockets. I haven't even flown a drone. I don't know
| the first thing about yaw and pitch and whatnot. I am not
| retarded otherwise so I'll say "I don't know enough about
| flying rockets so I won't risk going to the moon on my
| own. Can I achieve the same things by coming to your
| office or by riding in a rocket piloted by someone
| else?".
| jmorenoamor wrote:
| No, but it should be open enough to be reasonably independent
| of specific services and devices.
| 7bit wrote:
| You can make an argument without pulling it into the
| ridiculous, you know?
| realo wrote:
| The problem to solve is trust.
|
| The technical solution is a hardware root of trust. This is
| typically a specially hardened chip in the device. A Trusted
| Platform Module (TPM).
|
| Your Apple ][ does not have a TPM. It cannot run software
| that can assess it's identity in a trusted manner.
| atanasi wrote:
| The current policy trend in the EU is definitely not based on
| the principle of each user evaluating their own risk. On the
| contrary, service providers like financial institutes and
| identity providers have the responsibility to keep users safe,
| and more and more regulation will be made. The natural
| consequence is restricting which platforms are supported.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| > The current policy trend in the EU is definitely not based
| on the principle of each user evaluating their own risk.
|
| Yes and if you look back this is not new. Just look at the
| extraordinary restrictions that apply to:
|
| - What houses you can build,
|
| - What vehicle you can drive,
|
| - What food you can grow and sell.
|
| The result is real estate has become unaffordable for younger
| people, our car industry is being annihilated, and the
| agriculture sector hold by a string.
|
| The digital realm enjoyed an unusual level freedom until now
| because the silent and boomer generations in charge in the EU
| understood nothing about it.
|
| Now that the EU is getting involved in "computers" we are
| starting to understand why peasants have been protesting in
| Brussels and calling those people insane for decades.
| rcbdev wrote:
| I really have to wonder where in the EU you live. In
| Vienna, I got to buy an apartment in my mid-twenties by
| just saving up, which was easy, as many apartments are
| rent-capped and there's lots of cheap social housing. I got
| to enjoy free university, allowing me to get a high paying
| job. I get to use very cheap all electric state-subsidized
| rental car offerings if I need them, which is rare since we
| have federally good rail and bus coverage. And I enjoy
| affordable meat, dairy and vegetables all sourced from
| inside my country.
|
| Austria's courts also ruled ages ago that rooting your own
| device cannot be a legal reason for OEMs like Samsung to
| refuse warranty coverage, since you can run whatever
| software you want on hardware you bought.
|
| Maybe your country sucks? Don't blame it on the EU.
| krater23 wrote:
| Yes, blame Germany.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Yes congratulation, you get to benefit from a lot of
| regulated and subsidized things: housing, education and
| transportation.
|
| While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still very
| unregulated domain (computers/internet related).
|
| This is not about one country vs another.
|
| The problem is you cannot have a society with everybody
| winning on both fronts unfortunately. You also need
| people making, cleaning stuff, growing food, cooking,
| etc. Not everybody can live in the capital with "very
| cheap all electric state-subsidized rental car" and
| Vienna is probably not food self sufficient...
| rcbdev wrote:
| > 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 of respect and
| appreciation here, even in Vienna.
|
| > While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still
| very unregulated domain (computers/internet related).
|
| 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 disingenuous.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| > 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 disingenuous.
|
| Yes this is why I said "still"
| rcbdev wrote:
| 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"?
| Ray20 wrote:
| > apartments are rent-capped > cheap social housing >
| free university > high paying job > very cheap all
| electric state-subsidized rental car offerings >
| affordable meat, dairy and vegetables
|
| And here we can simply examine the tax structure and
| conclude that the problem isn't whether the country
| sucks, but whether the side you're on sucks.
|
| After all, how can housing be affordable for ordinary
| workers if they have to subsidize from their own pocket
| free university, cheap housing, electric cars, high
| wages, and everything else for the privileged class?
|
| > Maybe your country sucks?
|
| And maybe your country sucks too. It is just North Korea
| is also the best country to live in (if you're Kim Jong
| Un).
| rolandog wrote:
| "Legislation will continue until morale improves."
|
| The regulations sometimes feel like additional burden of the
| user, but not for the manufacturers (aside for the
| attestation logic); consider:
|
| > (MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY requires a security patch in the
| last 12 months)
|
| Think about how this essentially codifies planned
| obsolescence due to not forcing the manufacturers to maintain
| the devices for life.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Last week I was watching a YouTube video, talking about the EU
| creating payment services independent of VISA and MasterCard.
| What struck me is that they are all apps, which will require an
| app store.
|
| Great, I can pay with a digital Euro, Wero or something else,
| without routing my payments via VISA. I just can't do it
| without an account with Apple or Google. I'm absolutely baffled
| by politicians, regulators, banks, merchants and implementors
| lack of ability to think more than one or two steps out.
|
| Sure, the EU is forcing 3rd. party app store, but no one is
| using them, so no one is pushing apps to them, especially not
| governments, banks or payment services, they'll be the last to
| use them.
| haagch wrote:
| The digital Euro seems still in early planning stages. It
| seems people want to plan a physical card for it, but whether
| online payments will work without a platform dependent app is
| unclear for now.
|
| Wero however is currently only planned as an android/ios app
| period. There are rumors that a card will come but that's
| only rumors for now.
|
| In your list of groups to be baffled about I would add
| journalists. You see many articles about Wero mentioning
| digital sovereignty, but have you seen any that criticize the
| required banking apps only being available in google's and
| apple's app stores?
| cebert wrote:
| I am shocked that there isn't more opposition from the general
| public to policies like this that erode privacy and freedom. I am
| a parent and can appreciate the need to control what children do
| on the internet, but at some point parents need to parent. I fear
| we're giving up a lot of freedom and adding unneeded complexity
| under the guise of keeping children safe.
| Ardon wrote:
| As far as I can tell, people are getting blitzed. People I know
| are incredibly deep in their personalized bubble and genuinely
| aren't even hearing about it. It's genuinely distressing. In
| general and for the future of democracy.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| It feels like this era of hyper-individualism requires too
| much attention from each individual and favors those that can
| afford to outsource the work. While that stabilizes the role
| of society as a system, I feel like this is most worrisome
| for the less privileged in any low-trust environment.
| gmerc wrote:
| Germany is distracted with its version of "the gun debate" aka
| speed limits.
|
| Like every school shooting, every energy crisis brings
| opportunity to saturate the airwaves with shallow noise that
| gets people overly upset and they'll ignore everything else.
|
| Every player on both sides is abusing this mechanic for all
| eternity.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > every energy crisis brings opportunity to saturate the
| airwaves with shallow noise that gets people overly upset and
| they'll ignore everything else.
|
| At least their version has an obvious solution: Make electric
| cars and solar panels and then stop having oil problems.
| lukan wrote:
| The speeding debate won't go away with this, though, as
| speeding is not about oil.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You still can't get people upset about gas prices every
| time there isn't peace in the middle east once they stop
| buying gas.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| I believe the idea is that friction and resistance is
| proportional to the square of the speed. After a certain
| speed, every 10 mph extra starts to really count in your
| mileage.
| krater23 wrote:
| The idea is that some green ideologists think that when
| they don't need to drive a car because they don't leave
| their city, no one needs to drive a car. Because car
| driving creates CO2 which means car driving is bad. And
| they search for ways to implement that or make driving a
| car as bad as possible. Because they can't make the
| Deutsche Bahn better, they have to make driving your own
| car worse.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But then why not just make car driving not create CO2?
| kyboren wrote:
| Because that doesn't play to Germany's industrial and
| economic strengths (precision machining, metallurgy,
| basically the whole ICE automobile supply chain).
|
| EVs are just mechanically much simpler, with a shorter
| BOM that largely centers around Asian (particularly
| Chinese) battery, REE, and semiconductor supply chains,
| so hundreds of thousands of good jobs that supported
| Germany's industrial model are now economically obsolete.
| kuerbel wrote:
| An EV is the superior vehicle in every aspect. Cheap
| fuel, reliable, nice to drive, less maintenance costs,
| less noisy and yes, no local emissions.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| I think this view is too reductionist, as people can (and
| usually do) debate more than one topic at a time. The problem
| is that technological dependence isn't gaining enough
| precaution when commodity products are being discussed.
|
| What worries me is that it's a real global problem in all of
| our non-autocratic societies. On a positive note, I can see
| how this is actually becoming a common understanding and
| gaining traction, as hyped AI products are seen by some as
| 3rd-party- or SaaS-killers. It seems like we know how to
| differentiate between independence and dependence, and
| evaluate any risks affiliated with such a decision. But it
| baffles me that this differentiation manages to float as some
| ironic stream in our Zeitgeist, and just barely manages to be
| taken seriously.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Imagine we had real democracy where people vote on issues.
| Speed limits? Vote once every 7 years or so on it and be done
| with it. Same for abortion laws, drug laws, gambling laws.
| Have a debate, vote, come back to it in 7 years if there is
| public interest. Preferably vote locally on issues that can
| be applied locally (like speed limits/enforcement etc.).
|
| Public debate and assessing politicians and parties would be
| so much cleaner then if they couldn't use polarizing issues
| to rally their support and do w/e they please on all other
| issues.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Popular vote would have made sure civil rights legislation
| never passed and everything down to the schools and
| bathrooms would still be segregated.
| rcbdev wrote:
| What German civil rights legislation are you referring
| to?
| bluecalm wrote:
| I think you are wrong but it's hard to guess what would
| would happen in the past. Meanwhile a lot of unpopular
| policies are implemented right now.
|
| You are hoping "good minority" will get its way ahead of
| "evil majority" in indirect democracy but if anything I
| see the reverse happening in a lot of Western countries
| today.
| jahnu wrote:
| I would hate to live in that political system. Just
| imagining the ways it would be gamed and the billionaire
| press would leverage these votes makes me shudder.
|
| So far the best modern improvement I've seen (and it could
| be further improved of course) is the increasing use of
| citizens assemblies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_assembly
| bluecalm wrote:
| I find it much easier to live with a decision knowing
| people around me made it. As it is the strongest lobby
| wins which usually doesn't contain me. In a world where
| people vote on issues I can at least move to somewhere
| where people think like me.
|
| Taking speed limits and road safety in general as example
| I feel vocal minority of car enthusiasts are holding the
| silent majority hostage and that's the reason we don't
| have more sensible regulation in a lot of EU countries.
| kuerbel wrote:
| As a Swiss all I can say is that this is not how that would
| work out. Some of the most polarising statements I have
| ever heard come from Swiss politicians.
|
| Although it is a more recent development since a certain
| billionaire (what else) took up politics as a side hustle.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Nobody is seriously discussing speed limits right now ...
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| all speed limits in highways are stupid. It should be
| follow distance enforcement instead.
| dboreham wrote:
| Single-vehicle accidents exist.
| watwut wrote:
| > at some point parents need to parent
|
| You write it as if companies provided tons of help to parents
| and children. Meanwhile, they spend a lot of money to make it
| as hard as possible.
|
| Second, kids in Germany have generally a lot more freedom and
| there is less of knee jerk impulse to blame parents for every
| accident. Expectation is that adults dont harm them without
| parents having perfect control every sevond.
| shevy-java wrote:
| The age verification sniffing laws will come to the EU and
| Germany too, so your assessment is, in my opinion, too
| limited and incomplete. It's not really about parenting, it
| is about grabbing more and more data from people.
| baxtr wrote:
| I think because most people, even tech savvy ones don't
| understand how this might effect their lives. It's too
| abstract. At least how it's portrayed here.
|
| Contrast that with chat control.
|
| _My government can read my WhatsApp messages? Not good!_
|
| What's the non-technical narrative here?
| shevy-java wrote:
| But there is nothing abstract here. A private entity,
| situated in a country that is very hostile and pro-Russia,
| controls parts of the software stack and implementation here.
| That's a law written by lobbyists.
| hhh wrote:
| Well, it affects a tiny percentage of people today, so why
| would they see it as impacting them?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Do people in Europe not intuitively understand that
| willingly making yourself [more] dependent on a foreign
| corporation is disadvantageous to you?
| herbst wrote:
| Do people outside of Europe do not understand how Germany
| is just a small fraction of Europe.
| not_that_d wrote:
| While true, it influences a lot in the EU
| herbst wrote:
| I don't think they influence more than France does. But I
| don't know, I live in Europe but don't care for the EU
| baxtr wrote:
| Don't feel bad! The EU cares about you as much as you
| care about the EU.
| reddalo wrote:
| If you live in Europe you should care for the EU: not
| only it's the reason why there hasn't been a war for 80+
| years, but if we can have a voice on the international
| stage it's because we are united instead of 27 small
| independent countries.
| lukan wrote:
| Do you live within the EU, or in europe?
| megous wrote:
| Thankfully, not in the technology area. Eg. we in the
| post-soviet EU block are well beyond using fax, and stuff
| like that, ... :)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| People in Texas are in the US, right?
| rufasterisco wrote:
| US dependency did bring a lot of value to a lot (albeit
| not all) of Europeans in past, specifically 1938-1988. If
| you were born, raised and lived in that timespan, you
| might have developed a deep seated and hard to break
| habit to rely on that dependency for security and
| lifestyle/wealth.
|
| Also, that same lifestyle is based on ignoring
| externalities applied to commons and/or events happening
| "somewhere else", even when factually proven. Little
| wonder and tiny bit ironic that the same principle has
| embedded itself so deeply, that it holds true even when
| the damage is inward, just a few indirections away.
|
| On your side, yes, I think that "people in Europe"
| intuitively understand that, it just needs time to
| blossom. The reputation/trust damage self inflicted by
| the current US administration is triggering a pushback
| that will expand into the future. As a point in case, it
| will lead to reconsidering assumptions on habits that
| many generations of US businesses and diplomats have
| built.
|
| Many in this thread point at difference instances of
| services that should be decoupled. Connecting the dots,
| the larger picture looks painfully obvious to me: Silicon
| Valley never was a partner to be trusted, and certainly
| not after they built or bent every business to rely on an
| ad ecosystem that exploits users.
|
| That original sin, on which a huge portion of Wall Street
| rests, is now at the center of discussions. Hence, the EU
| will build tools to address this because it has to, but
| consumers will flock to them especially from the US,
| since at this point no one can trust SV companies on data
| privacy (since Snowdens at least), no one can trust the
| US administration to protect citizens (since Trump at
| least), and about half of the US is scared about what's
| going on deeply enough (the emotional push needed to
| break the habit). They will move their data it the EU
| (where else? China?).
|
| This will be compounded by the fact that everyone tries
| to build better LLMs and to get AGI, while forgetting
| that LLMs work on data pipelines.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The reputation/trust damage self inflicted by the
| current US administration is triggering a pushback that
| will expand into the future.
|
| This barely even seems like the relevant part. If Google
| was founded in Japan and Apple in Brazil, it would still
| be foolish to entrench them as a dependency. It would
| barely even be better to do it with a _local_ company.
|
| > They will move their data it the EU (where else?
| China?).
|
| This feels like hopium. Network effects are powerful and
| as long as the internet is actually global, there are
| really only two options: 1) Centralized megacorps, and
| then the US ones have both the US apparatus behind them
| and the incumbency advantage, or 2) open protocols where
| no corporation of any nation is a gatekeeper.
|
| So for Europeans to get the hooks of the US incumbents
| out of them, their best chance by far is the second one,
| and that one is also mostly to the advantage of the
| Americans who aren't the existing incumbents, which is
| why it works. Start making phones with open hardware and
| social networks with open protocols and you can get
| people outside of your own country to use them because
| they don't much like the incumbents either, and that's
| how you reclaim the network effect. Try to clone the US
| megacorps without the US apparatus to get them
| established in other countries and they don't because
| they're wary of foreign central control, which in turn
| means you don't get the network effect and you lose.
|
| But then it's not so much that data ends up in "the EU"
| as that it's on your own device and then backed up or
| distributed as encrypted chunks in a distributed network
| which isn't tied to any specific jurisdiction.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Relying on open protocols to make all the difference is
| much more potent hopium than what GP wrote.
|
| Open protocols are kind of thing techies do when in
| cooperative mode, when industry isn't looking. But this
| is not this kind of problem - this is an economic,
| geopolitical problem. It's not about your local school
| moving off Windows to Linux, it's about the European
| corporations moving off Azure to some other cloud
| solution offered by European corporations (do we even
| have any?).
|
| I'll grant it, the turmoil of such transitions is a
| perfect moment for pushing for open protocols, federated
| solutions, etc. - the industry is distracted, there's
| more space to sneak in some good solution before everyone
| notices, and EU has cultural and political tradition of
| pushing towards FLOSS (even if largely just as an
| alternative to Microsoft) and associated values/memetic
| complex. But open anything won't save the day - more
| corporations will.
|
| It's a blind spot for some software folks, because they
| forget that FLOSS is an exception here; _everything else
| in the real world_ - including computing hardware and
| supporting power and network infrastructure - plays by
| rules of market economy, with proprietary solutions and
| clear structures of ownership.
|
| It makes no sense to try and fight this here - but it
| does make sense to go along with the flow and _improve_
| things by pushing for more globally optimal solutions,
| especially that EU is known to be favorable to using
| openness in protocols and standards as a policy vehicle,
| both internally and externally.
| ElFitz wrote:
| > it's about the European corporations moving off Azure
| to some other cloud solution offered by European
| corporations (do we even have any?).
|
| Scaleway and OVH? Although I'm not sure how they compare
| at scale to AWS / Azure / GCP.
| rufasterisco wrote:
| great counterpoint! (no i'm not an LLM, it is a actually
| a crucial perspective) i especially agree with > But open
| anything won't save the day - more corporations will.
|
| i am not advocating for a pure "open source will save the
| world" there are just a few points i'd like you to
| consider, and hopefully give me insights i can learn from
|
| * other than code, open source has also given us
| governance "experiments" capable of running critical
| systems. As another poster was mentioning, the risk is to
| fallback on "big corps", usually run by "big man", and we
| are back to zero. The hope? expectations? is that the
| open source governance ecosystem has tackled this space
| in enough dimensions to be able to build something over
| this. I am looking specifically at the area around
| licenses (mariadb, redis, ...) and just overall
| governance frameworks, as in "deteach business ownership
| from ethical frameworks"
|
| * in order to build anything this big/reliable, without
| megacorp budgets, you can just ... pay FLOSS? They are
| one of the 2 majorly screwed groups by the current SV
| setup (with PLENTY of cavaets,amongst them that SV is a
| huge open soure contributor) The other one being content
| creators. Slogan? "For this to succeed, you need the best
| coders and the best marketing departments in the world"
| Looks to me like incentives are aligned towards them
| being available. Talking broadly on a systemic level:
| details need refinement, and space beyond this single
| message.
|
| * EU (the political instituion) desperately needs this.
| An innovative tech ecosystem (not startup, not product)
| driven by "european values" that puts them on the spot.
| Start with redefining it: there are no users, but
| citizens. Something effectively out-innovating SV, not
| just trying to get on par. The risk of "being bought
| out/copied" doesn't really apply, since (as I said in my
| original comment) the discriminator is existential: US
| companies cannot be trusted because they built the
| existing system. Any attempt to block this (stop users
| from getting their data back) is going to be challenged
| by the EU (GDPR violations cannot be brought to court by
| citizens, only by nation's data authorities, which means
| a citizen gets big guns and doesn't ned to pay). Also, go
| on and explain that to all you other (US and not) users.
|
| * A EU cloud provider doesn't have to provide the same
| services an US provides. That would hardly be innovative.
| You also don't need to focus on corporations. Provide
| data storage for citizens, that will be the basis to
| build a privacy focus cloud, and then business _might_
| want that. There is a possible continuation into
| "advantages of storage&privacy based vs compute", that i
| skip.
|
| But essentially, to me it seems that an open source,
| true, "give me back my data" business driven initiative
| has never been as actionable as now. I short, such a
| project can make 2 bold statements "We are more
| innovative than SV" "We have better freedoms than the US"
| rufasterisco wrote:
| thank you for the insightful answer
|
| > But then it's not so much that data ends up in "the EU"
| as that it's on your own device and then backed up or
| distributed as encrypted chunks in a distributed network
| which isn't tied to any specific jurisdiction.
|
| 100% i launched into a long trajectory from the comment i
| was originally answering to, and stopped short
|
| i think-of? dream-of? try-to-build? what you just said
|
| my "in the EU" claim is mostly around legislation (EU art
| 8 vs US CLOUDS act vs vs China approach to citizen's
| data)
|
| the legislation is there, since GDPR it's a matter of
| tools
|
| since corps built tools, they "forgot" to add the third
| button on cookie banners: "give me back my data" ... (and
| fourth: "delete it") but the legal framework is there, as
| well as _most_ of the tooling (google takeout, and so on
| from all other major players)
|
| it's not that pipelines for moving data from US corps to
| inidividual do not exists, it's more that, up to now,
| whenever i was talking about "data rights" to people,
| even in tech, i got yawns back
|
| now we have a "perfect storm": distrust towards US
| (administration, collpasing onto US businesses) + global
| uncertainty towards AI (where lots of people just
| perceive something happening but lack any tool that gives
| them control over it)
|
| this is what i perceive as a tectonic shift that can be
| used innovatively, by EU businesses, hopefully leveraging
| open
|
| for completeness, i have indeed wrapped "EU" as the
| spearhead for this, given the incentives to build it, but
| yes, central authority over this should live inside of
| each citizen nation framework (see, Japan and South
| Korea, both providing legal frameworks for data
| protection)
| krater23 wrote:
| No, most people aren't interested at all. They say it
| will nothing happen. Changed a little bit since Trump,
| but not enough to have really impact.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| "My government can read my XXX" also affects only a tiny
| percentage of people today, but due to historical
| precedents and a lot of history and civics lessons,
| everyone _thinks_ it affects them personally.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > Write too many color emojis in a row on a YouTube
| livestream chat
|
| > Get banned from society for life
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| The non-technical narrative is very simple: Google, Apple, or
| the German government can revoke your ID at any time. You
| cannot purchase or sell anything[1], sign any contracts, have
| a job, rent an apartment, use public transportation, or
| receive any kind of government services without an ID. This
| should sound _extremely alarming_ to everyone regardless of
| technical knowledge.
|
| [1] Maybe with cash, for now, but cash is clearly not long
| for this world, and your bank account will be inaccessible
| already.
| 4ad wrote:
| It also makes you sound like a conspiracy theory nutjob,
| and the current political climate in Europe is such that
| people are really sensitive to this sort of alarmist
| messaging (which they erroneously perceive as fascist
| rhetoric) and will not listen to you because they don't
| want to be associated with _those people_.
|
| I don't think we can win this fight. Personally I tried to
| advocate against eIDAS in Austria and I've had negative
| success. After my warnings, people like it more.
|
| "Oh, it's an EU thing? it must be good!".
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| I feel like if you frame it against the Americans you
| might have more success? Given this implementation is
| fully Google/Apple-based. Then it's not "conspiracy
| theory" but "something that is literally happening and in
| the news already", where you can point to the Europeans
| who were sanctioned by the US. But after demonstrating
| the American threat is real, it is also important to turn
| around and ask whether your own government should have
| that much power either, and for what benefit do you stand
| to gain by giving them that much? For those people who
| think you sound like a fascist nutjob, I would ask: you
| might be okay with the current government having this
| power, but will it still be okay if the FPO comes to have
| this power?
|
| But then again, maybe there is nothing that can be done.
| It boggles my mind that even on HN most people are
| defending this. It seems like freedom is a completely
| lost cause.
| testing22321 wrote:
| What percentage of people have a phone that is not apple or
| google?
| isolatedsystem wrote:
| I think the point is rather what percentage of people will
| _continue_ to need to have a phone that is Apple or Google,
| due to death by a million decisions like these.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Well the comment above was expressing disbelief that more
| people are not up in arms about this.
|
| When you realize the tiny tiny percentage of people that
| have a phone that is not apple or google, you understand
| why few people are up in arms.
|
| It simply doesn't affect many people.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This feels like arguing that people wouldn't object to
| having a shock collar padlocked around their neck because
| it's not currently shocking them. You don't have to see
| very many moves ahead to guess what happens if you don't
| object.
|
| Whereas if the collar is touted as fashionable and the
| lock is hidden until it's engaged, now your problem is
| not that people don't _care_ , it's that they don't
| _know_ , which is different.
| maccard wrote:
| I don't think this analogy comes even close to holding
| water.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| So cementing a dependency on paperclip-optimizing foreign
| megacorps to intermediate all your purchases and
| communications _doesn 't_ allow them to influence your
| behavior?
| maccard wrote:
| A dependency on a paperclip optimizing foregin megacorp
| is not remotely compara le to a "shock collar padlocked
| around your neck"
| testing22321 wrote:
| I'm not for one second saying I like it, agree with it,
| or support it.
|
| I'm just saying there are not many people impacted, so
| there are not going to be many people making noise.
|
| People are simply too deep in the trenches of day to day
| to object to things that don't impact them personally
| indrora wrote:
| My uncle has lost 4 Google accounts. Two to password loss,
| one to a fire, one to being banned for crimes against
| currency (having the audacity to live in several countries
| with different currencies)
|
| The issue isn't the phone, it's that a __government__ is
| depending on an unregulated private enterprise.
| ruszki wrote:
| > one to being banned for crimes against currency (having
| the audacity to live in several countries with different
| currencies)
|
| What does this "crimes against currency" mean? I live in
| several countries at once with different currencies, and I
| never had a problem with this. And top of this, I travel a
| lot. I have accounts in 5 countries, in 6 currencies.
| Should I pay attention to something?
| Aachen wrote:
| Are you saying there's a threshold percentage somewhere below
| which you're happy to
|
| A: exclude these people from society or force them to switch
| to big tech, and
|
| B: accept the consequence where a single other country holds
| access to everyone's identity information for convenience
| reasons (because it works for the 99% that are too tech-
| illiterate to install software that they control instead of
| the other way around)
| sunshine-o wrote:
| This is because the EU is basically designed as a lobbying
| platform. Note that lobbying by its own citizen is possible and
| welcome but expensive and require a some coordination, so
| basically foreign actors and big corporations are dominating.
| This is not a secret, the process is actually very transparent
| but it is "hidden" in all the documents nobody really want to
| dig into.
|
| Also the EU and all those states are also highly incompetent
| and pretty much only depends on low quality contractors. For
| example there is very little discussion and info about the fact
| that the EU digital infrastructure just got owned by what seems
| to be a random hacker group [0].
|
| - [0] https://cyberalert.com.pl/articles/shinyhunters-eu-
| europa-br...
| 7bit wrote:
| Because it requires tech iCal knowledge which 99% of the
| population don't have.
| phatfish wrote:
| I'm not. Parents are very much in favour of restrictions on
| what can be accessed online.
|
| Parents can't control what their children are doing 24/7, and
| neither should they. But they should expect a society where
| children are protected from billion dollar corporations
| stealing their attention and radicalising them, at least until
| they are old enough to leave mandatory schooling.
|
| There are many "real world" age restrictions that exist, and we
| have decided those are of benefit to society in general. The
| "online world" is no different.
|
| If we can't have age restrictions online then they should just
| be abolished in the real world as well, in the name of
| preserving "privacy and freedom". The online world doesn't
| exist in isolation like it did in the 90s and 00s.
| chmod775 wrote:
| They're taking feedback here:
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/eudi-wallet/wallet-developmen...
| lucb1e wrote:
| Source?
|
| You're linking to a bugtracker. I doubt they're inviting people
| to spam it with duplicate entries -- valid as I think the
| concern is. But maybe it says somewhere that you can leave
| feedback here and I just haven't seen it?
| chmod775 wrote:
| They are taking feedback there and also have already
| responded to some of it.
|
| From their README:
|
| > We are interested to receive feedback on all aspects
| described in the document. To provide feedback, please file
| an Issue on OpenCoDE.
|
| https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/eudi-wallet/wallet-
| developmen...
| dolmen wrote:
| There is a 8 months old open ticket, with an official answer,
| here: https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/eudi-wallet/wallet-
| developmen...
| lucb1e wrote:
| Yes, hence me saying duplicate above
| 0x_rs wrote:
| Does this mean sanctioned individuals, such as those in the
| International Criminal Court, would be unable to access eIDAS,
| among other things? As it requires, from my understanding,
| installing app(s) from the play store, thus requiring an account
| there and being able to access it, which isn't happening if
| you're among those or really, in any group that might get the
| same treatment in the future.
| iamnothere wrote:
| If an account is required, then yes. Good catch.
|
| This may not be unwelcome for authorities considering the
| recent extrajudicial "unpersoning" of many political enemies in
| the EU.
| comex wrote:
| It definitely would be unwelcome for EU authorities in cases
| like the recent US sanctions against ICC officials.
| OgsyedIE wrote:
| Not to mention the German debanking and account closing of
| a few middle eastern journalists living in Germany, their
| spouses and in one case their children.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Fair... they should think about this then
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes?
|
| I don't think it's a bad idea though. If only for bringing the
| issue to the public
|
| And while I do think an alternative would be good, the fact is
| that protecting the private key is the most important part (for
| example by keeping it on a smartcard with NFD) - hence why the
| need for a secure device
|
| "but I want to install alternative Android etc etc" yes that's
| fine - but you know this is a non-secure-(enough) env.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > "but I want to install alternative Android etc etc" yes
| that's fine - but you know this is a non-secure-(enough) env.
|
| I feel like this is getting to the point of gaslighting. Many
| of the _allowed_ devices are bargain bin Android phones
| running out of date software with known vulnerabilities in
| both the operating system and the hardware which is supposed
| to be protecting the keys.
|
| Meanwhile you could be using a hardware security module in a
| bank vault in a nuclear bunker surrounded by armed guards and
| the excuse would be that this "isn't secure" because it
| hasn't been approved by Google or Apple.
|
| Governments shouldn't be requiring you to use any specific
| vendor or set of vendors. They should be publishing standards
| so that anyone who implements the standard can interact with
| the system.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > Meanwhile you could be using a hardware security module
| in a bank vault
|
| Yeah you could, but most people won't
|
| Should they allow for a yubikey on a non-google phone? Or
| your own private key? Yes they should. But then there's the
| issue of enrollment, etc.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Yeah you could, but most people won't
|
| When something is required by law, it needs to work for
| _all_ people.
|
| It also specifically needs to not entrench incumbents by
| impeding the ability of challengers that don't
| _currently_ have market share from ever getting any.
|
| > Should they allow for a yubikey on a non-google phone?
| Or your own private key? Yes they should. But then
| there's the issue of enrollment, etc.
|
| There is no such issue because enrollment should be part
| of the standard so any device that implements the
| standard can be enrolled.
| fpoling wrote:
| Physical SIM cards are just as secure as the security enclave
| on the phone. In Norway few years ago banks even used that
| for secure authentication that worked on dumb phones with
| local mobile network providers pre-installing the required
| software on their SIM cards.
|
| But then to save cost including the support cost banks
| stopped and instead started to require a non-rooted
| Android/iPhone.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yup, it would be so much better to have it tied to simcard
| (though it might not help so much with anonymity)
|
| But I think there are still cell operators without sim card
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > but you know this is a non-secure-(enough) env.
|
| No I do not. It is plenty secure compared to a corporate
| version and nobody should be legally able to deny service
| over me having control over my own computer.
|
| Needing the entire OS to be secure to protect a key is also a
| dumb idea in general.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Needing the entire OS to be secure to protect a key is
| also a dumb idea in general._
|
| This is the final step in the road to full remote
| attestation, thankfully PCs already come with Microsoft
| Pluton chips[1] to make it easier.
|
| [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/security/hardware-...
| rkagerer wrote:
| That headline doesn't match the article at all. Can someone
| elaborate/confirm this really is the case?
| shevy-java wrote:
| So much for Europe to decouple from orange-man country ...
|
| It is so clear how lobbyists operate here. I'd call it
| undermining national sovereignty.
| chvid wrote:
| The Danish MitId also only runs on Google and Apple devices. No
| alternative phone platforms are supported including open source
| Android.
|
| If you don't have an iPhone or an android, you can get a physical
| one time password device.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You can get that anyway, and you should because 2 is 1 and 1 is
| none.
| spragl wrote:
| You can get that, even if you have a phone with the app on it.
| MitID is perfectly okay with that. At login time you will be
| prompted for your token code, but there is an option to switch
| to the app ("Skift til MitID app" in the bottom of the box).
|
| The MitID design is strange, but in this regard it is well
| done.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Same in Switzerland. The app needed to sign in to fill out my
| taxes doesn't work on ungoogled Android.
| afandian wrote:
| Can you do your taxes on a computer without a phone?
| herbst wrote:
| Yes. Without any issues still.
|
| Gladly.
|
| There was a time window 2 years ago where it appeared that I
| need an actual phone number to do my taxes, but even that was
| replaced with something more universal.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Somewhat. To fill out my taxes online, I could sign up with
| either the AGOV app (needs Google Android) or a USB security
| key. I happened to have a yubikey, but I needed to mess with
| the firefox about:config (security.webauth.u2f=true IIRC). It
| did work in the end though.
| nixass wrote:
| So much about digital sovereignty
| jakoblorz wrote:
| What if you ,,lose" your google / apple account, like this
| sanctioned judge of the international criminal court? Crazy to
| imagine that we are still baking in dependency on US providers in
| european societies, even though there is clear indications we
| should be doing the opposite?
| Animats wrote:
| Then you can't take a Waymo any more.
| Animats wrote:
| Amusingly, the points on this posting have been going up and
| down quite a bit. Range is -1 to 2 so far.
|
| The point here is that Waymo requires either an Android
| account or an Apple account to log into their phone app. Lose
| that and you cannot take a Waymo. This may be worth a formal
| complaint to the California Public Utilities Commission,
| because Waymo is regulated as a common carrier.
|
| California civil code section 2170:
|
| "A common carrier must, if able to do so, accept and carry
| whatever is offered to him, at a reasonable time and place,
| of a kind that he undertakes or is accustomed to carry. A
| common carrier must not give preference in time, price, or
| otherwise, to one person over another."[1]
|
| This is the core of what it is to be a common carrier. An
| airline can't require that you join their frequent flyer plan
| to fly.
|
| [1] https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/civil-code/civ-sect-2169/
| debazel wrote:
| 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.
| kouteiheika wrote:
| 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 a
| problem for you here's my advice: migrate. Right now. You
| never know when one of their bots will deem you a persona non
| grata.
| stephbook wrote:
| Can't you just create a new account?
| kouteiheika wrote:
| You can, but you lose access to anything that was
| associated with your old account.
|
| Another fun thing Google did is to _automatically_
| (without my consent) add a required second-factor
| authentication to my current Google account. I have this
| old, e-waste tier phone that I use mostly only as a
| glorified alarm clock, and at one point I used it to log
| into my current Google account.
|
| Imagine my surprise when I tried to log in to my Google
| account from somewhere else, and it asked me for an
| authentication code from this phone. Again, I have never
| explicitly set it up as such - Google did this
| automatically! So if I were to lose this phone I'd be
| screwed yet again, with yet another inaccessible Google
| account that I will have no way of recovering.
|
| At this point I don't depend on any Big Tech services; my
| Google account has nothing of value associated with it
| (only my YouTube subscription list, which is easy enough
| to backup and restore), and I pay for my own email on my
| own domain, etc. So if I get screwed over yet again by a
| big, soulless corporation that just sees me as a number
| on their bottom-line, well, I just won't care.
| tavavex wrote:
| You better hope that whatever is-this-the-same-user
| heuristics they have on their side never find out for the
| duration of your entire life.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| In his case, I'm pretty sure 20 y/o data is pretty
| useless nowadays in terms of fingerprinting and usage
| heuristics.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Crazy to imagine that we are still baking in dependency on US
| providers in european societies
|
| As long as the capital city is in Washington, this is normal.
| jakoblorz wrote:
| Not sure I'm getting what you are saying - us providers'
| capital city is always in Washington DC, no?
|
| Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something here
| 201984 wrote:
| He's saying the EU's capital city is Washington.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| I'm not quite sure if the German implementation is possible
| without mobile devices (couldn't find anything on that at first
| glance). the Austrian implementation on the other hand does not
| require a mobile device, if you want to do it on a pc you just
| need a fido2 token
| NanoCoaster wrote:
| I'm not sure either. I've looked at this other document:
| https://bmi.usercontent.opencode.de/eudi-wallet/eidas-2.0-ar...
|
| It seems to imply that the already existing way of
| authenticating via eID, which is the auth chip present on our
| ID cards, will still work, if I read it correctly? I understand
| OP's link to refer to a new, alternative system, that can be
| used without the ID card.
|
| But take this with a grain of salt, I'm not very well informed
| about the whole topic.
| kodebach wrote:
| As strange as it is, but Austria is quite far ahead in terms of
| eIDAS since we've had Handysignatur for more than a decade. I
| wouldn't be surprised, if the Germans are planning to support
| hardware tokens, but haven't had the time yet.
| 4ad wrote:
| > Austria is quite far ahead
|
| Yeah, quite ahead in terms of making anonymous phone numbers
| illegal and requiring the government to know your phone
| number.
|
| And if you don't want to use a smartphone, ID Austria does
| not work with regular FIDO security keys, you need special
| ones. Same for the old SmartCard system which didn't work
| without government-mandated malware.
| spragl wrote:
| I havent looked into the details of either, but what would
| prevent Germans from using the Austrian implementation?
| wolfi1 wrote:
| Austria provides their implementation only to people with
| Austrian citizenship or people working in Austria
| goblin89 wrote:
| In context of eIDAS, your phone starts to be used for much more
| sensitive matters than typing comments or even logging in to your
| bank. The repercussions from having a secretly patched bootloader
| can involve another person assuming your identity, including for
| large B2B transactions.
|
| Requiring citizens to have (buy) some device to simply prove they
| are who they are seems hostile and dystopian to me. Some say it's
| the future; I'm not convinced.
|
| However, if you _were_ to allow me to use my pocket computer (and
| nothing else) to prove I am who I say I am, you would want to
| trust that I am not pretending to be somebody else after
| extracting private keys from their phone or whatnot. I.e., you
| would want to require some sort of trusted computing.
|
| Currently, that seems to only be provided by closed ecosystem
| phones.
|
| Even still, I think it's a mistake to be rolling out eIDAS as a
| mobile app _first_. The specification allows for this to be a
| dedicated hardware key (maybe even something YubiKey-like, and
| the EU already requires all phone manufacturers to have USB-C),
| so why not start with that.
| goblin89 wrote:
| > Requiring citizens to have (buy) some device to simply prove
| they are who they are seems hostile and dystopian to me.
|
| Actually, that is not what's happening. Based on further
| research, the use of eIDAS is required to be left up to
| citizen's decision.
| RandomGerm4n wrote:
| 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 emulator, a homemade
| compatibility layer under Linux, or a custom port for MS-DOS,
| that should be possible.
| reddalo wrote:
| 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.
| kodebach wrote:
| I agree, you should be able to run anything you want, root your
| device, etc., but you also have to accept the consequences of
| that. If an app can no longer verify its own integrity, certain
| features are simply impossible to implement securely.
|
| Think of it this way: A physical ID (which is what we're trying
| to replace here) also has limitations, it looks a certain way,
| has a certain size, etc. Just because somebody wants a smaller
| ID or one with a larger font or a passport in a different
| colour or whatever, doesn't mean that this should be allowed or
| possible. Some limitations exist for a good reason
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| Comparing being able to run the hardware and software of your
| choice to "wanting a passport in a different color or
| whatever" is so completely fucked, and it's beyond insane as
| a justification for giving two American tech companies with a
| well established track record for doing evil control over
| your citizens' ID.
|
| The world has gone absolutely mad, what the fuck am I even
| witnessing? It is quite literally becoming 1984 in front of
| my eyes, with people complying completely voluntarily and
| openly advocating for it, not even a threat of force to make
| it happen.
| Avamander wrote:
| You keep lashing out at people in this thread.
|
| Demanding full control over something like an ID will
| fundamentally not happen. The same way you won't have full
| control over the way passports or paper bills are made.
|
| Take for example the expectation that some poor fool's ID
| can't be cloned and reused by malicious actors - full
| control directly contradicts that. It will not and must not
| be possible.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| We don't need 'full control' over an ID. We need the
| status quo, where we have mostly have control over our
| devices, and where paper IDs are still the foundation of
| society. Things are fine the way they are. There are
| problems, sure, but no problems that are made better by
| an all-encompassing surveillance state.
|
| If I am lashing out, it is because this is perhaps the
| most dangerous thing I've ever seen proposed, and it is
| deeply distressing how people are sleepwalking into it.
| To be honest, if I were German, I would probably just
| kill myself the day I was legally mandated by my
| government to register my identity with Google. That
| might sound hyperbolic, but I'm really not kidding. I
| have lived with privacy, anonymity, and freedom for all
| of my life. If the future of this world is one where the
| government and Google have complete control over every
| single thing you do, I'd rather die having lived a
| satisfying life than witness the horrors that are to
| come.
| tzs wrote:
| How do you use your paper ID to to prove identity or age
| or citizenship to someone hundreds of kilometers away
| whom you are conducting an online transaction with?
| lejalv wrote:
| It's not that important to be able to do that. You have
| been educated to trade your freedom for that kind of
| convenience, but it is not necessary.
|
| Proof: things mostly work now without all the
| surveillance state shenanigans.
|
| More proof: humans have lived full and fulfilling lives
| without "proving identity or age or citizenship to
| someone hundreds of kilometers away"
| Avamander wrote:
| > It's not that important to be able to do that. You have
| been educated to trade your freedom for that kind of
| convenience, but it is not necessary.
|
| It's important enough that people do so without any eID,
| using methods both more invasive and less reliable. Gas
| bills, document photos, having to take videos and
| pictures of yourself.
|
| Humans have lived in caves and died of preventable
| diseases, it doesn't mean it's a better way of living.
| integralid wrote:
| >To be honest, if I were German, I would probably just
| kill myself the day I was legally mandated by my
| government to register my identity with Google. That
| might sound hyperbolic, but I'm really not kidding.
|
| This is honestly not a good argument - it makes you sound
| desperate and puts in doubt your mental stability. I
| don't think you actually have mental problems, I just
| mean this this kind of argument comes off bad.
|
| Also nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. You don't
| have to own a digital ID. It just makes things easier,
| because you can sign things over the internet, or present
| your phone instead of your plastic ID. Both things
| already have alternatives (qualified signatures and
| regular physical ID), so no immediate harm is being done.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I am personally anti bigtech, I try
| to degoogle as much as possible, and I find the thought
| of my government coercing me to use google/apple duopoly
| repulsive. I dislike that, but using phones (instead of
| for example dedicated hardware) IS pragmatic, and you are
| not forced to do anything.
|
| Sent from my pixel phone.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I try to degoogle as much as possible
|
| > Sent from my pixel phone
|
| This contradiction is not even funny. Sent from my Librem
| 5.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| > You don't have to own a digital ID.
|
| For now. In 5 years you will, there is not one doubt in
| my mind about that. We've been on a slippery slope for
| (at least) 40 years straight, every year is a loss of
| privacy rights compared to the last, there is not a
| single year that reversed the trend, not a single year
| where we paused and stayed where we were. Once digital ID
| is implemented everywhere, alternatives will be quickly
| phased out. It's straight downhill as governments and
| corporations take more and more advantage of technology
| to build a degree of surveillance that even dystopian
| science fiction writers couldn't imagine.
|
| The government, the corporations, the data brokers each
| individual corp sells your data to to compile a unified
| profile, and anyone the data brokers are willing to sell
| to have an unbelievable amount of information on the
| average citizen. They know where you live, where you are
| at all times, where you work, every website you visit,
| every Google search you've ever made, everything you
| purchase, all of your acquaintances, when and for how
| long you call those acquaintances, the full contents of
| any conversations you have with those acquaintances, your
| interests, your hobbies, your political beliefs.
|
| I have thus far managed, I believe, to avoid the worst of
| the surveillance, with a tremendous amount of effort and
| the sacrifice of an unbelievable amount of personal
| convenience. But every year I find myself losing access
| to more and more things that I am unable to do without
| compromising my privacy. If it gets as far as government-
| mandated Google ID in my country, I think it's completely
| rational to kill oneself rather than live like cattle. If
| there were a resistance movement, I would participate in
| that instead, but this is happening completely
| voluntarily. You people want this. There is no
| resistance. Fine, you can have your dystopia. But there
| is no reason I need to be part of it, and I don't think
| it's a sign of mental illness to opt out. I don't much
| believe in living for the sake of living, you should live
| if it brings you happiness/satisfaction/whatever and
| don't if it doesn't.
| viktorcode wrote:
| > with a well established track record for doing evil
| control
|
| Can you please elaborate on that record?
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| The clauses are [with a well established track record for
| doing evil] [control over your citizens' ID], if that's
| not clear. I wonder from where your quote cut off if my
| sentence was misunderstood.
|
| As to the well-established track record of doing evil...
| _gestures broadly_ everything? Google in particular has
| built an empire on stripping away people 's privacy, and
| they regularly ruin people's livelihood by eg. shutting
| down Youtube accounts incorrectly with automated systems
| and no way of ever reaching a human for support unless
| you're famous enough to make it a PR issue. Apple is the
| same, just recently with a thread on HN lamenting that
| Apple was destroying their business because they revoked
| their dev license, or in other words, a private company
| unilaterally revoked the ability of a business to create
| mobile software for billions of devices. And now we want
| to give them control over our IDs?
| ????????????????????????
| fsflover wrote:
| Search for "Google" in my favorite submissions on HN.
| RandomGerm4n wrote:
| Users have the right to modify any app running on their own
| device. Software security should never depend on the user
| having no control over their own device. Smartphones are
| essentially just regular computers, and on them you can use a
| debugger and do whatever you want. Viewing smartphones as
| closed systems like game consoles where you need the
| manufacturer's permission for everything only leads us into
| the dystopia that Richard Stallman described as early as 1997
| in his short story "The Right to Read"
| Avamander wrote:
| Once SafetyNet was brought to Android a decade ago the
| tendency has been clear - these freedoms are going to be
| restricted heavily.
|
| Because how do you make sure it's the user who does those
| modifications, willingly and well-informed? That it's not a
| malicious actor, not an user getting socially engineered or
| phished? Incredibly difficult compared to the current
| alternative.
|
| If it's not a software root of trust that provides an
| attestable environment like Android or iOS. It's going to
| be a hardware root of trust that provides an attestable
| hardware environment, like SGX. I can predict no other
| practical avenue taken. Unless the orangutan really forces
| a demonstration on how untrustworthy these environments can
| be and a lot of money and effort is spent.
| lvass wrote:
| You can maybe, trust the user to handle it's own
| certificate in their own devices? Though I admit
| requiring attestation is probably a good default.
| Avamander wrote:
| One important feature of a legal ID is that it's hard to
| copy, so attestation from the hardware storage would have
| to be basically mandatory.
|
| But yeah, the user could have a choice to this extent.
| viktorcode wrote:
| To become dystopia people must be forced to use locked down
| smartphones. In reality you buy the one that suits your
| needs and do not enforce your design decisions on the
| smartphones other people use.
| tavavex wrote:
| Where is that free choice that you see "in reality"? This
| post is about the opposite of that getting put in place.
| The actual reality is that almost every service provider
| is converging on supporting a few extremely restrictive
| options. From every private service you can think of, to
| key government services. They all are saying "to interact
| with us, you must use one of these two types of devices,
| with all the attestation and security measures intact".
| It's impossible for people to make their own design
| decisions or choose for themselves, because other options
| do not have the corporate/government blessing.
|
| It's ridiculous that you look at all of us being forced
| into a government-protected duopoly, and then say "Don't
| you dare force your decisions on us!" to anyone
| suggesting that this should not be the default. Rules for
| us, but not them.
| viktorcode wrote:
| > They all are saying "to interact with us, you must use
| one of these two types of devices, with all the
| attestation and security measures intact"
|
| Are you claiming that this is the only way of interacting
| with particular government services, with the other ways
| that existed before the app no longer being available? To
| make situation ,,dystopian" this must be the case.
| GranPC wrote:
| Well, in that case, if they want full control and attestation
| yadda yadda, I'm fine with them shipping me a device they
| fully control exclusively for use of this stuff. But if we're
| talking about my smartphone that I paid for with my money
| that I worked for, I will do whatever I damn please with it.
| So I guess that means eIDAS will be inaccessible to me.
| aenis wrote:
| True, but its really hard to name a family of commercial
| devices with security features in hardware, including serious
| security features, which were not eventually hacked.
|
| Worse still, for new mainstream devices that are believed to
| be safe the state sponsored actors will likely operate
| unpublished exploits, and will exploit the misplaced faith
| people and judiciary will put in device attestation. I dont
| think the very likeable people who worked on Pegasus found
| themselves respectable jobs - they are likely still selling
| that sophisticated crap to all authoritarian regimes.
| no_time wrote:
| 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.
| aenis wrote:
| Exactly this. And whats more, the idea of device attestation
| makes people trust those devices, and the history of rooting
| consoles and phones proves that nothing holds, even tech backed
| by billions in commercial interest.
|
| The whole point in reducing the blast radius is valid - by all
| means make this optional and allow the user to elect to tie
| their identity to the device. For everyone else, implement
| validation of actual transactions, not just user secrets and
| device secrets.
| viktorcode wrote:
| > 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.
|
| and therefore the app cannot give a reasonable guarantee that
| it is not running in an adversarial environment that actively
| tries to break the app's integrity. Thus, the app cannot be
| used as a verified ID with governmental level of trust.
| pona-a wrote:
| If your app needs to be protected from harm, it cannot
| protect the user from said harm. I hoped software engineering
| culture was lucky to not have the same precepts that make
| lockpicking a crime in the real world, that we successfully
| make it into common knowledge that you can't grant any trust
| to the client, but it seems "trusted computing" is making
| some of us unlearn that lesson.
| Aachen wrote:
| There's a difference between needing to lock down the whole
| OS and just the secure element. The secure hardware component
| can sign a challenge and prove possession of a private key
| without you being able to extract it. Smartcards have done
| this for decades (most people here will know an
| implementation under the name Yubikey).
|
| Conveying authentic information across untrusted channels
| (your phone screen, say) has been a solved problem since
| asymmetric cryptography was invented back before I was born
| like_any_other wrote:
| > an adversarial environment that actively tries to break the
| app's integrity
|
| Can you elaborate on what this means? Who is the adversary?
| What kind of 'integrity'? This sounds like the kind of vague
| language DRM uses to try to obscure the fact that it sees the
| users as the enemy. An XBox is 'compromised' when it obeys
| its owner, not Microsoft.
| viktorcode wrote:
| The app is running in a virtual environment intercepting
| its system calls and designed to patch app's memory to fake
| an ID.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > governmental level of trust
|
| For most governments that is a very low bar.
| wpm wrote:
| All the more reason to not be requiring such things in the
| first place.
| viktorcode wrote:
| And that it is not required. Physical ID is still accepted
| darccio wrote:
| It makes no sense. eIDAS 2.0 specs don't require specific
| hardware [0]. They basically store verifiable credentials [1] and
| any other cryptographically signed attestations.
|
| This feels like laziness from German implementers, as they don't
| want to (quoting the spec literally) "implement a mechanism
| allowing the User to verify the authenticity of the Wallet Unit".
|
| 0: https://eudi.dev/latest/architecture-and-reference-
| framework...
|
| 1: https://eudi.dev/latest/architecture-and-reference-
| framework...
| mradalbert wrote:
| Look at reference implementation. Maintainers resist removing
| google dependency for no good apparent reason. An if there is
| persistence without reason - there is a reason.
|
| https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Why would this be? Bureaucracy / inability to change?
| archerx wrote:
| Or someone could be getting kickbacks on the down low.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Or it's just way easier to implement this way and they
| don't want to waste time on stuff only HN crowd cares
| about ?
| bakugo wrote:
| Implementing Play Integrity is something developers have
| to go out of their way to do. _Not_ implementing it
| requires literally zero effort. So no, it 's not easier
| to do it this way.
| kackerlacker wrote:
| One could say the same thing about virus scanners. They
| are obviously too little too late "security" so standards
| that require them have given up on real requirements like
| a way to achieve actual assurance of no buffer overflows.
| Nonetheless, an implementation to such a standard that
| chooses any off the shelf scanner is a lot less work than
| implementing a new scanner.
| spwa4 wrote:
| It is to move the burden of securing payments ("did the
| user actually, willingly, to the satisfaction of a court of
| law, initiate this payment?") onto Google and Apple.
|
| Either the government secures internet payments themselves,
| which means spending now to do so, coming up with a plan,
| ... or they can have Apple/Google do it.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I thought this was about identity, though, not securing
| payments. Isn't that sufficiently tackled with the
| digital signature?
| spwa4 wrote:
| It is about supporting "online cross-border
| transactions", in other words for providing a legally
| binding way for agreements to be made. This will be the
| basis for VISAs, proving you hold credentials (initially
| driving license, but will extend further), proving you've
| signed a contract. This MAY include a central-bank wallet
| with "digital Euro", or it may not, but even without,
| it's about money.
|
| You can smell where this is going, no? This is how the EU
| is looking to make any kind of internet authentication go
| through them. By providing companies like telcos with an
| online identity that says "if a customer clicks 'buy'
| logged in through eIDAS and they don't pay, EU courts
| will if needed get the money from their homes, their
| mothers, sell their dog to make sure you get paid".
|
| Then things like forcing kids off the internet, the
| always returning porn and copyright regulations rules and
| so on will follow.
| taejo wrote:
| Btw a visa is a document allowing entry into a country,
| while VISA is a word mark used by Visa, inc. for their
| payment cards and network. I think you're referring to
| the travel document, but since the context also includes
| payment networks, I'm not 100% sure.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Several reasons I can think of:
|
| 1. Google and Apple have a much larger ecosystem and are
| entrenched in their OSes, which means that they have a much
| better picture of the user than any government app ever
| will. They also have surveillance mechanisms that
| government apps are unable or unwilling to implement. This
| helps detect and prevent fraud (fraud prevention is mostly
| just mass surveillance used for good).
|
| 2. The eIDAS standards enable anonymous assertions about
| your identity. This lets you prove your age to a website /
| app without revealing any other information. There needs to
| be a way to prevent you from generating millions of such
| assertions using one ID and giving them out online to
| anybody who wants them, verified or not. The way you do
| that is by limiting their generation to trusted hardware,
| using hardware attestation mechanisms. Google and Apple
| provide those.
|
| 3. Pure laziness. It's an issue that <1% of the population
| cares about (which is hard to notice if you're in the HN
| bubble). Almost nobody uses a modern, eIDAS capable
| smartphone without a Google or Apple account. They may have
| decided that the part of the population who cares about
| this just isn't worth pandering to (just like some
| government institutions may decide that vegans aren't a
| part of the population they're interested in pandering to).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Appreciate you taking the time to write out the steel
| man. Ascribing motive to others without an honest
| appraisal of the benefits of choices one might not like
| is lazy.
|
| There can be good reasons for a bad thing, and it's
| important to factor them in when having a discussion.
| sneak wrote:
| The issue is that correctly implementing #2 means that
| your publishing can be censored at the rate at which you
| can buy discrete iPhones.
|
| Anonymity isn't anonymity if you can't generate millions
| of them cheaply.
| darccio wrote:
| I don't feel they resist. Quoting them:
|
| > We understand your concerns and truly appreciate your
| suggestions. As previously mentioned, this is not something
| that is enforced by the reference implementation -- these are
| simply recommendations, not requirements, for any wallet
| implementer. That said, we recognize that this is a sensitive
| topic, and we may need to revisit it, even at the level of
| recommendations.
|
| > The README files for both the iOS and Android Wallets have
| been updated to mention only OWASP MASVS compliance, without
| referencing any specific APIs.
|
| I understand their position, but I also get the concern,
| especially around existing implementations like the Italian
| app. I think it's mostly that they have different priorities
| than ensuring that the reference implementation is a perfect
| guideline for member states.
|
| This looks like a good vector for a European Citizen
| Initiative around removing all technological dependency on
| non-EU providers.
| argomo wrote:
| That's the kind of corporate baby-talk I use when I'm
| trying to resist doing something.
| michaelt wrote:
| Operate European tech infrastructure without a dependency on
| America challenge (Impossible)
|
| For 99% of smartphone users, you can't get apps onto their
| phones without Apple and Google signing the app and letting
| you into their store, _and_ users can 't install the app
| without an Apple/Google account.
|
| Why remove a dependency on Google, when you'll _still_ be
| 100% dependent on Google?
|
| Anybody working on "Digital ID" has already made peace with
| the fact that it can be turned off overnight if Trump says
| so.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| On Android you don't need to sign in with a Google account.
| You do need it for the play store but many brands have
| alternatives. Like the Samsung app store, Honor has their
| own too, I'm sure more brands do. And there's always
| aurora.
|
| Yes not many use it but if you cut this path off then
| people will never get there.
| bakugo wrote:
| Being able to install whatever apps you want on Android
| without any sort of dependency on a Google signature or API
| was the standard for a decade and a half.
|
| Let's not act like things have always been this bad and
| thus we should just accept it as the norm, because they
| haven't, the noose is actively tightening as time goes on.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It is still the standard today and for the foreseeable
| future. The only difference is that it will also be
| possible to install an app not distributed through a
| preinstalled app store on Google Android builds _without
| a warning_ as long as the APK has a Google signature.
| spwa4 wrote:
| You can just as well say "the correct reaction to having a
| guns aimed at your head is NOT to give the guy another gun
| ... you know, in case the first one fails to fire when he
| starts pulling triggers".
|
| Plus, the net difference is that this gives Google and
| Apple the ability to kill the ability of individuals to
| make payments (and tax them) ... do you want that?
|
| (And I would say, compared to having European banks tax
| them, the answer is not so obvious)
|
| The real issue is, of course, that this moves the burden of
| keeping phones secure onto Google and Apple, who are very
| willing to take on that burden in trade for a percentage of
| all consumer payment traffic in Germany. It's yet another
| choice between "spend money now to build a government
| department to secure payments ... or have Apple/Google do
| that for you". And they're choosing to save a little bit of
| money in the short term in trade for what is effectively a
| new tax.
| subscribed wrote:
| Oh, but Google doesn't really excel in making phones
| "secure".
|
| Sure, their researchers are great, but Google itself
| claims that several years old phones running Oreo are
| safe and secure. They also extended the time for vendors
| to bring patches to the new vulnerabilities, they
| themselves slowed down - compare timeframe between
| patches released by GrapheneOS and patches released by
| Google - the latest GOS release provides patches for
| vulnerabilities that will be fixed by Google in....
| October 2026: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026040300
| spwa4 wrote:
| Compared to EU governments' security for their citizens
| Google has absolutely perfect, world-class, bullet-proof,
| iron-clad ultimate security.
|
| I do get that that's not exactly impressive. It isn't.
| subscribed wrote:
| Why adding an additional, unnecessary, superficial
| requirement?
|
| It's not necessary to provide the functionality and
| enforces the dependency onto he potentially hostile actor
| (case in point: Microsoft disabling email account of Chief
| Prosecutor of ICC because US requested so).
|
| It stifles innovation in the future and hurts GrapheneOS
| right now.
|
| Let me turn the question back at you: why do you think
| adding unnecessary dependency is better than not adding it?
|
| Does it serve users, governments, service?
|
| Does it anything good for the interested parties or does it
| only serve Apple, Goggle and the US government?
| xmodem wrote:
| It's an objection to adding a new dependency, not an
| attempt to remove an existing one. If we can't stop adding
| new dependencies, we are certain to be stuck with the
| status quo forever.
| aenis wrote:
| Step by step. We realize we will not get there in one day.
|
| Its the same as with bicycle paths. Initially - those make
| no sense, leading from nowhere to nowhere. Give it a few
| years, and a usable network emerges.
|
| Right now there is serious money and brainpower being
| poured into sovereign cloud tech. Thanks to the gift of
| open source and standards, its actually not impossible to
| create modern systems with zero US dependency.
|
| I fear, though, that as with everything else Microsoft
| Excel will be the hardest dependency to deal with.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| 5.4 Attestation Rulebooks and Attestation schemes
| thomasingalls wrote:
| Europe needs a _private_ European identity provider. Until this
| happens, Europe will remain a technological vassal state of the
| US.
|
| These are expensive products, you need depth of expertise and
| experience to create a system that could compete with the likes
| of gmail and Microsoft and ... so it's not a wonder that this
| hasn't happened yet. But pretending like this can be a public
| service is foolish (too high stakes ~~if~~ when it gets hacked),
| and pretending like existing providers that offer identity and
| email are sufficient is equally foolish. Google and ms and apple
| etc all offer the basics for free, and this is necessary for mass
| adoption. It _will_ be an expensive project. But necessary, if
| the eu wants strategic autonomy.
|
| ---
|
| Oh and requiring a us based account is not even the most
| egregious part of this proposal, ffs
| reddalo wrote:
| Not only that, be we also need a European payment system that's
| not tied to VISA / MasterCard, etc.
|
| We're currently paying a small tax to the US for each card
| transaction we have.
| weddpros wrote:
| Self Sovereign Identity (aka SSI) is the only way out of those
| identity sovereignty issues. It shouldn't be acceptable that your
| identity depends on anything or anyone. It should just be your
| identity.
|
| A paper or certificate can prove an entity trusts your identity
| to be <firstname, lastname, etc...> but that shouldn't be your
| identity.
|
| You just are. Not your google Id, not your Apple Id either of
| course.
|
| Governments are lame.
| s_dev wrote:
| You are conflating the philosophical notion of identity with
| functional identification in the real world. There is no
| cryptographic escape hatch from the social contract.
|
| >You just are/I just am
|
| Is not an acceptable thing to say to a bar tender when being
| served an alcoholic drink when you're 22. You hand them
| government issued ID.
| rcbdev wrote:
| > Governments are lame
|
| In 2019, the EU created an eIDAS compatible European Self-
| Sovereign Identity Framework (ESSIF).
|
| How is the government lame, here? We've had the infrastructure
| for 7 years now.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| How is that not lame?
| userbinator wrote:
| 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.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Already exists as biometric passport or ID card in several
| countries. The problem is things like authenticating online to
| submit your tax form. App-as-2FA is kind of the standard for
| example to log in to your online bank portal, though for
| government services the threat model and privacy implications
| are different.
|
| If you have a FIDO device on your (physical) keyring or a
| keyboard with a smart card reader or some kind of NFC
| transceiver connected to your PC, the problem is technically
| solved - just not practically.
| Aachen wrote:
| Note that phones also have NFC readers. Instead of requiring
| everyone to have a locked-down phone, they could offer day
| you use said phone to read the chip or use any other (USB)
| reader you like. I believe there's a German government app
| that already does this, Ausweisapp2 iirc. As someone with a
| different nationality who lives in Germany, I don't know more
| than that
| JorgeGT wrote:
| This is exactly how we implemented eIDAS in Spain. The
| government-issued national ID (DNIe) is an ISO 7816-compliant
| smart card. Latest versions are also ISO 14443-compliant for
| contactless reading. To use it, you just need a simple smart
| card reader or an NFC-enabled phone.
| https://www.dnielectronico.es/PortalDNIe/PRF1_Cons02.action?...
| elric wrote:
| 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
| spyware.
| Avamander wrote:
| > 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| _because card reader support is still shit in browsers in
| 2026_
|
| Around a decade ago I was working at a company that used
| smartcard login for authenticating to internal sites. I've
| heard of many others doing the same. USB card reader worked
| fine in both IE and Firefox at the time, so I take your
| statement to mean that we've somehow regressed since then
| (not surprising) or this was an isolated instance of success
| (less likely, considering the US government also uses this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card).
| SkiFire13 wrote:
| It seems that many Android devices won't safisfy the
| requirements, even when using a device approved by Google:
|
| > MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY also includes the requirement that the
| device has received a security patch _within the last 12 months_
|
| Good luck with that.
| blindseeker wrote:
| Possibly I'm not smart enough to understand, but from what I see
| is that the implementers intend to leverage existing security
| architecture of Android/Google and iOS/Apple, respectively-
| arguably to drive adoption. The document doesn't state anywhere
| that Apple / Google account is a requirement to use German eIDAS.
| From what I can tell, one may (continue to) use its government
| issued ID card with electronic signature for authentication.
|
| Please prove me wrong, I genuinely want to understand the
| implication of the linked document.
| webhamster wrote:
| 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.
| archerx wrote:
| What if I don't have a smartphone?
| jahnu wrote:
| I wonder if there will be a big enough market for a very
| compact smartphone equivalent device that can be used just
| for credentials? A device that is offline on standby except
| when you need it. Perhaps the size of a car key.
| Matumio wrote:
| If it can go online, I'd prefer to use an android work (or
| user) profile with only auth apps in it, and nothing else.
|
| As a separate device, it should be offline always IMO, and
| perhaps the size of a passkey. Or one of those banking
| devices with a display that show an authenticated text
| saying what you are confirming.
| archerx wrote:
| What if it was the size of a credit card and it had stuff
| like your name, date of birth and even a picture of your
| face. I want to name this invention an ID card...
| subscribed wrote:
| And if you added a cryptographic layer to it, with your
| own private key baked into it, you could both sign the
| documents, confirm your identity and the government could
| confirm it's actually you....
|
| ....wow, that would be reinventing the existing model of
| the leading ID cards....
|
| Crazy if you think about it :)
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| You're screwed. This has been the way for a while now. You
| cannot exist in society without a smart phone and it's only
| going to get worse.
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| Essential services (banks, government services, public
| transport) generally still support SMS as an alternative to
| their mobile apps when there's no completely offline
| process.
| maccard wrote:
| If you can't exist in society without a smart phone
| already, how is it going to get worse?
| 0x3f wrote:
| Perhaps you won't be able to exist in private without a
| smart phone. Or there will be some technology beyond a
| smartphone that you can't exist without.
| subscribed wrote:
| ...without a smartphone that is surveilling you 24/7.
|
| Private smartphones are excluded already.
| anileated wrote:
| No one is required to use EUDI: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-
| building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...
|
| Companies and providers (like banks) have to support it, but
| use is voluntary.
|
| Check out the spec and legal framework, it actually makes
| sense and is open to different implementations, though you
| might need to certify it.
| bschwarz wrote:
| If they have to support something that most everybody has
| they will soon stop supporting alternatives that are not
| required by law. What then?
| pastage wrote:
| You are not required to accept anything other than digital
| ids. So from experience, whatever demands euid has will be
| what is required to identify you.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| My prediction is that eventually services for people NOT
| using the digital ID will be so degraded to be almost
| useless or seriously disadvantageous.
|
| Kinda like the discrimination DB does for people using
| paper tickets vs those using the DB Navigator app.
| verbalize2224 wrote:
| You should think about how easy it is to permanently lose
| access to your Google account for very trivial issues and
| Google doesn't offer any form of recovery. That in addition to
| the current geopolitical situation should be reason enough not
| to rely on that for any justification.
|
| And personally as a software developer myself i know that
| nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution. No one
| will prioritize or give budget to change it later "because it
| works"
| trklausss wrote:
| What? They should freaking think of sanctions, not about "how
| easy is to lose Google account". Both Google and Apple are
| American companies. If someone lands on a sanctions list,
| they close your account without further notice [1].
|
| Let me get this straight: you can be a defender of human
| rights, aligned with the country you live in, but if you fall
| in disgrace with the American government, _you can't even do
| transactions with your own country_.
|
| So this is fundamentally flawed, and violates the fundamental
| rights of German citizens in Germany.
|
| [1] https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/british-icc-chief-
| prosecutor-l...
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| Sanctions are a bonus point argument, but shouldn't be a
| factor either. No citizen should be subjected to this,
| whether the company running it is American or German. Can
| you imagine if the Nazis had this level of control in the
| 1930s? Imagine having your ID digitally revoked,
| effectively cutting you out of society completely, without
| so much as an attic to hide in before it can happen. This
| is a completely dystopian legislation from start to finish.
| There is no possible way this can ever provide a benefit to
| the German people, it exists only to control them.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| His wife and kids are sanctioned too. Sometimes it isn't
| even anything you did.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Can't you just make a new google account then?
| subscribed wrote:
| That's crazy.
|
| Imagine cheering for the company that will block the
| criminal prosecutors investigating war crimes and genocide
| from having the ID _at all_ (1) once the supporter of the
| investigated sanctions the law-abiding persons:
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/02/impo...
|
| But anyway - why the requirement in the first place?
|
| (1) because sanctioned person must not be allowed to create
| another account.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| It's puzzling how such sanctions are enforceable in the
| first place. If the person published their phone number
| then maybe, but if not then little can be done to
| identify them.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| ....with a new phone number....
| ibbtown wrote:
| Why is a trusted device chain needed? It will put more trust in
| the potential Chinese device maker and American software
| companies than the user who's id is shown?
| kodebach wrote:
| Simply because the law was written that way. But also the
| whole idea of identity verification becomes pretty useless,
| if there is no chain of trust. You could run a modified
| client that lets you assume any identity you choose, exactly
| the opposite of what eIDAS is trying to achieve.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > You could run a modified client that lets you assume any
| identity you choose
|
| Provided you know the secret key to a government-issued
| certificate. Making it impossible to copy said certificate
| is not really a requirement for identity verification.
| subscribed wrote:
| Some countries fixed it already, see Estonian ir Polish
| IDs with digital layer (performing signing,
| authentication, etc), and the devices only acting as
| untrusted interfaces to these.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Who wrote that law and why, this is the question.
|
| I think we need some fingerpointing that EU officials
| strive to avoid.
| kro wrote:
| It will likely display something like a QR Code with
| signature anyways, otherwise it's just a glorified passport
| picture?
|
| Authorities/anyone could verify that it's not counterfeit.
| And photo should be checked anyways to match the person.
|
| So I also don't see the need for attestation. For ID check
| it should be ok without. For signing stuff ofc it is not
| resistant to copying. But EID smartcard function already
| exists.
| subscribed wrote:
| But you can run modified client already.
|
| Rooted, wildly insecure devices can pass the attestation
| easily: https://magisk.dev/modules/play-integrity-fix-
| inject/
|
| Safe, updated devices cannot unless they permit Google to
| run their surveillance services in the privileged,
| unconstrained mode.
| pwlb wrote:
| The documentation actually reveals why this will most
| likely not work, given you are on expert on mobile
| security
| pwlb wrote:
| This is necessary because the wallets contain an identity
| proofing functionality called PID(Person Identification
| Data). Showing these credentials basically approves you are
| you. There are high requirements for identity proofing that
| even pre-date wallets and that makes sense, because the
| potentially blast radius of identity theft is huge.
| Historically, these have been secured in smartcards, like eID
| cards or passports and are not shifting to the smartphone.
| Verifying the security posture of your device and app is
| therefore crucial.
| subscribed wrote:
| OK, but Google will happily confirm android device running
| Oreo is safe.
|
| While it's dramatically worse than devices Google refuses
| to certify (ie these not running their spyware as
| privileged services).
| oytis wrote:
| What do you mean "shifting to smartphone"? It's not a
| natural process - it's a technical decision to shift them
| to the smartphone, and a really bad one. We already have
| smart cards, they work and do not depend on any
| corporations, even less foreign corporations.
| zb3 wrote:
| We even have smartcards with e-ink displays and I'd
| personally want them to succeed here instead of moving
| security-critical apps to smartphones..
|
| Because Google then abuses its position to inject
| unremovable spyware with elevated privileges into the
| phone which the user then can't defent against without
| making the phone "unsecure" and thus unsuitable for these
| apps.
|
| If these apps really need a smartphone, I'd at least want
| it to be free of ad-related garbage in the system. I'm
| fine with not being able to flash a custom ROM on the
| smartcard as it doesn't contain hostile software.
|
| Now if even Apple starts showing ads, there's no other
| choice but to restist this..
| brador wrote:
| Google has banned many accounts of genuine users.
|
| What is your fallback for such an important vital service?
| notpushkin wrote:
| To play the devil's advocate here: MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY on
| Android doesn't require a Google _account_ AFAIK. But it
| might change, of course.
|
| Edit: but as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, Play
| Integrity is _not_ the only way to do hardware attestation on
| Android. GrapheneOS devs have a guide:
| https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-
| gu...
|
| So avoiding proprietary Google stuff altogether is possible
| and we should encourage it.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Humiliating disregard for sovereignty.
| ksjfjsmb wrote:
| Sich bei staatlichen Dienstleistungen auf Google oder Apple zu
| verlassen, kommt schon fast einem Verrat gleich. Trump hasst
| uns.
| ghighi7878 wrote:
| Tbh, I feel this is stupid.
|
| Banks are giving out QR Tan. Optical TAN devices which work
| with credit cards and it has been going pretty well. Why can
| eiDAS not have something similar. Distribute hardware tokens.
| Get rid of dependency on any OS.
| mariusor wrote:
| I'm pretty sure electronic IDs are a good starting point for
| exactly this. Hopefully they get wider use inside the EU.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| why do you hope that?
| pwlb wrote:
| Banks actually have high fraud rates today because of weak
| security mechanisms. If attackers steal your money, the bank
| will reimburse you. If attackers steal your identity, you are
| really screwed. Security requirements for banking and
| identity are simply different.
| ghighi7878 wrote:
| Mobile Google account based is even weaker than hardware
| tokens used by banks. Make of that what you will.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| If they use SSN as a password, it doesn't mean you can't
| have something slightly more reasonable without going full
| cyberpunk dystopia.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| Please give some evidence that this is due to hardware
| tokens failing where a smartphone based solution would have
| prevented it
| Avamander wrote:
| Plenty of EU countries have rolled out SmartCards for this
| exact purpose, some are now adding NFC functionality. Nothing
| really stops Germany from continuing like that either.
|
| The issue then becomes the UI/UX. If the legal mandate is not
| strong enough the solution will not gain enough ground. You
| can see this if you start comparing those countries with an
| eID rolled out.
| omnibrain wrote:
| The German ID card (Personalausweis) supports certificates
| and communication via NFC. I really don't understand what's
| all this about?
| longdidi wrote:
| Why not do it right from the beginning?
|
| https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
| subscribed wrote:
| They don't really want to.
| tadfisher wrote:
| That "guide" is kinda shit, there is massive work to do for
| an actual attestation implementation that replaces Play
| Integrity and supports the various backend frameworks.
| Archelaos wrote:
| German citizen here. I find this attitude horrible and
| threatening. You are working on sacrificing yet another part of
| our digital sovereignty to a US company. There are trillions of
| better things to do with your life.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| European Citizen here, and indeed lots of people in IT turn a
| blind eye onto the collateral damage their work may create.
|
| I know someone who happily codes "verifiable credentials" in
| Elixir, disregarding all externalities.
| oytis wrote:
| What's wrong with verifiable credentials? It's an important
| thing to have it seems? Your passport or a bank card are
| verifiable credentials, or at least are designed to be.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| It's an EU thing, overcomplicated an not sovereign:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-
| blocks/sites/spaces/EB...
| oytis wrote:
| Oh dear, web 3.0, blockchain. Do we get our sovereign
| monkey NFT too?
| vaylian wrote:
| Thank you for chiming in.
|
| > We have to use some kind of attestation mechanism per the
| eIDAS implementing acts.
|
| What does this attestation need to prove? Is this only about
| ensuring that private keys are managed by a secure enclave or a
| TPM?
|
| > we have support for other OSs on our list (like, e.g.,
| GrapheneOS)
|
| I appreciate that, even though I am really not enthusiastic of
| eIDAS. But time will tell. Thank you.
| subscribed wrote:
| They won't implement alternatives later, they'll be no point
| if "most of out customers is using either of the major
| providers".
|
| Concerning secure enclave - what other device except iphones
| and Pixels have it actually safe?
| Aachen wrote:
| The nfc chips in identity documents
| vaylian wrote:
| > They won't implement alternatives later, they'll be no
| point if "most of out customers is using either of the
| major providers".
|
| It's hard for me to assess the effort needed here, but I
| guess that the GrapheneOS implementation will be 99% like
| the regular Android implementation. Supporting both systems
| does not seem to be that unrealistic.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Just a quick question, and sorry if it might have been answered
| already... why preventing duplication is so important? I know
| it's in the spec probably [1], but I can't figure out the
| reason.
|
| And a suggestion: add external HSM support at least? (e.g.
| things like NitroKey/YubiKey)
|
| [1]: https://eudi.dev/latest/architecture-and-reference-
| framework... I suppose?
| notpushkin wrote:
| I've just had another, completely stupid but not implausible,
| idea:
|
| _> a local internal WSCD, which is a component within the
| User device, such as a SIM, e-SIM, or embedded Secure
| Element,_
|
| So you could issue SIM-cards / eSIM profiles that _only_ do
| signatures and nothing else. The app then connects to such
| eSIM (and you keep your main SIM /eSIM in another slot).
|
| The less stupid variant is, of course, to get mobile
| operators to issue SIM cards with e-sign capabilities.
| Estonia has that, for example: https://www.id.ee/en/mobile-
| id/
| Avamander wrote:
| > The less stupid variant is, of course, to get mobile
| operators to issue SIM cards with e-sign capabilities.
| Estonia has that, for example: https://www.id.ee/en/mobile-
| id/
|
| It works great. Just keep in mind that newer phones are
| starting to deprecate physical SIM slots. At the same time
| certifying eSIM implementations to the same EAL level is an
| absolutely crazy task.
| pwlb wrote:
| Preventing credential duplication is a requirement to achieve
| high level of assurance. One of its purpose is to limit the
| potential damage that can be done by attacks. If credentials
| are bound to hardware-bound keys, attackers will always need
| access to this key store to make any miss-use. If you don't
| prevent duplication, attackers may extract credentials and
| miss-use them at a 1000 places simultaneously.
| subscribed wrote:
| Okay, but Google certifies phones which are not updates for
| the last several years.
|
| They can be trivially rooted, then they spoof the signature
| and get a pass in Integrity while being wide open for
| malware (or cooying the ID, ID presume).
| pwlb wrote:
| The documentation clearly outlines that there are
| multiple signals being analysed. Relying on play
| integrity alone is definitely not sufficient as you
| state.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I think it should be possible IMHO, like it is for many banks
| (still), to get a hardware token and then use whatever
| hardware/browser. Even a nice EU hardware token which allows
| banks , govs etc to add their keys/seeds in the enclave would
| be nicer so I don't have the lug 1000 tokens around, but it's
| still better than having to trust non sovereign companies for
| anything without backup; like multiple here said; Google/Apple
| getting the command from the Dep of War to shut down EU phone
| attestation, you losing your account etc, or, you know, me
| simply not wanting to use their stuff.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| The hardware tokens ate being phased out by banks and
| replaced with SMS OTP codes + passwords.
|
| Cost saving measures.
|
| Its funny to see that I can access the bank account through
| FaceID but to actually make a payment I need to use an SMS
| code.
| egorfine wrote:
| > That doesn't work without operating system support
|
| Do you realize where this path is going?
|
| Certain European governments would have greatly benefited from
| KYC/attestation in the late 1930s had it existed.
| elric wrote:
| Yup. But apparently the EU is refusing to take lessons from
| history.
| gambiting wrote:
| Germany is just part of EU - as many other people pointed
| out, there is no requirement from the EU to implement it
| this way. Same as California or New York making extremely
| Draconian laws around 3D printing doesn't represent all of
| US.
| khalic wrote:
| It's insane to make yourselves US dependent from the very
| beginning, at least provide something like a crypto-key that
| you can get from an official, banks can do it, so can you.
| haagch wrote:
| German citizen here. So why is an implementation going forward
| when you already know it will not serve all citizens? Why are
| we not refusing to implement this until we know we can make it
| work on all devices?
|
| Personally I recently switched from an AOSP based android
| without Google Play to Ubuntu Touch. In the future with better
| hardware support I will probably switch to postmarketOS.
| dark-star wrote:
| because then it will never get done. There are still people
| using old Nokia phones, for those there will never be a
| solution.
|
| The usual 80/20 rule applies here as well.
|
| And if you really are a German citizen, you know how slow the
| wheels of government already turn in Germany, I assume next
| week you would be the one complaining that "Germany is so far
| behind" and that "other countries are so much faster at
| implementing stuff" :)
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Yeah, let's burn the witches who care about privacy! Jokes
| aside, in a democracy, the systems must be designed so that
| everyone can participate. We manage to do it with voting,
| with income tax declaration, but for some strange reason,
| with ID we want to achieve 1984 nirvana, and crush the
| voices who tell us that the surveilance society we are
| building is just setting us up for the next Hitler.
| haagch wrote:
| Nah, I'm that one idiot who uses alternative open software
| and just accepts when services aren't offered to me. The
| older I get, the easier it feels to not give a fuck
| anymore.
|
| Can't buy any single fare public transport tickets online
| here in Stuttgart? Sure, I'll use the DeutschlandTicket NFC
| card. Can't view the EPA? Fine then I don't. Can't pay with
| Wero? Fine, I don't actually need to use shops that don't
| offer SEPA Vorkasse or Lastschrift (only without a dodgy
| "identity verification" fintech startup of course.
| sippeangelo wrote:
| Then maybe it shouldn't be done? What??
| jijijijij wrote:
| > There are still people using old Nokia phones
|
| No one wants support for toasters and washing machines.
| We're talking general purpose compute hardware. TCP is also
| supported on all these devices. Quite frankly, it's
| probably easier to implement, if you are not fighting a
| locked-down OS like iOS.
| microtonal wrote:
| We are not talking about old Nokia phones, but perfectly
| modern phones like those with GrapheneOS, that can be run
| on cutting-edge hardware, with a secure enclave, does not
| use Google Play Services by default, and has a high
| probability of being more secure than iPhone or any Android
| phone.
|
| It is exactly the kind of alternative that European
| countries should embrace to become less dependent on US
| tech.
|
| I am not sure if you are European, but why people are still
| supporting the GMS Android/iOS duopoly after the US revoked
| the Google accounts, Office 365 accounts, credit cards,
| Amazon accounts, etc. of ICC judges is beyond me.
| Supporting only iOS/Google GMS Android in a government app
| basically gives the US all the means to blackmail you
| and/or disrupt your digital infrastructure.
|
| It seems there are still people working for European
| governments (including developers) who seem to have missed
| 2025 and the first few months 2026?
|
| We are repeating the same mistakes as depending on Russian
| oil/gas again.
| p2detar wrote:
| Do we have stats how many germans use something else than
| Google Android, Samsung Knox or Apple? I recon it should be
| less than 1% which quite honestly is in fact ,,all" citizens.
| elric wrote:
| Sure, let's just arbitrarily exclude ~1million people
| because they're not running the government's preferred
| American spyware.
| p2detar wrote:
| This is an unfair and a straw man argument, is it not?
| Are you also unhappy that in a democracy the 51% choose
| how the other 49% are going to be governed?
|
| Why device attestation is required is quite well
| explained by this github comment [0]. I am in the
| industry and I agree fully with it, because it is a fact
| a problem for most smart phone users in terms of
| security.
|
| 0 - https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-
| app-andro...
| Hackbraten wrote:
| I think your analogy is flawed. I can be part of the
| losing 49% and still be entitled to receive the same
| services as the 51%, whereas people who chose a privacy-
| oriented OS are essentially going to be excluded from
| essential governmental services. That's a whole different
| kind of thing.
|
| I'm not going to replace my 1200 EUR smartphone with a
| device that forces me to have an account with Apple or
| Google. I've been issued a German identity card, which is
| its own computer that includes a digital identity
| already. I also own an expensive card reader, which
| together forms a system that is completely capable of
| supporting any attestation anyone would need. They should
| just stop excluding me already.
| p2detar wrote:
| > privacy-oriented OS
|
| Well, in all seriousness what examples could you give me
| here in terms of device hardware attestation? Even
| GrapheneOS does use Google root certificates to attest
| your device. There is indeed an option for EUDI to keep a
| list of keys and I bet this is probably the way they are
| going to go for Android in the future. We shouldn't
| forget this is still in the planing phase.
|
| > to have an account with Apple or Google.
|
| True for Google, not true for Apple. Device attestation
| on iOS does not require you to have an iCloud account or
| sign into some Apple services. It works entirely using
| device hardware ids.
|
| > I also own an expensive card reader, which together
| forms a system that is completely capable of supporting
| any attestation anyone would need.
|
| Nope. This is eID and verifies your identity, it does not
| attest the security of your hardware. These are two
| different problems we talk about here.
| fsflover wrote:
| > in all seriousness what examples could you give me here
| in terms of device hardware attestation?
|
| My Librem 5 runs an FSF-endorsed OS and has a smartcard.
|
| > True for Google, not true for Apple. Device attestation
| on iOS does not require you to have an iCloud account or
| sign into some Apple services.
|
| This is extremely misleading. Even if true, you must have
| an account in order to install _any_ app on an iPhone.
| p2detar wrote:
| > My Librem 5 runs an FSF-endorsed OS and has a
| smartcard.
|
| Ok, so how does that help with device attestation? If I
| am an app developer how does it tell me that your OS has
| not been tempered with or actually that my app has not
| been tempered with? Are there any cryptographic keys
| stored in a secure place on the device that the Librem
| vendor can verify?
|
| > This is extremely misleading.
|
| But it's not. It's an architectural difference between
| how Google and Apple implemented attestation. Apple
| stores the generated keys in a secure part on your device
| and certifies them. The rest is your job as an app
| developer. And as a user, you do not have your iCloud or
| iTunes account used for device attestation. In contrast
| Google and its Play services are an integral part of the
| attestation workflow.
|
| For Apple it's evident from their docs. As a side note: I
| do try to learn more about this, because of an incoming
| project concerning it.
|
| > You can't rely on your app's logic to perform security
| checks on itself because a compromised app can falsify
| the results. Instead, you use the shared instance of the
| DCAppAttestService class in your app to create a
| hardware-based, cryptographic key that uses Apple servers
| to certify that the key belongs to a valid instance of
| your app. Then you use the service to cryptographically
| sign server requests using the certified key. Your app
| uses these measures to assert its legitimacy with any
| server requests for sensitive or premium content.
|
| Source: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicec
| heck/establ...
| fsflover wrote:
| > If I am an app developer how does it tell me that your
| OS has not been tempered with or actually that my app has
| not been tempered with?
|
| This is not your business to verify and control what can
| run on my phone. I can do it with my smart card, which
| securely stores cryptographic keys.
|
| > And as a user, you do not have your iCloud or iTunes
| account used for device attestation.
|
| It does not matter. An account is necessary to make the
| phone usable at all. The attestation is useless on a
| phone that can't install apps.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > Nope. This is eID and verifies your identity, it does
| not attest the security of your hardware.
|
| The reader and its firmware is already certified by the
| federal IT security agency BSI for use with eID and
| banking. Why shouldn't I be allowed to use that for
| whatever digital identity wallet thing the EU is cooking
| up?
| p2detar wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong please, but this is a mobile
| Wallet app, an enclave, for government issued documents:
| Ausweis, Diploma, etc. How does a card reader come into
| the workflow here? I don't quite get your point.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Currently, the card reader is the only thing that allows
| me to do banking and use government services on Linux. If
| at some point, governmental services decide to drop
| support for the physical-card-plus-reader systems and
| move everything to mobile wallets instead (like many
| banks already did), then I can't do shit anymore without
| Apple or Google.
| well_ackshually wrote:
| >I' ve been issued a German identity card, which is its
| own computer that includes a digital identity already.
|
| Then keep using it, instead of the not-mandatory app?
|
| > I also own an expensive card reader, which together
| forms a system that is completely capable of supporting
| any attestation anyone would need.
|
| Sure. In the mean time, do we tell the other few dozen
| millions that don't have an expensive card reader to go
| fuck themselves, or can we get to work on a solution
| that, even if not ideal, makes their lives easier?
|
| > They should just stop excluding me already.
|
| They aren't. You said it yourself, your ID is in your
| pocket.
| shakna wrote:
| If it requires a Google or Apple account, then it also
| requires those companies never cease an account, either.
| Or vulnerable people will be harmed.
| nothinkjustai wrote:
| > Are you also unhappy that in a democracy the 51% choose
| how the other 49% are going to be governed
|
| Yes of course. That is one of it's fundamental issues.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is a very, VERY stereotypical Tech Product Manager
| viewpoint: "N% of users are hard to support edge cases,
| so we should exclude them." You see this justification
| everywhere in business. "We'll drop support for [old OS]
| once it gets to 1% of our user base." "Only 1% of our
| users have non-Latin characters in their usernames so
| it's OK to not support that." "1% of our users are on 3G
| or slower Internet connections, so we don't have to
| consider them in our performance metrics."
|
| It's a pragmatic, profit-oriented point of view, but not
| one that makes sense when your mission is to be inclusive
| of everyone.
| type0 wrote:
| In fact ,,all" citizens who are willing to be surveilled by
| Google and Apple, unless German government provides each
| citizen with similar eID hardware there won't be any
| digital equality any time soon. Maybe they should pay to
| some subsidiary company of IBM (like RedHat) to do this,
| they already have such a good track record of storing
| nationality on their machines /s
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag#Holocaust
| class4behavior wrote:
| There's a big difference between having to run a particular
| company's OS and being forced to share private data
| (whether that's merely your DNS requests or your ID
| documents and full financial history). with said
| organization.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > Why are we not refusing to implement this until we know we
| can make it work on all devices?
|
| Simply put: this will never happen. Way too many devices
| implementations to make this a reality.
| fsflover wrote:
| It's just a matter of creating a web app.
| well_ackshually wrote:
| And what attestation services does your web app use? Do
| we lock that web app behind having Secure boot enabled,
| along with a Java applet for the fun of it?
|
| If your answer is "none", you missed the point.
| fsflover wrote:
| Attestation of what? It's none of your business how I
| secure and configure my phone. I use a smart card on my
| Librem 5 btw. See also:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47647047
| well_ackshually wrote:
| My business, no. Your government however, has a few
| reasons to want to ensure that the ID you're going to use
| to vote, to prove your identity to any service, etc, etc,
| does not get passed from device to device.
|
| Configure your phone however you want, then use your
| physical ID because your phone isn't supported. They're
| not taking it away. In the same way that you can file
| your taxes. Having an online filing service doesn't mean
| you're being "excluded" because your i386 running BeOS
| isn't part of the supported hardware. Send a letter.
| It'll still work.
| haagch wrote:
| I second the question, attestation of what? I have a Solo
| key that I use with webauthn for several services
| already. Is that not good enough and even if not, there
| surely are sufficient alternatives, least of all the
| actual electronic id on the national id card via nfc?
| miki123211 wrote:
| Do all German hospitals serve vegan food?
|
| If you were averse to carrots (without any health
| restrictions on eating them), would every government
| institution in Germany be required to serve you carrot-free
| food?
|
| If not, why should they be forced to accommodate every
| smartphone brand in existence, even if there's only 3 people
| in Germany using it? THe list has to end somewhere.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > Do all German hospitals serve vegan food?
|
| Can't speak for Germany, but they do in the UK. It would be
| illegal discrimination against a belief for them not to.
| b112 wrote:
| While the example your provide is reasonable fair, the
| comparison is not.
|
| For it to be fair comparison, the carrots would have to be
| grown by a foreign company, known for using unsafe growing
| practices, causing contamination. Eg, poison carrots. This
| same company would have to be under the control of a very
| hostile, very actively aggressive and threatening nation.
|
| Such as one currently threatening to annex allies, among
| other things.
|
| With the US literally tapping and spying on heads of
| foreign states:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committe
| e...
|
| and there being lots of ways to spy, such as push
| notifications:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/government
| s...
|
| Only insane people would objectively decide to use Google
| or Apple _anything_ for any form of ID. Those platforms
| should literally be outlawed. Any use of push notifications
| or identity attention should be looked at as utter fantasy.
|
| Here's a secret for you. There really isn't any urgent
| requirement to have an electronic identification method. It
| can wait. Supporting legislation can be passed first. There
| are lots of ways to do so.
|
| For example, the entire EU could pass legislation stating
| that all cell phones have open source code available,
| including all binary blobs for drivers. And that all phones
| are unlockable, and that (for example) the phone has a
| version of the rom you can download without any Google
| services.
|
| (If Apple isn't able to compete here, well... too bad)
|
| The phones would not be legal to sell, unless the open
| source firmware was compiled in front of regulators. The
| point of this is another pet-peeve of mine, it would allow
| people to support their own phones, for that source code
| would be released the day that phone was no longer
| supported.
|
| And yes, it's trivial to have open source firmware blobs.
| There just isn't a market for it. Pass a law, and sellers
| of SoC and other ICs will capitulate, or maybe more
| punitive laws will be passed against them. As someone once
| said, yes companies can have a lot of sway.
|
| But governments have police, courts, and armies.
|
| Right now, Android and Apple devices are a literal arm of
| the US government's spying apparatus, even if those two
| companies actively work against it.
|
| Do not trust Google Play. Do not trust Firebase. Do not
| trust Google. At all.
|
| Are Germans just too trusting? I remember 15 years ago,
| when nuclear power plants were closing, concerns were
| raised about the reliance on Russian natural gas. These
| were waved away. Russia? What's wrong with Russia! They're
| almost allies, they're capitalists now!
|
| Don't do this again.
|
| Do NOT trust Google. Don't. Don't make it a core part of
| any identity management.
|
| Imagine, needing an active Google account to even bank! Or
| to file your taxes, or even to prove who you are!? Google
| cancels accounts with no recourse, no reason why, won't
| help anyone, and this is to be the core of identity
| management for Germany?
|
| The average person won't even be able to install any German
| Government designed apps, unless they are on the Play
| store! Are you going to teach Grandma how to use ADB to
| install an app? Without an active Google Account, will you
| even be able to use push notifications?
|
| Why would a government even _allow_ ID to be blocked by the
| requirement that a company with terrible, horrible, inane
| customer service, which just kills accounts without
| recourse, be a gatekeeper?
|
| No Google account, no ID! Wha!?
|
| It's literally not sane.
| LexGray wrote:
| I think it falls under the article yesterday about male
| German citizens having restrictions on their travel.
| Electronic ID is a step toward "papers please".
|
| Germany at least seems to feel international war is only
| a few steps away and from how militant the Chinese and
| Russians have been treating their "territory" I am not
| sure it is a bad call.
|
| America has likewise turned bad preferring violence over
| dialogue and loves tracking "hostile influences on the
| American way of life". Those influences being anyone who
| would call out the toxic culprits making America into a
| cesspit.
|
| Tying to Apple and Google? It is a terrible idea. Both
| are prone to freeze devices for financial or social
| issues.
|
| However, a fix I would accept is to force the device
| makers to support multiple accounts out of box on every
| device to keep separate what the corporations have proven
| time and again they cannot be trusted to combine. Also
| for those companies to be forced to make a cheap credit
| card sized device which must be held to power on for the
| few that truly hate the ecosystems.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| > cheap credit card sized device
|
| I don't understand why this is not the default to be
| honest, and why people are not advocating for that
| b112 wrote:
| The first thing to go in every major war, will be the
| reliably of electronic anything.
|
| What's wrong with ID cards and cash?
| faust201 wrote:
| They do.
| haagch wrote:
| Lots of hospitals don't even serve healthy food in any
| sense, so expecting a good coverage of dietary options is
| optimistic...
|
| But to answer the question in a real way: Veganism is often
| regarded as just a dietary choice like any other, when in
| reality courts in several countries have more or less
| agreed to classify it as a matter of conscience, which
| would give adherents some right to it. Though it seems
| German courts have been reluctant to draw much legal
| consequence from it - so far at least.
|
| So in that sense, I don't think people have been talking
| about digital sovereignty and abstaining from proprietary
| software under another country's jurisdiction much as a
| matter of conscience yet. We can thank Trump that it might
| actually become a thing though.
| preisschild wrote:
| You are forgetting that by not allowing more open platforms
| they effectively force you to accept Apple/Google EULA's
| essentially forcing you to give your private data to
| Google/Apple.
| dgellow wrote:
| The ones I'm aware of do, yes
| dabber21 wrote:
| also German here, we have to get rid of the 100% perfection
| at launch expectation its crippling this country
| conception wrote:
| But things not in the launch can easily be deprioritized as
| budget issues indefinitely. "Oh why spend the money adding
| support for just a few people??" will be the line moving
| forward.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It would be cheaper to just buy all of the outliers a
| bottom of the barrel Android phone for them to use with
| the tax money.
| fsflover wrote:
| And force them into the Google surveillance,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
| charcircuit wrote:
| Collecting telemetry is not the same thing as
| surveillance. Using such vocabulary to describe what a
| phone does is both misleading and manipulating, playing
| into the angle of scaremongering people who do not want
| to be survived.
| fsflover wrote:
| So please tell us what the difference is.
| charcircuit wrote:
| With surveillance a person gets surveilled with telemetry
| a person doesn't. Telemetry is collecting information
| about the operation of the device. The goal of telemetry
| is to understand how the device is operating where with
| surveillance it is about seeing what a person is doing.
| tavavex wrote:
| The types of data that's collected for these two purposes
| have a significant overlap.
|
| Sufficiently detailed telemetry is indistinguishable from
| surveillance because even if the goal isn't to target you
| right now, they will still have the secondary option of
| going back and inspecting all that data you sent them if
| they ever are interested in you. Another secondary use of
| telemetry is selling it to someone else to squeeze out a
| bit more money. There's no downside to doing this, so any
| business that collects a lot of varied telemetry and
| likes making money might as well do it. And once the data
| is in the hands of adtech businesses, it becomes a whole
| lot more like tracking you personally than just
| collecting some data for development. In Google's case,
| you don't even need to hand it over to anyone else,
| everything stays in-house.
| preisschild wrote:
| What does it matter in practice? Do you seriously think
| Google, the targeted advertisement company, does not use
| that Telemetry for targeted advertisements?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Yes, I do seriously think that Google does not use
| anonymous telemetry for ad targeting.
| dmantis wrote:
| Do you imply that it's not possible for the US
| intelligence agencies to request this data from google
| per person of interest and deliver some information from
| the metadata?
|
| I heavily doubt that.
| AJ007 wrote:
| Are you a lobbyist for Google, Apple, Meta, or the adtech
| industry? Because if you aren't, you are parroting their
| bullshit.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Save your keystrokes. I think I've seen that nickname
| express anti-consumer, pro-corporate, freedom-violating
| viewpoints in dozens of different threads on a pretty
| wide variety of topics at this point. Not once have I
| seen them take the pro-consumer stance.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The pro consumer standpoint is overly represented on this
| platform so often I can simply upvote points I agree
| with.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I am not a lobbyist, but I do recognize the great value
| the adtech industry provides to society and I am familiar
| with the common arguments and strategies people try and
| use to undermine it and sow distrust.
| haagch wrote:
| It really doesn't matter. When you power on an android
| smartphone with google play installed for the first time
| you are presented with a gate screen that asks you to
| consent to google's privacy policy. You can't use the
| phone without accepting. (for example
| https://forum.fairphone.com/t/finalising-the-setup-
| wizard-wi...)
|
| Using smartphones with such a setup should not become
| required by a European government on a fundamental level.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Yes just like it's cheaper to just provide people who
| can't afford a phone in the US a phone by taxing other
| cell phone users - and I don't have a problem with that.
| ramblerman wrote:
| Taxpayer money project being tied to a dependency on Apple
| google is 100% counter what that money should be used for.
|
| You are copy pasting a "correct" argument against eu
| bureaucracy in the absolute wrong space
| josefx wrote:
| A 10% goal would be a good first step. Now excuse me while
| I read some tea leaves to find out if my trains will be on
| time tomorrow ( spoiler: they wont).
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| surely 10% of DB digital offerings work as expected, just
| not the 10% that is essential for train travel.
| fsflover wrote:
| Refusing to send all your private data to the US to benefit
| their megacorps, using the tax payers' money, is not
| "perfection". It is the only reasonable and legal choice.
| tremon wrote:
| This is not about 100% perfection at launch, this is about
| civil equality. Launching without broad support for use
| cases creates a two-tier society.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > it will not serve all citizens
|
| This is an understatement. Better phrasing would be "when it
| allows two unaccountable foreign companies to lock citizens
| out of the digital market".
|
| There are plenty of horror stories of tech giants frivolously
| banning people. We shouldn't be adding state support to that.
| I don't want to lose access to digital banking because of
| some deliberately vague "community guidelines" violation, or
| because I got mass-reported to some "e-safety" provider that
| both Apple and Google outsource to.
|
| Sibling comments see this as a good solution, just not a
| perfect one. I see it as making a bad problem worse.
| gmueckl wrote:
| You have the totally wrong expectations here. Some service
| that requires citizens to buy and bring their own devices in
| order to use a service will by definition always be
| exclusive. Whining about lacking compatibility with some
| niche sbowflake devices is just inappropriate in this
| context. The only solutiin is to require an actually
| convenient fallback for those otherwise excluded from that
| service.
|
| The limited selection of attestation providers can be
| criticized for many other reasons, though.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Your disdain isn't helpinh you here either as you're just
| as wrong as parent.
|
| Such public utilities ought to always prioritize privacy,
| platform-independence, and empowering market competion
| long- and short-term. And to achieve that you need to start
| at the design level.
|
| In this case, clearly, you either have to avoid relying on
| app attestation or lay the foundation for an unrestricted
| number of independent chain of trust frameworks.
|
| The latter, of course, is a policy-level issue, but the
| ones responsible for the design and development are the
| ones who need to pass such concerns up the chain.
| gmueckl wrote:
| You have the right starting point, but the wrong
| conclusion. Government services need to be inclusive of
| everybody. But you simply cannot build technical
| solutions that put technical requirements on devices
| owned by the users in a way that the service is
| sufficiently inclusive. That is just a fact.
|
| If you want to be critical of the outcome on
| compatibility grounds, forcing a grind to increase
| technical compatibility is the wrong thing to ask for.
| That must necessarily always leave some people behind.
| The only honest alternative positions on that front are
| (a) the government issues the tech to everybody itself or
| (b) the government doesn't build advanced systems at all.
|
| The German government offices rely on a lot of quaint-
| looking paper based processes, but they have one thing
| going for them: working through them can be done with pen
| and paper - tools that are available for cheap and
| broadly compatible. It's probably not such a bad thing
| after all?
| class4behavior wrote:
| Inclusivity is secondary here. Moreover, it's just
| fallacious to argue the nation has to give up on its own
| rights and principles and be content with whatever the
| market provides.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Because you can't please all of the people. And before
| someone likens it to the ADA. Even with accommodations you
| have to make, car makers aren't for instance required to make
| cars that blind people can drive.
|
| You chose to use a non mainstream platform. Thats on you.
| retired wrote:
| Perhaps look at the Spanish Cl@ve, it works with Linux. It's
| just a simple digital certificate that allows you to identify
| yourself.
|
| You can even run it on OpenBSD or TempleOS if you want to.
| fredgrott wrote:
| so I have to buy a Yubikey hardware thingie to keep my Google
| account just to use eIDAS??
|
| For those that do not know, that is the only way to get the
| Google account back is to use a hardware 2FA in the first
| place....
|
| AND yubikeys are $60 per yubikey...and generally you want 2
| including a backup
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| You must go back to the drawing board and rely on highly-
| regulated Telecom standards (that's why they were mandated in
| the first place!) not monopolistic defacto "best practices" you
| have no influence over because they're more convenient for you.
|
| This is simply unconstitutional and should be escalated ASAP if
| you don't want to end it before the appropriate court in
| Leipzig, Karlsruhe, or maybe Luxembourg.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Another German citizen here. I think what you're doing is
| illegal and will be blocked by German courts.
| 0x3f wrote:
| It's funny because this is also the exact German response for
| when your neighbour has an unsanctioned BBQ.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I know it's not quite the same thing as an OS vendor, but
| culturally, if you're having trouble empathizing with the _ick_
| in this thread then imagine if the initial implementation was
| available only for account holders with Facebook, Yahoo! Mail,
| or MySpace.
| oytis wrote:
| I don't get it. Are mechanisms in our ID cards not strong
| enough so that we have to rely on the security of the operating
| system?
| NanoCoaster wrote:
| Will eIDAS be the only way to identify yourself in cases where
| it's needed, or will we be able to user other mechanisms like
| the german ID card stuff or an entirely separate alternative?
|
| Or to put it another way, is a smartphone required? If not,
| that would already clear up a lot of issues, I think.
|
| EDIT: Whoops, just saw the answer to another comment asking
| precisely this. So it's not a requirement. Good. Is there a
| legal framework that ensures that this remains the case?
| Otherwise, I fear it will become a de facto requirement over
| time.
| jech wrote:
| One datapoint: at least in practice, it used to be impossible
| to delete an entry in the French INPI database (trademarks
| and company names) without eIDAS. It forced me to unearth an
| old unmodified Android phone (I run LineageOS on my main
| phone).
|
| If you read French:
|
| * https://www.plus.transformation.gouv.fr/experiences/4531155
| _...
|
| * https://linuxfr.org/users/jch-2/journaux/l-identite-
| numeriqu...
| NanoCoaster wrote:
| Oof, that's disappointing to hear. Thanks though, that's
| actually quite interesting.
|
| I'm also thinking of keeping an android phone purely for
| auth purposes, separate from my main one. The world's most
| overengineered (and probably also less safe) Yubikey.
|
| > If you read French
|
| Let's see how far my five years of French at school will
| get me. I'm not getting my hopes up ;)
| Aachen wrote:
| Also if you are legally required to be able to use some
| backup mechanism, it can become the de facto requirement
| regnerd wrote:
| that's not correct. Article 5 eIDAS2 explicitly states, that
| europeans exercise full control over their data. Therefore EUDI
| wallet must not be a walled garden. Especially if the wallet
| shall be used for authenticating and signing, it must be
| available to all europeans, even those sanctioned by the US.
|
| If this is your plan, please go back to the drawing board.
| eMPee584 wrote:
| There's a new initiative by some non-google non-apple phone
| vendors called *UnifiedAttestation* which I hope you will
| support at some point in the future:
|
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/Paying-without-Google-New-conso...
| nip wrote:
| In light of all of these shortcomings with platform
| attestation, why go with the eIDAS 2 wallet approach at all?
| eIDAS 1 already solved this with Mobile-ID (SIM-based, no
| Google/Apple dependency) and Smart-ID (server-side key
| management with minimal platform reliance). What does the
| wallet model give you that justifies this level of dependency
| on two American corporations' proprietary backends?
|
| Especially considering that mobile-ID has been around since
| 2007.
| nip wrote:
| I'm sorry to lash out at you but I keep getting disappointed
| in European countries (more precisely the ever disappointing
| EU commission) all suffering of the NIH syndrome instead of
| collaborating and learning from each other
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| There is mothing to be gained politically by doing this.
| You think you look good if you say "hey, the Poles had this
| really good idea, how about we do the same"?
|
| Plus, the process is something like:
|
| - we want to do $something
|
| - hire consultants to help us define $something and produce
| a document
|
| - hire other consultants to write the specs for the project
|
| - launch an RFP
|
| - select a winner
|
| - wait for the implementation to finish
|
| All the proposed solutions will be something paid, ideally
| made by a really large company to lend it credibility, and
| with maintenance costs that justify hiring dedicated people
| for it.
|
| In the end no one gets what they want.
|
| You think if there was any will wouldn't the whole EU use
| whatever the Estonians are doing very well?
| jen20 wrote:
| > You think you look good if you say "hey, the Poles had
| this really good idea, how about we do the same"?
|
| Yes.
|
| > You think if there was any will wouldn't the whole EU
| use whatever the Estonians are doing very well?
|
| Using the Estonian system would be vastly preferable.
|
| If politics doesn't allow that, the political environment
| is broken.
| grundrausch3n wrote:
| How is the Estonian system now? I remember when I visited
| around 2010 our host just had a quite simple smart card
| reader and could just use it to sign in to government
| services with their ID and as far as I remember even sign
| mails and documents. Germany of course could not use
| normal smart cards but had to use NFC cards with special
| readers and made the signing feature and additional
| service you had to pay for on a yearly basis. Of course
| the Germans system did not went anywhere for years. I do
| have a reader now and can use it for some governmental
| services and have very limited appetite to bind the ID to
| my phone.
| pas wrote:
| Ukraine also seems to have solved this pretty well. NFC
| in the plastic card, selfie video confirmation, etc.
|
| Hungary is also rolling out a "digital citizenship" app.
| (Also can be bootstrapped via newer plastic cards, so no
| need to visit the government office.)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Isn't the eIDAS 2 wallet approach a legal requirement of
| eIDAS 2 (which is an EU regulation, i.e. the law).
| nip wrote:
| It is, mandated by the EU commission.
|
| Instead they could have mandated the use of eIDAS 1 to all
| countries + extend it with attribute/credential support,
| and let countries choose their implementation (cards, SIM,
| server-side).
|
| Instead we're back to the drawing board with the big
| shortcomings highlighted in this thread.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Oh OK, I understand your point now.
| Avamander wrote:
| SIM-based solutions are on their way out because phones are
| starting to lose SIM slots. Certifying eSIM implementations
| to the same EAL level (as Mobile-ID SIMs are) is way way too
| difficult. At least for one country doing it alone.
|
| Smart-ID sucks. It's not truly hardware-backed, it's
| proprietary and has fundamental flaws like not having a
| direct link between the site being authenticated to and the
| authenticating device (auth can be proxied, just like if it
| were just plain TOTP).
| nip wrote:
| Agree on Smart-ID but the answer is to fix those flaws, not
| to replace the entire approach with one that depends on
| Google Play Integrity verdicts that even the German
| architects admit they can't fully trust.
|
| SIM-based solutions on their way out is a non-issue. For
| eSIM to support that use case, political will only is
| needed: the EU got Apple to abandon the lightning cable,
| this is not any different.
| Avamander wrote:
| > Agree on Smart-ID but the answer is to fix those flaws
|
| Fundamentally can't be, it'd be a whole new solution.
|
| > For eSIM to support that use case, political will only
| is needed: the EU got Apple to abandon the lightning
| cable, this is not any different.
|
| Mandate every phone vendor to EAL4(+) certify their
| eSIMs? I'd love to see that, but I'm not sure that's a
| viable approach to take.
| pwlb wrote:
| EIDAS 2 motivation is implicitly that eID failed in eIDAS 1.
| It simply either didn't take off or didn't work at all
| gmerc wrote:
| "Not Great" is the understatement of the century. It fails to
| protect sovereign identity by handing the default to companies
| not only under foreign sanctions control but who also lock
| people from their accounts without recourse.
|
| The device chain is a classic misdirection, it seems everyone
| here is just following Meta's lobbying to put this into the OS.
|
| Even the carrier layer would be better than the mobile device
| layer.
|
| Or, you know, just look at Singapore's or Swiss National SSO -
| it functions on an app that layer just fine, no issues
|
| See https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-
| andro...
| oakpond wrote:
| Shouldn't the energy instead be focused on creating a
| standardized eIDAS driver API that OS vendors are required to
| implement?
| utopiah wrote:
| > The initial limitation to Google/Android [...] is simply a
| matter of where we focus our energy at the moment
|
| Nice... so the rush is to delegate power to the large American
| platform?
| bakugo wrote:
| > We have to use some kind of attestation mechanism per the
| eIDAS implementing acts.
|
| Sounds like these "eIDAS implementing acts" are the problem,
| and were influenced by ulterior motives.
| isodev wrote:
| > The initial limitation to Google/Android is not great
|
| It's also illegal on both accessibility grounds as well as
| violating the eIDAS spirit of no dependency on specific
| providers.
|
| By shrugging it off as "not great", you're also dooming every
| citizen to have to comply with whatever whimsical terms of
| service Google and Apple have.
|
| Have you ever tried to unban your Apple/Google account? So in
| effect, everyone's access to eID services will depend on some
| crappy automation some intern in California setup to detect
| "abuse" or whatever.
|
| There are technical solutions to avoid this dependency and
| you're probably getting paid to find, research and adopt them.
| So ... do your job?
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| This is simply unacceptable. You are not making an innocent
| pragmatic compromise here, you are launching digital
| infrastructure which initially will tie everyone to
| Google/Apple and give alternatives a huge disadvantage for an
| unknown amount of time. Nobody knows when, or even if ever,
| support for open platforms will arrive.
|
| You should be ashamed of being involved in this monopoly
| handover to American big tech.
| aenis wrote:
| Fingers crossed for the judiciary - if the implementers
| ignore the intention of the law, then lawyers will have to
| help them understand the limits of corner cutting - and block
| this.
| subscribed wrote:
| I bet PS50 that the alternative (eg GrapheneOS attestation
| (based on the standard AOSP attestation)) will be delayed,
| then delayed, then scrapped since almost everyone is using
| Google Plag integrity anyway.
|
| Yes, I assume malicious intent, sorry, seen this happen
| enough tines recently.
| tadfisher wrote:
| I'm in the US, not facing a mandate, but I want an open-
| source alternative to Play Integrity to use in the
| financial sector. There should be no excuse for anyone not
| supporting GrapheneOS. I've asked on Google's issue tracker
| and they are not interested in opening the program to non-
| OHA ("Google Play Approved") participants.
| chaz6 wrote:
| Have you considered Unified Attestation [1] which is an
| alternative to Google's?
|
| [1] https://uattest.net/
| tadfisher wrote:
| Oh dang, this is exactly what I've been looking for. Thank
| you.
| codethief wrote:
| > 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).
|
| GrapheneOS uses standard Android APIs for hardware attestation
| (as opposed to Google-specific ones), so why don't you just use
| those from the get-go?
| zajio1am wrote:
| Why not just use U2F or certificates on crypto-tokens?
| zajio1am wrote:
| Note that for eIDAS 1, a Czechia e-identity provider uses U2F
| tokens.
| crest wrote:
| This is on the stupid side of lazy (again). You'll still be
| sovereign only at the pleasure of Apple and Google if you
| submit to their platform as a service crap.
| inexcf wrote:
| Side question. How come it is always the most incompetent
| people who get put in charge of implementing things like that.
| Over and over apps and services are developed in Germany and
| completely fail at what they are supposed to achieve. Where are
| these people recruited from?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > and we have support for other OSs on our list (like, e.g.,
| GrapheneOS)
|
| Excellent. Massive respect to you for doing this. This
| attestation business is an existential threat to "other"
| operating systems. I'm glad to see people are putting effort
| into supporting them.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| What happens if someone is banned from both companies (even for
| a very legitimate reason such as hosting illegal content --
| they still need to access government services)?
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| What about people hosting content that is illegal in the US
| but not Germany (not sure what that may be now, but with the
| direction the US is taking maybe in a couple years even the
| fat Vance meme could become some kind of illegal subversive
| content). Anger the big daddy and your identitiy is gone.
| mrsssnake wrote:
| > We have to use some kind of attestation mechanism per the
| eIDAS implementing acts.
|
| Translates to:
|
| "We have to make sure citized accessing the public service have
| not control over the device per the eIDAS implementing acts"
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| glad that the "move fast break things" mentality has finally
| arrived to Germany, just didn't expect the public sector to be
| the first to implement it
| amaccuish wrote:
| Why the need for a Cloud HSM?
| whizzter wrote:
| Is this implementation related to the AusweissApp I've seen
| mentioned before (that reads the cert via NFC from a physical
| card) or another implementation?
| nforgerit wrote:
| Congrats, this is the stupidest thing I've been reading all
| day. And that includes the orange man's post.
| hans_castorp wrote:
| German citizen as well.
|
| So with a Jolla phone and Linux laptop, I am left in the cold.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Are you interested in a community-maintained alternative to
| Play Integrity? I work in the finance sector and it's
| increasingly likely I'll have to implement attestation at some
| point. Graphene's examples are adaptable, but we need a DB of
| open Android distribution keys and effective admin to support
| adding and revoking, possibly something like the LVFS system
| for Linux firmware.
| zkmon wrote:
| Google is becoming a bit draconic. They did not allow me to
| create new email account, saying I already have too many
| accounts. But they also don't allow me to delete existing
| accounts, saying there is no authentication method available to
| access/delete those old accounts.
| tsoukase wrote:
| EU depending so much on Goo/App feels suspicious for direct
| lobbying, as someone noted. If I were Ursula, I would draw a red
| line: no US digital dependence. But the rounding error of the
| rounding error of these trillion dollar companies is enough to
| expunge the nonexistent EU infra.
| sylware wrote:
| Well, since it happened also for my gov (France) 10 years ago, we
| can see this pattern happening in the whole EU.
|
| There is a mixure of incompetence and big tech aggressive
| lobbying on gov 'standards' all over EU... making anything
| internet hard locked on big tech ultra-massively complex
| software, protocols and file formats.
|
| In my country, it is the web: classic web support interop was
| actually killed 10 years ago. Now, only web apps requiring one of
| the gigantic and ultra complex web engines from the WHATNG cartel
| are working. No more "small' web engines (including their SDK)
| does work, and it did close the door for good to anything 'not
| big tech' (here the WHATNG cartel), what a bummer, oopsie!
|
| In means in my country, to interact with the gov agencies and
| dependencies, you are now FORCED BY LAW to use only WHATNG cartel
| web engines. Wow, corruption (there is big public money there)?
| brain washing grade lobbying (what seems to be the case)?
| incompetence (always expected on complex matters)?
|
| To add insult to injury, in my country, the ONLY person who have
| the power to fix that is the prime minister (then also the
| president). Oooof!
|
| Of course, very simple classic web sites do work on 'smart
| phones' (apple did threaten to remove its browser... we know why:
| to force a technical hard dependency on them since they have a
| significant amount of the "market").
|
| We all know their weak spot: a simple and stable in time, "good
| enough" to do the job, set of existing protocols/file formats (to
| protect the SDKs, I would include the computer languages, for
| instance excluding c++ and similar for plain and simple C and
| assembly to protect against the obviously ultra-complex SDK
| components): it will reduce dramatically the complexity and size
| of any current and future, local, implementations.
|
| What's seems to be happening when I look at that: some people all
| over EU countries are trying to fight their way out of big tech
| because of gov officials probably being brain washed by lobbying
| (do not exclude the possibility of "corruption" and there is
| always some level) of incompetence which is expected).
|
| Since it is happening in France and Germany, core of the EU...
|
| Now what?
| trklausss wrote:
| Knowing the German, how much of a fiasco will this be? Many
| Germans despise having to go online with specific services due to
| "Datenschutz". Now you are telling them that they need an
| external (American) service in order to use this?
|
| What I don't understand is: ELSTER (taxes) already uses
| electronic signatures, don't these signature already fulfil the
| requirements of eIDAS? Why do we even need Google/Apple?
| coretx wrote:
| Germans are likely going to try and hang the public servants
| for high treason via their constitutional court.
| verisimi wrote:
| Corporations + government = fascism.
|
| Fascism is the reality.
|
| And its global.
|
| Global fascism is what is already the case.
| sajithdilshan wrote:
| As someone living in Germany, the alternative would be snail
| mail, which is used to send a pre-authentication code, username
| and then another code. This is pretty common with insurance
| providers, German traditional banks, etc. However, the annoying
| part is that if you ever forget or lose the code, then you would
| have to request a new one via mail that would arrive like 2 weeks
| after.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The alternative is a secure physical device and that's also the
| correct way to go if you insist on having online ID checks and
| take digital sovereignty seriously instead of making it a joke
| lip service like these implementers do.
| makerofthings wrote:
| Requiring people to use products from one of two private American
| companies with a bad track record of locking people out of their
| accounts is more than "not great". Some things are better not
| done if they can't be done well.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes but in the real world all smartphones are either Apple or
| Android. Europe has zero footprint in either software or
| hardware. It is not creating a requirement to use specific
| products, it is using the products people already have.
|
| So one may argue that the implementers are only taking the
| pragmatic approach regarding something that is out of their
| hands.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| We're talking about an essential government service, not just
| another weather app. You have to look at this through the
| lense of national security, the debate about EU digital
| sovereignty, and the requirements of the GDPR in light of the
| US CLOUD Act, as well as prior decisions of EU courts about
| these issues.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes all that you wrote is true. But that does not magically
| change anything to what I previously stated: in the real
| world all smartphones are either Apple or Android...
|
| I don't know what the eIDAS 2.0 requires in term of
| security but it may make the choice the implementers made
| here unavoidable in practice, as hinted by @webhamster.
|
| If so, it seems that a solution, if technically possible,
| might be to mandate that OSes provide the required security
| features without tie-in.
|
| The outrage in the comments feels a bit like people yelling
| at clouds...
| taotau wrote:
| correction. in the real world all smartphones are either
| apple, android or none/other. in terms of legals, you
| really do have to cater to all three, which is why we
| don't have one world government.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is about a digital wallet, so people who don't have
| a smartphone are out of scope.
|
| Now, "other" than Apple/Android is so small as to be
| negligible and governments also have a duty not to waste
| taxpayers' money, which means not spending hundreds of
| thousands to cater for an ultra small number of people
| who have an easy access to an alternative.
|
| To have government apps work only on iOS and Android is
| perfectly reasonable in the current state of the world
| where this covers 99% of smartphones.
| znort_ wrote:
| > To have government apps work only on iOS and Android is
| perfectly reasonable in the current state of the world
| where this covers 99% of smartphones.
|
| the fundamental flaw with that approach is that it is
| totally unreasonable to have government apps in anything
| _other_ than open source and fully public systems.
| nothing else can really be trusted, and _any_ private
| /closed source option should be disqualified from the get
| go.
|
| the reason is simple: you can't trust private entities or
| opaque systems, and you can't trust government either,
| thus the solution has to be fully transparent or you're
| doing nothing.
|
| the problem with that is that it is hard, expensive
| and/or inconvenient.
| limagnolia wrote:
| Why should I have to have a smartphone to have a digital
| wallet? Smart watches, tablets, laptops, portable game
| consoles, etc, are all perfectly cromulent hardware for
| running a digital wallet.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > in the real world all smartphones are either Apple or
| Android...
|
| So you're claiming that Mobian doesn't exist? PureOS
| doesn't exist? PostmarketOS doesn't exist? Ubuntu Touch
| doesn't exist? SailfishOS doesn't exist?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Don't be disingenuous. All of what you mention are
| rounding errors in term of market share.
|
| This discussion feels unreal, really.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Essential EU government services cannot be devised on the
| hope that US companies will invent something that -
| contrary to current US legislation - will somehow provide
| the attestation services needed in a GDPR-compliant way
| without forcing EU citizens to provide personal data to
| US companies.
|
| If it's not possible to create such a system for mobile
| phones because of legal issues (as you seem to
| acknowledge and judges have found in the past), then the
| focus would have to be on creating hardware devices in
| the EU, ideally with open source hardware and software.
| These can be made reasonably secure, have been used by
| banks for a long time, and would enhance digital
| sovereignty.
|
| What I find unacceptable is the attitude "well, it will
| violate the law but as a matter of practicality it's the
| only choice we have right now so we'll just do it."
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _Essential EU government services cannot be devised on
| the hope that US companies..._
|
| I don't disagree. I am just pointing out that this is
| wishful thinking right now.
|
| As said, Europe has zero footprint in hardware or
| software so the choice is either not to develop any
| digital services or to accept that they will run of
| foreign hardware/software because everything is either
| Android or Apple and runs on hardware that is from
| US/Taiwan/China.
|
| Developping honegrown alternives is pie in the sky or a
| 20 year project if we are optimistic (which I am not)...
|
| Frankly, many comments, and the reactions to mine, show
| how out of touch and idealistic or naive the HN crowd can
| be.
| subscribed wrote:
| It literaly has created the dependency on google when thought
| Android offers the standard/generic AOSP attestation.
|
| Also you weirdly forget all the Chinese phones. There's also
| some tiny European brand which will have absolutely no way to
| limit their users dependency on the famously hostile and
| unconctactable provider.
| FabHK wrote:
| Most Chinese smartphones run Android (Huawei uses
| HarmonyOS).
| qwertox wrote:
| Maybe that will force the companies to not be allowed to just
| lock you out of the account.
| gmerc wrote:
| Ya, sorry, no, maybe is not really a durable position here.
| subscribed wrote:
| You, your siblings, your parents, etc, etc.
| spwa4 wrote:
| So what can be used as an attestation API? WHAT will make sure
| that when a phone says "you're paying 10 euro to $coffee_place"
| that it isn't a bitmap being shown over "you're paying 10.000
| euro to $scammer", above the pay button. Note: needs to be a
| real guarantee that isn't a permission question away from going
| away.
|
| Either governments can develop (and pay for) THAT technology,
| or they can use Apple/Google ...
| xorcist wrote:
| That seems like a weak argument to require attestation? What
| would attestation prevent that scenario, specifically?
| spwa4 wrote:
| Oh I see your confusion. It is not trying to prove it's not
| cheating with the UI (or remote control, or ...) to the
| owner of the phone. It's proving to the owner of the
| website (or app, or SIM, or ...) that it's really the user
| agreeing to the contract on the screen. Or, more to the
| point, it's proving it to courts after the fact so they'll
| convict the owner of the phone rather than the business or
| government.
|
| The scenario it would prevent is that a government gets a
| filled in form with someone requesting unemployment
| benefits, or reimbursement for a medical procedure on
| account X ... and then government finds out after payment,
| later, in court, that the owner of the phone never agreed
| to it and it needs to pay it out again (because the claim,
| true or not, that a scammer initiated the payment agreement
| in some way rather than the owner). Same for business and
| agreeing to a loan and ...
|
| It is NOT to protect you, the owner of the phone, against
| scammers (it does not really do that at all), it is to
| protect companies and especially governments AGAINST the
| owner of the phone. It is a way to fire most EU government
| employees by allowing automation that currently can't work
| because you can't legally trust phone and internet
| automation to be binding in court.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Do you imply that google can prove such a thing or it's
| just a security theater for (((compliance)))? AFAIK
| attestation attests hardware, not software, but hardware
| attestation is self contained and doesn't require any
| remote cartel permission, cf yubikey attestation.
| spwa4 wrote:
| The EU is trying to make a standard that courts will
| enforce because EU politicians (the commission, not
| parliament) really want that. But all EU countries are
| trying to save cash without touching what's causing the
| money problem (that would be pensions, there is no way in
| hell EU governments can spend what's required to keep
| pensions going as is even in 2026. In the past they spent
| all the pension money instead of investing and now they
| have to start paying it back, except they can't. And if
| they touch pensions ... well there's a French joke. It
| goes something like this "One of the greatest
| accomplishments of the 20th century is that you can see
| Paris from space. Look there it is, that flame right
| there ...")
|
| So they're just going to use the Apple/Google standards
| and declare the job done. So it's theater from all sides.
| Politicians will pretend this is a good solution because
| they don't want to spend real money, and they really want
| to tempt EU kids to get loans on their smartphones
| because, you know, in the EU you're protected from
| companies exploiting you. Of course, that just means
| governments will have to do it instead.
| xorcist wrote:
| The argument here is kind of hard to follow. Who is the
| "owner" of the phone, "the user" is also mentioned and it
| is not clear if these two are the same. Is the owner of
| the phone in the controlling-software sense, Google, or
| is it the end user? Both fits, and both are commonly
| used.
|
| Because if it is the end user, the strong version of the
| argument would be as follows: The end user signs a
| document, baked in is an attestation that Google
| guarantees that this device is an approved Android device
| with a clean boot chain and a Chrome web browser. Then
| the end user contests the signature in court, either
| because they didn't understand what they signed, or they
| did not sign it at all, or did it under threat. How could
| the attestation help here?
|
| I do not have experience with all EU countries, of
| course, but more than one, and nowhere is this an issue
| today. Countries use a wide variety of electronic
| identification, from soft certificates and mobile phones
| to smart cards. But as far as I know, all countries
| accept signatures made even with normal Windows PCs. You
| can contest a signed document in court for a multitude of
| reasons, but that's not specific to electronic
| signatures.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I'm not sure I want my government to develop that technology.
|
| Government software is usually low-quality, expensive
| procurement crap, often riddled with security holes, and an
| exercise in checkbox checking. UX and user friction can't be
| expressed as a verifiable clause in a procurement contract,
| so they're ignored.
|
| Besides, every time EU governments tried to force smartphone
| manufacturers to pre-install government apps, the population
| freaked out over (unwarranted) surveillance concerns. This
| isn't something you can do without pre-installing apps (you
| don't want these APIs opened up because then attestation
| loses all meaning).
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| It's not that difficult, just `git pull lineage`.
| subscribed wrote:
| In case of Android - AOSP attestation.
|
| Not necessarily the company that locks out entire family
| because one of the family member jacked off on the chat with
| Gemini model.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| There are no alternatives.
|
| I mean you could use Huawei and others, but the FUD campaigns
| against chinese manufacturers was pretty agressive in the EU.
| letmetweakit wrote:
| :facepalm:
| ttkari wrote:
| Oh but isn't that great. This is just the kind of digital
| sovereignty these times call for.
|
| Sometimes I wish the Germans had an island of their own somewhere
| up north near the american continent.
| robertDouglass wrote:
| lobbyists!
| kkfx wrote:
| Simply eIDAS must works on smart-cards and desktop USB/built-in
| card reader, not mobile (cr)App.
|
| BUT government do not want sovereignty more than they want snoop
| on citizens.
| coretx wrote:
| Time for a digital Reichstag fire. When will the germans stop
| repeating history ?
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| How many billions will EU countries spend on this bull shit? Who
| needs it?
| ldng wrote:
| The solution is simple :
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/artcl/I+want+to+...
|
| Because you'll be stonewalled by devs because they can't really
| changer decisions made bu higher ups.
|
| Edit: I'd sign it, but don't want manage and diffuse it.
| 8note wrote:
| What does the eIDAs do?
|
| Does this lock Germans out of society if they dont buy American
| tech?
| txrx0000 wrote:
| This is about mass surveillance and control.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Revelations
|
| The existence of eIDAS itself is already a big problem. They're
| going to try to gradually push laws to make it so that you'll
| need a government issued signature to do _anything_. That 's when
| they'll have total power over you because they can simply refuse
| to issue.
|
| Modern computing and communications technologies can be leveraged
| to build infinitely stable authoritarian regimes. It's even
| possible for democracies to stumble into it on their own as they
| attempt to regulate these new technologies. In hindsight, the
| Internet was built wrong. It has a top-down structure which all
| of human civilization is beginning to mirror.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > They're going to try to gradually push laws to make it so
| that you'll need a government issued signature to do anything.
|
| And in the EU it's already nearly the case. The dystopian
| horror that KYC/AML has become for honest citizens is beyond
| belief. And they're of course hiding behind the excuse that
| "bad guys are laundering money": but going after actual drug
| dealers, of course they're not doing that. We now have articles
| wondering if Belgium (where most of the EU institutions do live
| and where all these totalitarian laws are passed) has become a
| "narco-state" (where criminals make the rules).
|
| People's life can be ruined when some employee, somewhere,
| decides he wants to bumps his SAR quota (Suspicious Activity
| Report): you can have a real-estate transaction fail (and have
| hence moreover to pay a 10% penalty to the other party) if
| either a notary, bank employee, real-estate agency employee
| decided that they've got the nostalgy of the Gestapo-time and
| decided to act like a good little nazi (yes, Godwin's law: for
| we're literally talking about totalitarism).
|
| I recently had an notary's employee bother my brother for the
| source of funds when he bought an apartment... A quarter of a
| century ago. A quarter of a century ago and he was talking to
| my brother as if he was a criminal for he didn't have access
| anymore to the bank wire transfer from 25+ years ago. It's
| crazy for the exact same controls had _already_ been done 25+
| years ago when he bought the apartment. And the notary 's
| employee fully knows that. (regarding that case my brother is
| currently looking into the national federation of notaries and
| he's going to file a complaint: he's got emails from that
| notary's employee that are totally out of line).
|
| The problem is way too much power over the lives of others is
| put into the hands of petty people: petty bank employees, petty
| notary employees, petty public servants. The same kind of
| people who were all too happy to out jews during WWII and who
| were making sure trains would leave on time.
|
| I previously had a folder where every single money transfer of
| more than 10 K EUR was saved: I know do it for every transfer
| below 5 K EUR. And these are to be kept forever for I know that
| me or my wife or my daughter shall invariably meet
| motherfuckers asking them "proof of the source of funds from 30
| years ago when your father bought that collectible car" (worth
| less than 20 K back then btw, but worth 6 digits now).
|
| Just fuck these systems and fuck anyone working on it and fuck
| all the nazis participating in it.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| > They're going to try to gradually push laws to make it so
| that you'll need a government issued signature to do anything.
| That's when they'll have total power over you because they can
| simply refuse to issue.
|
| The more this signature is necessary the harder it becomes to
| deny issueing it to somebody.
|
| I don't see how this changes much compared to nowadays. You can
| already require an ID for all kinds of these and the government
| already has total control over those. So what changes? China
| manages to ruin the lives of the people illegally born under
| the 1-child-policy for decades already, all without systems
| like eIDAS.
|
| You can't protect yourself from authoritarian regimes with tech
| or good policy since those will just get ignored. Look at
| Trumps war with Iran, where did Congress agree to it?
|
| I'm not a fan of these systems either, I also think software
| should be open and no vendor lock-in should exist. But I don't
| think this will change much to be honest.
| txrx0000 wrote:
| It will matter a lot in the long run. I will outline one
| concrete way it will matter, which I think is the most
| critical, but there are other ways it will do damage besides
| this:
|
| Right now, physical ID is only required for government
| services, for the most part. But digital signatures can be
| extended later to gate all services and purchases, both
| online and physical, including non-government ones. For
| example, you can't host a website without a gov approved
| signature for each website.
|
| Under a system like that, you would rarely find out when the
| gov refuses to issue a signature, or when any kind of
| injustice happens, really. Websites where people can talk
| about bad things happening to them will simply be denied a
| signature to legally operate, so they're given the ultimatum
| to "voluntarily" censor posts, or be shut down. It becomes
| impossible to have this very conversation on a public
| platform with any kind of meaningful reach. And they already
| have this kind of system in China, since you brought it up.
| In fact, they have domestic surveillance systems that make
| the Snowden disclosures look cute.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| eIDIOTS I guess
| Glorified2202 wrote:
| Can every german citizen opt out?
| Glorified2202 wrote:
| Can every german citizen just opt out and not have to use any
| kind of digital ID?
| docmars wrote:
| This is such an egregious and embarrassing breach in privacy,
| it's crazy.
|
| GDPR good, but oh no... gotta spy on everyone now.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-05 23:01 UTC)