- If a politically stable nation with a good international reputation were to guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil and run by its companies, that nation could become the Swiss bankers of data.
Rolling your own "digital sovereignty" is not going to be cheap for most nations, and many other nations simply won't be trusted by anyone, least of all their own citizens.
It's a bit flabbergasting that U.S. tech companies didn't see this coming years ago and lobby hard for the U.S. to repeal anti-privacy legislation like the CLOUD act. Their lunch is sitting out in the open, completely unwatched, waiting to be eaten by somebody else and it's far too late to do anything about it.
- The more astonishing thing is that people regularly talk about this in the context of hosting providers when by far the more significant threat is mobile platforms.
There are a zillion hosting companies, many of them outside the US. Now which mobile platform are you going to use that doesn't give one of two US companies root on your population's phones?
- I have a sliding scale of devices I trust more or less (I trust nothing completely).
At the top of the trust scale is a self built desktop running fedora then way further down is my apple devices (iPads) and then even further down is my android phone.
Open source on hardware you control is the least worst option but since the hardware comes from abroad/countries I don’t trust much (including the US) not perfect.
- Soon thanks to Digital ID all your important business will have to go through the devices you trust the least.
- There's nothing about a digital ID system that would inherently require the use of a pre-approved OS.
Some countries went with SmartCards that you can use on any platform that can communicate with a card reader basically.
- Hah, you wish. See how maintainers of a reference implementation resist removing Google dependency here: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
- Probably but I’ll just end up with a separate device just for that.
- This is in no way a solution to the population-scale problem of a belligerant nation having root on the citizenry's mobile phones/cameras/GPS units/network scanners
- > Now which mobile platform are you going to use that doesn't give one of two US companies root on your population's phones?
HarmonyOS
- Something with ~0% market share outside of China and which trades the US having root for China having root is not a viable alternative.
In theory you could have something produced by a country other countries might be willing to trust, but the number of countries that are both trustworthy and large enough to sustain a globally-viable platform is practically the empty set at this point.
Which means the thing it calls for is something open source, since that both allows contributions from multiple countries and solves the trust issue by leaving no single entity in control of it.
- One of the ironies of the TikTok-China discussion was that as an individual in the US, I would much prefer the Chinese govt have access to all my data over the U.S. government, just like I suspect individuals in China would be much better off if the U.S. government had all their data over the Chinese government.
So giving your data to the Chinese government, while not a great solution, may still be preferable over giving it to the U.S. for someone in the EU given the closer relationship between EU governments and the U.S. than EU governments and the Chinese government.
Of course, this may be the opposite of what you want from a national perspective.
- My bank account is much more likely to get wiped by Chinese hackers than the CIA.
- Viability is debatable. There are tens of millions of smartphone users in the US who are vastly more exposed to US law-enforcement abuses and intrusiveness than anything China would care to try. Chinese emigres excepted.
In other words China doesn't have to be trustworthy as long as the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.
- You could take your analogy further, and consider why the Swiss banking isn’t so opaque anymore. Hint: people who did really inhuman things used that system to store their profits, and the Swiss society, developed and stable as it is, decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.
- > ...decided that they don’t want to bear the moral cost of it anymore.
And of course the external pressure to loosen banking secrecy laws has been huge, particularly from the US e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS_tax_evasion_controversies
- But ultimately the Swiss decides what Switzerland does, and the population deciding they didn't want that, was the deciding factor. Been pressure on Switzerland about that for a long time, from many countries, and in fact still there is, as many still think they're not doing enough. Not everything in the world happens because of the US :)
- The US department requests that all foreign financial institutions share all their US clients details.
Wanna refuse? No problem. Of course you can. You're outside the US jurisdiction.
But every USD transaction you do is subject to, IIRC, 30% tax. Unless the US decides to block it altogether.
- You are naiive and/or stupid. And/or gaslighting. Most likely the latter since you have to sugarcoat your message with trailing emoji.
UBS tried to hold for as long as they could, and the choice the US given them is "pay a fine (accrues daily) or be cut from world financial system run by dollar".
UBS ultimately paid a 780 million fine. The rest of Swiss banks followed suit immediately.
Many things in the world happen, and most of the dumb bullshit that happens is imposed by US. This naiivete has to stop, the times have changed, and you, you spefically are part of the problem.
- Please maintain proper decorum. Ad hominem attacks aren't beneficial to the discussion on HN. Thank you.
- The Swiss didn't vet their clients. If Vladimir Putin wants to contract a data centre on your soil for the privacy, you can always have regulations that say, "No.".
- The entire premise of "other countries can trust your companies to protect their privacy" is that you can't. "US reads Dutch emails" is the thing you have to not do.
- You can be strict about who you do business with while still respecting their privacy once they are set up.
The respectable, politically popular country setting this up would simply say yes to the International Criminal Court, but no to Putin.
This doesn't work well as a blacklist of "everyone's allowed unless they turn out to be sanctioned", because some shell company or reseller could register and actually be a front for Russia or whatever other bogeyman. But just serving enormous respectable organisations is a big niche in itself.
- But now you're proposing something that doesn't solve the problem for the vast majority of people, since nearly everyone is neither the International Criminal Court nor Vladimir Putin.
- It might solve it for the majority of people by compute use, though. Charge $100,000 one time auditing fee to get approved for it. For a Fortune 500 company or EU government agency or a big NGO that's nothing.
- If the payments go through SWIFT, the problem is solved if either party is sanctioned.
- > Swiss society decided
Nice attempt at whitewashing and gaslighting, but the only entity here that decided that is the fucking US of A.
- > It's a bit flabbergasting that U.S. tech companies didn't see this coming years ago and lobby hard for the U.S. to repeal anti-privacy legislation like the CLOUD act
The US big tech has been in bed with the US establishment since eternity.
- It is not as simple as banking - people tend to want low-latency and high-speed connection which necessitate the data center to be in close proximity. Which basically means that founding a country with strong data protection laws somewhere in Antarctic won't get you many clients in Europe.
- that's a psyop from the cloud evangelism era. a few hundred milliseconds of latency make fuck all any difference for 95% of things, even voice/video calls.
- That is just like, your opinion, man? I personally find it a very poor experience talking to someone over high latency connection when we tend to always start talking over each other.
- The question is, is that really only due to data center geo? I am always amazed how low latency and high quality Facetime between Europe <-> Australia is. Seems like good engineering can overcome less optimal geographics.
- I find that hard to believe. Are you implying that Apple is running their own fiber network providing low-latency connection between Europe and Australia? Or what kind of "good engineering"?
- I can vouch for GP's exact experience. Facetime does feel much smoother than other videocalling apps for Aus<>Europe. Of course they don't run their own fiber network. The good engineering is making it feel smooth and good despite that. At its core, nothing about computing is smooth. Everything is based on making it feel that way, using countless techniques.
- What "techniques"? Audio/video over high-latency connection is not a computer game where there all all kinds of latency compensation techniques - several meeting participants start speaking at the same time, realize they do only after RTT, stop, then awkwardly wait for a moment and repeat hoping for no "collision", rinse-repeat. Everyone who often has meetings with participants connecting from different continents knows what I'm talking about. But you can have this in beautiful high-definition "smooth" 4K if bandwidth is high enough, yes.
- If the premise is that you want to host data for people in Europe who don't want it to be under the control of the US then Frankfurt is a lower latency place to be than Virginia anyway.
- OP had a much stronger premise ("guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil") than what you described.
- > people tend to want low-latency and high-speed
that might change is privacy is an option. The real problem is the cost of building in the middle of nowhere, even if you use spare Starlink capacity, where do you get power & personnel from?
- > where do you get power
Wind, hydro, sun? This is 2026 after all.
> personnel
Depends on what that theoretical country would offer. Some kind of strong constitutionally-enshrined protections for privacy and perhaps from tyranny-of-the-majority exploiting upper-middle class like all other western countries and with strong IT jobs market? Are you kidding, sign me up!
- The original post was "somewhere in Antarctic", what does that offer?
- I chose Antarctic as an example because it is one of few places on Earth with significant uninhabited land where one could theoretically establish a new sovereign state. Are you implying that all popular green energy technologies are somehow unfeasible there?
- Yes, the "somehow" is that no one want to live there, and the associated expense of building there probably outweighs the benefits. I'm also sceptical you could establish a new sovereign state there.
- > Rolling your own "digital sovereignty" is not going to be cheap for most nations
neither are Microsoft 365 subscriptions at governmental scales
No offence, but I do believe a few Dutch ppl could run email servers for cheaper
- The fact that government agencies, particularly those that deal with international concerns like these are using non sovereign tech for communications is mind-blowing. They might as well use public gmail.. atleast it would be cheaper. If you want it not exposed directly, host it yourself and take measures to secure it for intended eyes only. This should be common sense.
- It's mind blowing that government bureaucrats would be permitted to use commercial providers for official business at all. The provider being foreign is merely the cherry on top.
I was going to ask why something like mail.gov.nl doesn't exist but it turns out [0] (edit: wikipedia is full of lies) that they don't have a reserved second level domain for official government services to use? Is this really one of the countries pushing digital IDs?
> Official second-level domains do not exist.
- Privatization: in much of the (neo)liberal West, it is seen as better to use commercial providers. They're supposed to be cheaper and better, because they're not using (union) civil service staff.
Yes, this results in enshittification.
- The thing that results in enshittification is market consolidation. Notice that Comcast sucks whereas there aren't a lot of complaints about Big Shampoo because that's a fairly competitive market.
If the government needs trucks then they should just buy trucks, not build a factory to make trucks and then another factory to make lead acid batteries for the trucks and then start mining lead to make the batteries etc.
At some point they have to interface with the market and you still have to solve the problem of keeping the market competitive and keeping the bidding process from being captured. If you're not doing those things then you're screwed either way; if you are doing them then it's better to just buy finished goods than to have civil servants manufacturing doorknobs and operating rubber tree plantations to make weather stripping.
- I think that's true for widgets but it becomes much more opaque when it comes to digital services, particularly those that handle sensitive information. Sure there's govcloud and fedramp these days but if the US federal government had chosen to build that hardware out in house I think that would have been a reasonable decision. It's similar to private versus in house security personnel where there are arguments in favor of both.
- I'd understand contracting a commercial provider to run the government infra, with extensive contractual obligations surrounding exactly how data is to be handled. What's wild to me is turning government bureaucrats loose to send and receive likely very sensitive information using the third party provider of their choice.
- Ah yes, the art of making things shitty.
- That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.
- It exists, but the vast majority of government services dont use it (i.e. taxes are just done through belastingdienst.nl).
- Yes, which I think is also very common, but what Wikipedia was referring to is that there's no official second-level domain for Government, unlike say gov.br or gov.uk).
Gov.nl is just a domain owned by the Dutch Government, like gov.ie or belgium.be.
- Ah. Just a blatant inaccuracy on wikipedia I take it. That does make a bit more sense.
- Yep. gov.nl is in the PSL[1] and there are plenty of used subdomains (e.g. https://business.gov.nl/)
- As far as I can tell .gov.nl is only used for pages aimed at i.e. expats and businesses. Most services dutch people use simply have a .nl page like the digital id or filing taxes.
- This makes sense because gov is anglocentric and would make the URLs sound weird in non-English countries.
- There’s no reason they couldn’t have picked a different second-level suffix. Spanish-speaking countries use e.g. .gob.mx, France uses .gouv.fr.
- And overheid.nl is their government site for that reason.
- I remember 15 years ago when our Minister of Foreign affairs was gleefully telling a gadget-vlogger about his personal setup where he was not using 'official email', but his own private Blackberry / iPhone (I forgot) and email for communicating all things. Out of 'frustration with how long it took for official IT to get things sorted'. Video is still online even: https://vimeo.com/13224190
- I don't think Americans understand what US used to mean for the rest of the world.
America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old world where you invest or you go to build things, where your past or identity wasn't the primary concern but your dreams your abilities were. It wasn't nationalistic place, it was open to all and pretty much it was the group work of humanity. When aliens arrive, they arrived to US and even if not, they certainly wanted to speak to the US president as the leader of humanity.
Unlike Europe it wasn't stuck into petty identity conflicts, unlike Russia or China it was governed by the law and the law would protect you from the sneaky politicians. Unlike Europe, US companies were fair businesses that could protect you the customer from bad things even if America developed European or Asian habits.
Why wouldn't you use anything from America? Americans don't understand how transactional they are becoming and that from now on they will need to perform. Like the Tesla boycott, suddenly Tesla had to price their vehicles to match the functionality they provide in order to be able to sell cars again.
Currently the US tech tools are better as they were refined for decades with huge resources and user bases, so it is hard to switch away and at this time it's the perception of risk and US no longer being cool are what pushes for the transition but if EU is lucky Trump will invade Greenland and will make people take the inconvenient path and US tech industry will compact into 350M US market. Europeans will have a few years of sub-par tech and then will have good sovereign tech.
- This reminds me of a 1995 Norwegian song, freely translated by me and chatgtp:
We dreamed of America where the soft wind lives. We dreamed of America where honey flowers grow, where the sky is vast and blue with stars and stripes upon it too. We dreamed of America, but not anymore, no, not anymore. I don't know when people first began dreaming of America. Long before Columbus, people dreamed of America, I think. A place of everlasting flowers where everyone was free and happy, and no one had to take off their hat for anyone unless they wanted to themselves. A smiling paradise where love lasts forever, and old age is beautiful, a place without any smell. In 1945—before that too, but certainly in 1945—I knew what I was going to be when I grew up. I was going to be an *American*. That spring, the first films from the Pacific War arrived, where the Americans stood with bent knees on jungle paths and shot Japanese soldiers with U.S. carbines. The Japanese were ugly, with protruding teeth and protruding ribs, while the Americans were brave, handsome, clean-cut, and immortal. And even if they did die, they died with a courageous smile and said: "Give this letter to my mother; she will understand." While the Japanese died like grubs and worms, and we felt no pity for them. Besides being ugly, they were portrayed as horribly stupid—so stupid that they spoke broken English even when talking to each other. I know that we dreamed of America well into the 1960s. A scentless land beyond the sea, where everyone had cars and white teeth. I don't know exactly when it stopped. But one day in the 1960s, we not only stopped loving America as a god; we began hating America as a fallen god. And nothing falls so heavily, so hard, and so deep as a fallen god who turns out not to be a god at all, but merely America. Then America was blamed not only for the Vietnam War and environmental disasters, but also, for example, for car culture. And the greatest share of the blame fell on the man who discovered America. Now, 487 years after his death, Christopher Columbus is blamed not only for the slave trade from West Africa, but also for the murder of Kennedy, and for all the worlds traffic accidents. Now they say Columbus was a bastard. Because it was he who discovered America in 1492. - > America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor
wat
- Indeed, hilariously blind to the actual history of the US.
They’ve (just like any powerful country) never been good though they do have excellent propaganda.
- Sometimes I envy the illiterate.
At least they cannot read this ridiculous load of propaganda.
- Don't go too hard on yourself on this, you are doing just fine.
- Given enough time on HN, we will all get there someday.
- This kind of sums up my sentiment.
All throughout my adult life the US (for all its apparent faults) was to me a shining example of progress and humanity. It was the best large scale implementation of human rights, laws, and democracy. Sure it was far from perfect but “as good as it gets, for now”
Became very disillusioned with that image of the US in the last couple of years. Maybe it’s always been like that - but the recent cronyism, the blatant openly displayed corruption and complete disregard for all the values it used to champion really destroyed the good image I had of the US.
In years to come they will realise what this loss of image (or “aura” as the kids would say) really means in a very practical and blunt sense.
- > was to me a shining example of progress and humanity.
Which country was the US bombing to the ground at this period you're reminiscing on?
- You don't get it, the US government could have been bad or good but that wasn't the concern when it comes to America. America was a separate thing from the folks in Washington, some politicians and might have done very bad things or the military industrial complex might have pushed the politicians to start wars but this wasn't what America stands for. Americans used to be the good guys, even when bombing kindergartens in the Middle East because whoever was responsible for that would have had paid for it in front of the American legal system or American people.
- > because whoever was responsible for that would have had paid for it in front of the American legal system or American people
That literally never happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre?wprov=sfla1
> By June 17, 2008, six defendants had their cases dropped and a seventh was found not guilty.[5] The only one of the eight charged to face punishment was Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich. On October 3, 2007, the Article 32 hearing investigating officer recommended that charges of murder be dropped and Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide in the deaths of two women and five children.[6] Further charges of assault and manslaughter were ultimately dropped. Wuterich pled guilty to the only remaining charge, one count of negligent dereliction of duty, and was convicted on January 24, 2012.[7][8]
- It doesn't matter, that was the perception and the expectation. Americans themselves were used to seen as blameless, since those things were against what US stands for.
- Dude, seriously, what are you smoking? Some nutcases literally flew a plane into civillian buildings as a response to the works of these Washington minority.
- I think you need to read more carefully, you are arguing against things you imagine I said. Write down what you believe you are objecting to, try to find that in the things I wrote.
- >Americans themselves were used to seen as blameless, since those things were against what US stands for.
...
- What do you think that means exactly? Please consider to use words instead of dots. I am sure that those dots have some concrete meaning but that is in your head, we are different people and I am not able to read what you constructed in your imagination.
- American soldiers committed the Mỹ Lai Massacre.
American soldiers trained their weapons on those Americans to halt the killing.
America has always contained multitudes, but chose to see the best in itself and the world saw it reflected in that light.
One of the most shocking things to me was visiting Vietnam and going to the Museum of American War Crimes in Ho Chi Minh City and almost the first thing you see walking in is the words of the US Declaration of Independence in enormous letters, printed across an entire wall: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
They are throwing America's own principles back in its face, castigating America for behaving in a way that is un-American. The world believed in what America claims it believes.
- The constitution is a piece of paper written by dead white men.
Principles have never been about that. The world has never been about that. It's never been something anyone who wasn't "that kind of nerd" could believe in. Not even up for debate.
- You say that, but pieces of paper written by dead white men have remade the world for good and for ill. All of 20th century history stands in the shadow of Das Kapital.
- It seems like a specific thing has changed.
It used to be that when the US did something bad, people would point to the constitution and the American ideals and say "this isn't living up to our promise".
Now instead when people point to the constitution and American ideals people say "those were written by dead white men" as if to justify cynically discarding them in favor of something heinous.
- Yes, US was also the guide star when it comes to dilemmas. When not sure, check out what Americans do and they will probably have it figured it out without the bias that we may have due to historical reasons.
I firmly believe that the dominant feeling towards US today isn't anger or hate, its heartbreak and disappointment.
- As a kid, I used to regard US culture as a source of inspiration. Be awed by its achievements, innovation & military strength. Have great respect for its founders & various US-based historic figures. Be greatful (to this day!) for the sacrifice US soldiers (among others) brought to help free Europe in WWII.
As I grew older, I'd learn more about bad things US did throughtout history. Downsides of its policies. Some of the burdens it placed on other nations. Shortcuts it took to enhance the American way of life @ the cost of people elsewhere. Examples are just too many. The shining beacon became a grey area. But overall, tended to regard US' influence as a net positive.
These days, it's crystal clear to me why so many people cherish a deep hatred towards the US. Again: reasons are many & complicated. I don't happen to be among them, but understand their reasons.
US has fallen from being a shining example for the world, to a dumb & selfish kid doing damage everywhere. Damage the rest of the world scrambles to route around.
Sadly, this is not the result of external pressures on the US. Nor the (sole) fault of its current leadership. It came from within. It's damage the US is doing to itself, and to others.
This will not improve any time soon, I think. We'll take Lady Liberty's flame on your way out, thank you very much.
- That’s a good way to frame it.
It might be different for US Americans themselves and a lot of other countries as well; but for a large part of the west this was/is true
- Ah, come on, now that those government agencies and their employees are using "non-sovereign tech" (ie. chatgpt/claude/gemini) for thinking, the emails are basically not a concern at all.
This is ignoring that AI also, of course, lets spying agencies move from having every email ever sent in most countries to actually reacting to every email ever sent in most countries. They can move from helping Boeing make foreign airline companies ignore door closing issues to influencing every last restaurant's drinks buying decision individually.
I mean, I doubt they're there yet, but that's what they'll want to do.
Disaster, meet Catastrophe.
- In the meantime Belgian public sector will use Google Cloud, it seems: https://ittech-pulse.com/news/smals-partners-with-google-clo...
- That's not the case. Smals will use it, that doesn't mean that the rest of the public sector has to follow.
- bonkers
- With DigiID, as with this, I never understood why countries give critical infrastructure contracts away from the country it directly impacts, provided they have a mature tech ecosystem. I thought the whole point was that it was critical?
- Because politicians hate depending on their engineers so much that they are willing to risk high treason charges instead?
- Nobody is getting charged for this in any way.
- Not yet )
- I kinda like where you are going with this.
But I think the only way to establish these laws would be an IT competent judicative branch of the government... which, as we all know, is pretty incompetent in these manners.
- Progress advances one death at a time. As new, younger judges are sworn it, the situation will change in the coming years.
- we never have evidence that providers bribe politicians into signing juicy contracts so I wouldn't claim they do, but it's either that or they're extremely gullible and don't care about their jobs.
consider Hanlon's razor before being mad and sending everyone to court for treason
Either ways, something needs to change
- Is anyone building (open source?) G-Suite - I’m honestly tired of paying Google money and I think everyone needs independence.
- Yes, "Euro-Office" was launched this week. It is a European fork of "OPENOFFICE".
It is open source and supported by Nextcloud, IONOS, Proton, Tuta and more.[1]
I haven't tried it out, bu you can find the documentation on how to host it yourself here: https://euro-office.github.io/documentation/
A more mature alternative would is Nextcloud as it offers a lot more, but setup is reportedly more involved. It does appear to be available for enterprise customers as hosted version as well though: https://nextcloud.com/office/
- Something like nextcloud.com? It's appeared on HN a few times. Some European governments and municipalities have switched to it.
- Not exactly free as in free beer but Collabora, and their 'Collabora Online' suite fits your description. It's effectively online hosted libre office with a few extras.
- Where and how will you host your email service, for example?
- to be clear is the "paying" part or "google" part a problem to you?
- Nextcloud+self hosted email
- No one made the easy pickings of Facebook clone, Reddit clone or Twitter clone for insane profits. You really think someone will make a gsuite?
The person making project X days are over. The energy and drive is extinguished from humanity. Ambition is all that’s left.
- Facebook made a Twitter (now X) clone (Threads) and has reportedly more users than X now [1]. They have also started a Reddit clone as well now (Forum)[2]. Not sure if that one will be a success as well though, as Reddit isn't loosing users like X is.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/18/threads-edges-out-x-in-dai... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/meta-quietly-launches-a-ne...
- Reddit was waiting for Digg to have an incident and milked it to billions. Why was there no project waiting for Reddit to have an incident? (It has had many).
- These things go in cycles, we’ll be back - or potentially something better will come along.
- Please give me all the data I promise I won't look into them. Unless this is about kids. Or terrorism. In fact, I might look into the data without telling you, because fsck /dev/hdu
- they never promised they won't look into them, they just suggest it
The way they break the informative tone and circle around the bush in AZ900 absolutely looks like a admission that they do and is peak hilarious:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/describe-...
>Describe the shared responsibility model
> How responsibilities shift in cloud
"the consumer is responsible for the data and information stored in the cloud. (You wouldn’t want the cloud provider to be able to read your information.) "
- Europe and many other nations will look back on the early 21st century and wonder how they ever thought it was a good idea to willingly give up so much soverignity to foreign powers
- Europe was beaten down, broke and simply kaput.
Then it was split in a camp dependent on the US and a camp dependent on the USSR.
Both the US and USSR spent decades keeping us together but definitely not united.
This runs deep in European political culture.
Until 2 years ago many Dutch people had more in common and more trust in Americans than <insert European country>. If only because half of them go broke once every generation.
- Well the history is more complex than that - let's not rewrite it. The US bossed around and bullied large parts of Europe for decades (and still does). Often we did not have a choice (or, siding with the US was the least-bad option)
- The irony that it is data from civil servants that wan to implement the biggest central digital censorship endeavor in the western hemisphere.
- Netherlands has always been pretty firmly against Chat Control (except for one political party, EPP)
- Is this about EU Chat Control? Because that was mostly pushed from Denmark no?
- Perhaps it originated from there. But EU Chat Control is brought up again and again and again for a vote. They'll continue until some version of it is passed. And then they'll go further with the next privacy infringing regulation to be building on top of it. It is really disheartening for privacy activists, but that is probably the strategy. Wear people out, and push the regulation through when resistance wanes. Note that the Netherlands is on the side of protecting privacy at this point in time. I think it does a great deal to erode trust of EU citizens in the European Union, in a time when that trust is perhaps more important than ever before. For information see: https://fightchatcontrol.eu
- Yes, which is why I commented why I did - poster was pointing at the Netherlands which seemed to misconstrue the current state of the problem.
- Ah, yes. Sure. Proof?
- the danish were one of the strongest Chat Control promovers
- Dutch and Danish are two different nationalities. To be fair they both begin with a D and end with a H so I understand the confusion.
- That’s a very generous understanding.
- And neither are in the Western hemisphere.
- You mean these specific Danish EU civil servants were the ones pushing chat control? Or are we actually talking about completely different people? Not every European is the same person.
- So, completely different country
- But also the U.S. based companies are the biggest lobbyist.
- Maybe the Danish government but not the Danish people.
- In Europe, we dissociate public servants from elected officials. Dutch officials, receiving a lot of money from US-based NGO/foundation, push for chat control and other US interests. Dutch public servants obey official in matters of laws, but can lobby for the tools they use.
- They have been doing it for years? ECHELON isn't exactly new. Also, recent EU and UK actions are not exactly privacy friendly.
- So they aren't one of the Five Eyes, they joined later...
https://tuta.com/blog/fourteen-eyes-countries
And are proposing their own EU version as well....
>Incoming Dutch coalition floats European version of ‘Five Eyes’
https://www.politico.eu/article/new-dutch-government-floats-...
- I don’t understand the problem? If you’re not doing anything wrong, there shouldn’t be anything to hide, right? What’s the big deal? Besides, it’s not like you have any privacy anyway.
(Am I doing this right?)
- Digital sovereignity is not enough. You need to get electronic communications completely off the internet.
- You mean off the web... Properly encrypted email can't be read in a browser (unless you give your keys to Gmail etc);
- Never thought about it, but makes quite a lot of sense.
- Why? e2e encryption and self-hosting exist.
- We've known this since the Snowden leaks 13 years ago. In a couple of years there will probably be a president in the US that will be more palatable for the european political class and we'll all be able to go back to pretending this doesn't happen.
After all the EU is too compromised energetically, militarily, industrially, burocratically and democratically to ever achieve independence. Talking about digital sovereignty as we ban construction of new datacenter is just too cute. This is all just political theater as we peacefully sunset into a museum continent.
- I don’t think that trust is coming back with a simple president swap.
- Downvotes for stating a reasonable, and probably correct argument.
Europe's biggest problem (I do not mean just the EU, I mean everyone from the UK to Russia) is that it is in denial about its decline, weakness and irrelevance to the rest of the world.
The UK is a bit of an exception in being aware of it and actually talking about it. That is about it.
- "Europe's biggest problem (I do not mean just the EU, I mean everyone from the UK to Russia) is that it is in denial about its decline, weakness and irrelevance to the rest of the world."
I disagree on this broad statement.
- Why? I see statements like this as evidence of denial - the same with the downvotes. No real counter argument, no evidence, just - "you are wrong".
Europe is relatively a much smaller fraction of the global economy or population than it was a few decades ago. It is militarily less significant. How is that not a decline?
Shooting the messenger is just another sign of being in denial.
- >No real counter argument, no evidence, just - "you are wrong".
You presented no argument yourself, just a broad "denial". Which is, as GP said, is wrong. I am sure plenty of people are in denial but plenty are well aware of the real situation and doing things about it.
- " Europe is relatively a much smaller fraction of the global economy or population than it was a few decades ago. It is militarily less significant. How is that not a decline? "
Yes and most of my friends are aware. It isnt a big problem because Quality of Life is still very fine. So present your arguments. How are people in denial?
- The EU in just the past year has signed deals with Latin America and India in addition to the already existing ones with South Korea, Canada, Japan etc.
It has positioned itself at the center of the world's largest free trade zone.
It's managed to replace US contributions to Ukraine and looks like its in the process of bloodying Russia's nose.
Reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
- Free trade didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine and it didn't convert China into a democracy. And the india's deal is saddling us with more third world immigration that will only make things worse.
It seems to me that this is still all the EU not keeping up with where the world is going. We started drafting the mercosur agreement 27 years ago so we finalize it and call it a victory, all that it's probably going to do is precipitate the demise of our domestic agribusiness, so that farmers won't be able to cause a ruckus in Brussels anymore.
- > Free trade didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine and it didn't convert China into a democracy.
We do not need China to be a democracy. That’s a matter for the Chinese people. Imposing a form of government from outside rarely works and is really counter-productive most of the time.
- The point of all this free trade ideology is that it would make the whole world into peaceful liberal democracies. If it doesn't do that, why are we doing it? We're just making ourselves dependent on dangerous dicators while simultaneously enriching them.
No, it's truly not. Yes, for some time it was said (and probably believed) that free trade, capitalism, and democracy were all mutually dependent. But that has turned out to be false.The point of all this free trade ideology is that it would make the whole world into peaceful liberal democracies.But the reason for free trade is economy, and that it in theory makes everyone richer (but not necessarily free). In reality things are more complicated, both in term of strategic dependency, and distribution of the increased wealth. But economy is the answer to your question.
- Our defense industry and economic might are plenty to stop Russia.
China's system of government is China's matter. I think we could learn a lot from them, actually.
Immigration will be vital to the survival of Europe. We are far below replacement level birth rates and we'll need new young people to keep our societies functioning. Being European is about values, not the color of your skin. If immigrants don't live up to those, we can sanction. But we can't just let Europe die out because of some sense of racial superiority.
- > Immigration will be vital to the survival of Europe. We are far below replacement level birth rates and we'll need new young people to keep our societies functioning
Third world immigration actually makes things worse in two ways. The first one is that we have recently discovered that third world immigrants are net negative economically across their lifetime due to social security. The second one is that they all move to the big cities exacerbating the sponge city problem and its effects on fertility.
> But we can't just let Europe die out because of some sense of racial superiority.
What we are actually doing is we are letting europe die out of a sense of moral superiority, that we can do away with nasty (hydrocarbons) or scary (nuclear) sources of energy, that we must take in every third worlder because letting them live in the thrid world is a crime, that AI must be regulated to death because it enriches billionaries and "technofascists", etc etc
It reminds me of that scene in the ninth gate, we are going bankrupt in the way former nobility goes bankrupt.
- The EU has expanded to incorporate many more countries but is a much smaller fraction of the world's economy than it was in the 70s. Europe is the world's slowest growing region so this will continue.
- Youre only counting the core, not the periphery we bound to us through deals I mentioned.
Korea, Canada, Latin America, India. They're all bound to us. Europe is just the imperial capital of the largest economic region in the world.
- You seriously think that those countries are bound to Europe? That Europe is their imperial capital? Anyone from those countries here who feels that Europe is their imperial capital?
Those countries also have trade deals with each other, and with other trading blocks. The EU us not the top trading partners for any one of them, and, because its low growth, is becoming increasingly less important to all of them.
People seriously think this but it was people voting for Brexit that were suppose remainers claimed hankering for empire.
This sort of claim is pure wishful thinking, and only strengthens my belief that Europeans are in denial.
- We Europeans are very well aware that we need to strengthen our position in the world, both economically and militarily. I would say we are making progress on both. China is not happy with recent EU decision for example.
Let's see how far China and US will go when access to the European consumer market will be resticted.
Let's see how well China and US can adapt to modern drone warfare when Ukrainians have the expertise and can share it with the rest of Europe.
We have to step up our game for sure, and everyone in Europe knows it. But the race is definitely not lost yet.
- > We Europeans are very well aware that we need to strengthen our position in the world, both economically and militarily.
It doesn't seems like this. It hasn't even been ten years since Europeans ridiculed Trump for making such calls, and it doesn't look like anything has changed.
> Let's see how far China and US will go when access to the European consumer market will be resticted.
Why do you think access to the European market is so critical?
> Let's see how well China and US can adapt to modern drone warfare when Ukrainians have the expertise and can share it with the rest of Europe.
Ukraine is a deindustrialized country, corrupt at every level. Their experience is worth little, and if you think they understand what a drone warfare is, wait until you see China in action, which has thousands of times more capable engineers and can produce drones that are better, ten times cheaper, and in tens of thousands times greater volume.
- Well, Russia is trying to do something about it and I think we can all agree that there are wrong ways to go about it. Simply being incompetent, like the EU, is not the worst possible scenario.
Btw, say what you will about Russia, but it's light years ahead of the EU in digital sovereignty. One of the reasons it did not crumble under sanctions.
- Encryption is what's important, jurisdiction gives a false sense of security. Nobody should prefer their messenger be server-side encrypted in Iceland rather than e2ee in China.
I self-host e2ee services instead of server side encryption, even though I control the server. It's one less point of failure.
If the data centers can't see the data they're just hosting encrypted data like a Tor node that sends along gibberish–that's the endgame. Remove extra trusted parties to minimize data.
This also applies to metadata, that can be encrypted. SimpleX has 0 user identifiers, Signal's sealed sender encrypts the senders identity. Every Monero transaction is in the publicly distributed blockchain, hidden.
- Politicians LOVE theatre
- Removed that to be less extreme.
- The EU should fine such intentional violations with a billion euros per violation. That would stop this immediately and force cloud providers to split off their European side into separate companies that don't fall under US law.
- The EU is trying relentlessly to read our IMs though.
- Chat Control is not law. Of course there are some people inside the EU pushing for privacy violation, just like there are everywhere else, but it's not law. For now, the law protects privacy, and Microsoft violated it. That is the issue at hand.
- That's a separate problem.
And it's not "The EU", but really one EU commissioner. Many organs of the EU including the EU Legal Service have criticised CSAR (Chat Control) and the European Parliament has voted against it, effectively killing it.
- One understated outcome of Trump 2.0 is waking up some sections of the European intelligentsia to the risk of dependency on the United States.
Trump 1.0 should've been enough, but instead European leaders were just too thankful for a Biden back-to-normal scenario that they basically took no action allowing the US to further extend its dominance.
Better late than never. Incidentally, trying to build EU tech independence should produce job making industries, so can become a populist move also
- > basically took no action allowing the US to further extend its dominance.
I love this. Do you think everything is in Europe's control? Do you know anything about the US has operated since WW2? Have you noticed the mismatch in economic and military might between the two regions?
And what about all the US military bases in Europe? Do you think it's simply a case of asking them to please leave within 1 year, thanks, goodbye.
They've had us in a headlock for a very very long time
- It’s a mismatch we’ve been asking Europe to do something about for 30+ years. Instead, they decided to turn their countries into third world refugee camps.
- yeah true. Still, the primary problem was lack of consciousness about this state of affairs, especially at leadership level. One thing Trump 2.0 does take off the mask on this. It's a start
- Because Trump has 2.5 years left and they may be hoping a Democrat wins
- Trump was elected. Twice. It was not a fluke, not a once in a lifetime event, he's a symptom of wider processes happening in the US. The world has changed and the old order is not coming back
- Trump is one thing but the overall dynamic of similar politicians gaining footholds across the world is what worries me. If everyone is X nation first in the same way, you lose the ability to negotiate with compromises, people want to start expanding their borders and that just escalates into war.
We're already seeing that in a few cases but it just stands to get worse if this carries on.
- Mostly it’s a symptom of Democrats nominating the two most unliked people in politics.
- Half the countries in Europe has their own Trump-equivalent politician heading one of the largest parties, and yet Europeans are imagining it's something happening "in the US" while they sleepwalk into disaster.
- Yes, and: these are the same picture. They're all promoted by Russian-backed influencers on US-owned social media, or indigenous US racists. We've got Elon inciting race riots in Belfast now; several people left homeless after they were firebombed out.
A lot of this was laundered through Hungary: https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-viktor-orban-favorit... ; hopefully some of those involved can be jailed by the incoming administration for misusing government funds.
- I am European and I am all too aware that the trend exists here as well. I am just hoping that a majority will now be able to see what disasters that road can lead to.
- Does it matter who is president? The US was spying on European leaders before Trump's first term:
"According to the investigation, which covered the period from 2012 to 2014, the NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück."
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...
- Everybody always spies on everybody else. Even it only to check what they are really thinking.
- That is all the more reason for governments not to rely on foreign suppliers.
- This should kill Office 365 instantly globally.
- these scandals happen every other day
Hardly a decade ago, a well documented part of prism was on how Berlin was being scanned all the way up to the chancellor
Could the Dutch government think they were any different to the Germans ? Did they not use outlook ?
You put a lot of hope in managers from large companies and governments who get their rent and yearly bonuses no matter their performance, and will never ever be made redundant
- What's the point of this when The Netherland, among some other EU countries is already all in into eternal Atlanticism.
- yes, digital sovereignity of the individual.
- US companies cannot comply with the GDPR because of the CLOUD Act. The two frameworks are fundamentally in conflict with each other and it seems to me that everybody in the EU knows about it, yet this is somehow swept under the carpet and ignored even by government authorities. I've always wondered why this is so and how these kind of dependencies could be allowed in the first place. It's even worse for AI use than it is for productivity suits and email.
- Roll on Schrems III.
- This is entirely the wrong lesson to take from this. Why are we still using a plaintext protocol in this day and age? Why can we not get an E2EE addition to the email protocol with full backwards compatibility?
Yes, I understand that it would be imperfect since inevitably not all servers would support it thus forcing additional understanding and decisions on the end user. No, I don't care that a user other than myself might leak my messages in plaintext. Perfectionism in this regard only serves to further shoot us in the foot. Yes, I understand that key distribution is a difficult problem but then that's the case no matter the protocol. Other protocols have solutions that work reasonably well at this point.
There's no justification for the current status quo.
Alternatively I'd be fine using matrix for all my PII related needs (healthcare, government, subscription services, etc, etc) but somehow I don't see that happening any time soon.
- For large organization data the keys would need to be stored within the organization, not with one particular user as in the case of your personal PII needs.
And then you'd still need to worry about digital sovereignity for the keys.
- I don't follow. Are you saying that BigCorp would demand key escrow? They already deploy custom email solutions today so I don't see the issue.
- I am saying you can't keep the keys just on a stick in the employee's pocket since multiple people need to have access to the data.
And if those keys are stored by a company subject to US jurisdiction, we're back to the same problem.
- Well yes, if you hand your keys over that is indeed a problem. Of course handing your keys over to the provider rather defeats the purpose of E2EE so hopefully no one is doing that.
Key escrow is the usual solution to an employer needing access to employee materials.
- > Key escrow is the usual solution
Yes, and you move the problem to "is the entity/process/whatever handling key escrow under US jurisdiction"?
- Yes, obviously, but key (/account/identity/etc) management is typically a much narrower and well defined problem to solve and in many cases it will already have been solved (centralized management of user accounts, employee ID cards that contain physical tokens, and other such things).
- Getting from here to there is going to be tough, but I agree 100%. Not only should email be E2EE, but it should include a certificate scheme such that you know the person purporting to be the sender is actually the sender.
- PGP had the right idea, but the system is too hard for the average person.
With "system" I refer to building a web (or multiple!) of trust, based on parameters that you decide upon.
- Given that the cryptography would necessarily be asymmetric verifying the sender on a TOFU basis seems like a trivial addition (just sign something). I doubt you can do better than TOFU though unless you tie it to an external ID system (corporate or government or etc issued hardware tokens or similar).
- How about the metadata? Perhaps if you mean something like self-hosted Matrix, then I agree.
- For a public institution you want some sort of accountability / auditing mechanism, so you can't just do E2EE encryption between users.
Otherwise, a public servant could do sketchy stuff behind the public's back with no paper trace.
What you don't want is hostile foreign capitalists leaking your data to their local authoritarians. They are not your public and shouldn't have the data in the first place.
- It seems similar conversations are happening in Europe as well. Originally, Korea is a country where the 'pro US faction' (the faction that believes Korea should be subordinate to the US) is very strong by default. The US had a very strong influence on the establishment of the Korean government, and if you look back at Korea's history, it has always been about finding a country to serve. It feels like siding with the strongest power. In fact, the pro US faction is very strong, but there has also been a strong flow of security, bureaucratic, and economic elites who have justified dependence on the US as a national survival strategy.
But recently, after Trump, I have never seen anti American sentiment this bad. It is the first time.
Actually, it is natural. In my view, Trump's policies look very similar to the Indian caste system, and I think they are a serious regression for democracy. More than that, he is destroying all the international trust that the US has built up. In Korea, people used to think of the US as a 'just' country, but these days, people are cautiously mentioning US wrongdoing more often. Especially after the tariffs and the Iran war. I myself am now unemployed because my factory expansion was canceled due to the Iran war.
My country has a natural talent for impeaching presidents, but unfortunately, Americans do not seem to have that talent. What a pity.
- I have never seen anti American sentiment this bad
Bad is subjective?
- I am speaking based on the response criteria of Korea's largest research institution.[1]
https://kbthink.com/news-list/view.html?newsId=2026011611543...
- South Korea does seem to be somewhere where the people are more acutely aware that they are a new democracy, and also that there are a number of horrific fascist incidents in recent memory ("tank day") which remind people that it matters.
It seems Korea lacks the "cheat code" for fascism: an ethnic minority population on which all evil can be blamed.
- In Korea, there is also a minority group that receives that kind of hatred. They are called Choseonjok(To be clear, I think this kind of discrimination is wrong), which refers to ethnic Koreans who came from autonomous regions in China. There are also problems with far right groups, particularly religious ones. They tend to hate China. (I do not hate any specific country. I hate and also love all humans around the world. Every country has its own problems.) There is also collusion between religion and politics, such as religious groups helping politicians with their election campaigns. Korea itself has many problems, but in our case, it is probably because our historical background has taught us how hateful the era of dictatorship was
- Can you run an empire democratically? Imagine if the US president instead of being a dictator had to actually spend EVERY SINGLE DAY convincing Congress members.
- [flagged]
- > That is exactly where digital sovereignty begins. It is not a patriotic slogan, nor a storage-location promise. It is the practical question of who can compel access, who can audit the chain of custody, and who can deny or limit disclosure when another jurisdiction asks for the keys.
Please at least try to make your LLM write better. It can! You can start by giving it https://tropes.fyi/tropes-md.
- Not the US but the Dutch state is the problem here. The powers that be know that US espionage is not only limited to some emails and also entails sophisticated industrial espionage and never cared. Now "suddenly" they want to do something about it. This is Not about Dutch interests / sovereignty - we need to find out what it really is about.
209 points by dotcoma 12 hours ago | 205 comments