Because that's fundamentally what the EU does - it comes up with long, detailed agreements that specify the exact technical details of things that will sometime

Because that's fundamentally what the EU does - it comes up with long, detailed agreements that specify the exact technical details of things that will sometimes go out of date soon. That is what it, as an institution with a whole bunch of well-paid employees, exists to do. As I understand it, this is just extending an agreement the UK was already a part of when it was part of the EU to the country after it leaves, complete with SHA-1, 1024-bit RSA, and references to Netscape Navigator 4. Also, I reckon that if these same issues came up in the context of the in-EU version of the agreement, this would be widely portrayed as an example of cynical Euroskeptics taking advantage of people's cluelessness and making a big fuss about nothing, like bendy bananas. It'd be one of the things people relied on to argue that Brexit supporters had just been tricked by the press. Can't see that happening with its use as an anti-Brexit talking point, even though that's substantially more misleading. The entire mainstream narrative around Brexit is just so cynical...