this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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Good analysis, thanks.
But IMO this bit was superfluous POV. An alternative theory is that nobody is secretly scheming to do anything, least of all the chaotic EU apparatus, and that most politicians are not experts and they are simply responding to various competing stimuli, as humans do. Notably elections and media hype and lobbyists. Personally I don't get why so many people attribute to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence, but whatever, I'm in the minority and that's fine.
Interesting detail about the eID certificates. You're right that Americans will find this crazy in the way that we Europeans might not. Perhaps Americans are right.
Yeah that's a very big possibility for the state of the EU, I'm not gonna deny it.
Yes, I've seen a TON of American propaganda and people flipping out about central / govt issued IDs, driving licenses and whatnot. I also know that most US states use still use rudimentary paper-only documents to identify citizens... I mean the situation is so bad that even Apple is trying to digitize them.
Meanwhile here in Europe most countries / people have smartcards (that in some cases combine multiple documents, like the actual ID, social security ID, tax number, driving license etc.) and are using it to login to govt websites and to sign documents. It's just crazy fun to see that in the US there are tons of companies offering ways to digitally sign documents in "a safe way" and even again, Apple, creating the means to scan a signature while here those things have little to no value and people are required to actually use their identity cards to sign docs. lol
Yes the PDF-"signing" mascarade is beyond ridiculous but that's definitely a thing in Europe too, certainly France and Germany. Maybe only for private businesses at this point, yeah. Personally I have a whole production line up and ready for photoshopping sigs and initials and even handwritten dates onto PDFs in order to comply with dumb instructions. It's as if a handwritten signature, even in PNG form, has a magical superpower to make a document authentic. A bit like the security theater at entrances to buildings and transport. What's important is to go through the motions of securing something, to prove that you really want it to be secure, rather than actually to secure it. A rite, basically.
But yes, having said all that, the alternative is maybe even worse! We're gonna find out.
While Germany cards doesn't seem to have a digital / smartcard component, French ones do. In Portugal and Spain at least you're required to sign digital documents with your identity card, using a smartcard reader + a small utility app provided by the gov. Only those have legal value and this is enforced. Scanned handwritten signatures have zero value, and I know this also applied for other EU countries.