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So with a single flip of the switch, the president of the USA can shut down our EU Digital Identity Wallet. Why was this decision ever made?

by retired 5mo ago

onlytue 5mo ago
I hate to beat a dead horse and have people downvote me but: the EU has always been corrupted. The knowledge and effects are not evenly distributed until it hits each niche group. Then they find out the hard way that they were useful idiots. It’s ok to be wrong/admit. Let’s just move past the infighting and see those in power for the evil that they are.
- rvz 5mo ago
  Exactly. I have said this for a very long time and the EU (and many other governments) are not our friends and they are just as corrupt. Remember ChatControl? Anytime anyone criticises the EU here, you will get downvoted even after trying to warn the EU defenders that they are not our friends at all. I was asking for evidence about the EU digital ID wallets about what the "disinformation" was around it 3 years ago [0] and not a single link of it was given. At this point, being an EU defender and supporting the "open web" are incompatible since you will be using your EU digital identity wallet [1] with your phone to login to your bank and the internet will push age verification with it, locking you out if you don't sign up. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36105002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36105002 [1] https://eudi.dev/latest/ https://eudi.dev/latest/
  - palata 5mo ago
    > Remember ChatControl? That thing that got refused multiple times already? Because not all politicians think like you does not mean they are corrupt. Seems like enough politicians have voted against ChatControl until now. I always wonder what people who say stuff like "politicians discussed this topic I hate and refused it, but the mere fact that they discussed means that they must all be corrupt" understand about politics. You know that it is about people with different opinions (representing people with different opinions) discussing stuff, right?
    - miohtama 5mo ago
      The Commission got it through on the last round, though, so eventually it passed.
      - palata 5mo ago
        So ChatControl was accepted and is in the process of being implemented is what you say?
      - surgical_fire 5mo ago
        Bullshit. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eu-parliament-blocks-mass-scanning-our-chats-whats-next https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eu-parliament-blocks-m...
      - EmbarrassedHelp 5mo ago
        Chat Control hasn't passed yet. But the Chat Control lobbyists are still lobbying for it behind the scenes, and are currently pushing for all phone calls in the EU to be covered. Source: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/8612-2026-Document-CSAM-%E2%80%94-presidency-compromise.pdf https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/861... https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer
        izacus 5mo ago
        So what should be done about it? EU Commission issue a decree that it should never be spoken or debated again in public? Never proposed? Any other tyrannical idea? Do you have a list of other things that shouldn't be brought in front of the elected parliament?
  - dijit 5mo ago
    (ignorant) people proposing things does not mean corruption: the fact that these things are voted down and never pass is proof that the system works, not evidence of corruption. Corruption would be if it passed despite it being unpopular, because some corporate or rich peoples interests desired it.
  - surgical_fire 5mo ago
    > Exactly. I have said this for a very long time and the EU (and many other governments) are not our friends and they are just as corrupt. Remember ChatControl? The EU parliament shot down ChatControl. In fact, without the EU, most likely many member states would have ChatControl in some shape. National governments are the ones all in on this crap.
- graemep 5mo ago
  Governments are place a higher priority on controlling internal threats than external ones. In this case the EU wants to control its own people more than it wants to avoid deoendence on the US. It would like both,but the former is more important
- epistasis 5mo ago
  The question isn't if there's corruption, the question is who is behind the corruption. Condescendingly and incorrectly assuming that others think that corruption is impossible is kinda rude and also dodges attempts at correcting the corruption.
  - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
    Not only that, "corruption" is pretty squishy. Let's apply Hanlon's Razor for once. Google et al go to the government and say they've got this attestation thing that can something something security. No one is taking a bribe but also no one they're hearing from is telling them that doing this is going to cement the incumbents. "Security" is good, right? So it makes it into the law. That doesn't meet most formal definitions of corruption. It's more like incompetence than malice. But the outcome is indistinguishable from corruption. The bad thing gets into the law. The difference is, if the politicians are taking bribes and you get mad at them, they fob you off because they're more interested in lining their pockets. But if the politicians are just misinformed bureaucrats and you get mad at them, they might actually fix it. And attributing everything to "corruption" discourages people from doing the latter even in cases where it would be effective.
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      > Google et al go to the government and say The money that goes into lobbying in order to have that say is, depending on who you ask, corruption. I, as a random citizen, don't get the same say that a multi billion dollar international corporation does.
      - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
        That seems like a pretty useless definition of corruption. It implies that retirees writing letters to Congress is "corruption" because working people don't have the same amount of free time to do that. It's also kind of weird to propose it as an asymmetry. Google's parent company spends around $4M on lobbying in the US: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000067823 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... That's around $0.01 per capita. Your per capita contribution for individuals to out-spend Google on lobbying is two cents.
varispeed 5mo ago
Corruption. A taboo topic people prefer to downvote and pretend it does not exist. But even bigger problem is that institutions designed to prevent this from happening are not doing their job. Thousands security service and civil servants take their wages and look the other way.
- kyleee 5mo ago
  No doubt there is corruption; but it’s also momentum. There aren’t stable and good alternatives for so many reasons so the duopoly has momentum
  - varispeed 5mo ago
    I understand, but this is a national security matter. The focus should be on developing matching domestic capability.
    - cyanydeez 5mo ago
      you know that domestic capability means putting taxes to take things into a public good and corporations and paranoia are the bigger problem to overcome than anything technical. Any endevour will be cast as some kind of fascist takeover of governance.
      - bornfreddy 5mo ago
        Well no, there is no need to develop domestic capability. Put laws in effect which disable foreign capabilities and which reward domestic ones, and they will be developed. No endeavor from government needed (which is a good thing, since governments are not really great at doing such stuff).
        cyanydeez 5mo ago
        Well yes, just because you think it's a public good worth competing over doesn't mean there's anyone who thinks it's a viable business model.
Gravityloss 5mo ago
Is some party or coalition putting forth candidates that stand against this?
tardedmeme 5mo ago
They can also shut down all European payment cards.
- OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
  Maybe not all of them, but certainly a few large, popular ones. You bring up a good point though, it seems surprising that Wero/PEPSI don't have more momentum. Maybe Europeans hate their continental neighbors more than American financial conglomerates.
  - PunchyHamster 5mo ago
    Just big systems having even bigger inertia
  - lxgr 5mo ago
    The EU might have slept on Russia having to urgently come up with its own payment systems after the 2014 Crimea annexation (which in turn enabled it to deal with the complete Visa/Mastercard exit in 2022) because political goals were aligned and transatlanticism was still alive and well. But they've been wide awake ever since ICC employees have been personally sanctioned by the US as well [1]. Big ships turn slowly, but I give it at most two more years until at least one pan-European retail payment scheme (cards, QR, or maybe the "digital Euro") has been regulated into existence. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...
  - sudahtigabulan 5mo ago
    We just don't know much about one another. I never really thought about it until I saw this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993140
    - reddalo 5mo ago
      Unfortunately, each European country has a different "national" payment method. Swish in Sweden, MobilePay in Denmark/Finland, iDEAL in the Netherlands, etc. Of course you can't sign up to a specific country payment system if you're not a resident there. And systems from different countries don't work with each other. Luckily, there's now an initiative called EPI [1], which is an alliance that wants to make all these apps interoperable and call them "Wero" [2]. There are two problem with this system though: - Wero insists on making you use your own bank app to send/receive payments. That's a terrible choice, because most bank apps are huge behemoths that are slow and heavy. People don't want to use them: PayPal is so much quicker and easier. They should develop a new, lightweight app that only does payments. - The Italian member of EPI is "BancomatPay", which nobody uses. Sure, Bancomat is a huge company in the debit cards world, but no sane person uses BancomatPay in their daily life (also, BancomatPay forces you to use your bank app). In Italy, Satispay is way bigger and widely accepted, especially in the North (i.e. richest) part of the country. I'm surprised Satispay didn't get into EPI. [1] https://epicompany.eu/ https://epicompany.eu/ [2] https://wero-wallet.eu https://wero-wallet.eu
dathinab 5mo ago
> Why was this decision ever made? because it wasn't made the decision which was made was having a digital ID wallet, that this needs hardware attestation (or something comparable) is somewhat of a direct consequence of existing laws/regulations regarding making IDs forgery safe it also is a phone only application the huge huge majority of phones runs Googled Android/iOS, so you support them if there where a relevant 3rd party competition it would (most likely) supported it, too going back to the "the president .. shut down .." argument: The US can shut down >90% of all smart phones used in the EU. I don't think the US being able to shut down something which in the end is fundamentally just a minor convenience feature is making much of a difference here. But I also think that whole identity wallet (the regulations behind it) is approaching things from the wrong direction, carrying a credit card sized ID with you isn't really a problem or very inconvenient. So instead of having the whole attestation nonsense it would be more practical to simply not have attestation and in turn allow the digital ID only for usage where the damage it can cause is quite limited. Especially given that device attestation systems have a long history of being circumvented... As a side note this whole app is distinct from the "use you ID with through your phone/NFC with applications" thing many EU countries have, through that solutions also tend to have attestation issues in most cases. But again most relevant use-case of it can be done just fine, without the security level attestation tries to provide, if approached pragmatically.
- reactordev 5mo ago
  Have you seen our President? Minor conveniences are what trigger him into launching full blown DOJ investigations, wars, and economic disaster. If he realizes he can just "turn off" the EU, oh, he will threaten that on Truth Social tonight in a rant about how they should make a deal or else.
  - like_any_other 5mo ago
    An open threat like that would be the best case scenario, as it would (hopefully) cause a reaction in EU countries trying to get rid of this yoke. Instead usually it happens through backroom dealings, or just the services being a nuisance to competitors while being helpful to friendly companies, and thus the target country is drained of its resources and economic independence, slow enough to not provoke retaliation. With the exception of the current US administration, hostile countries and corporations try to appear non-hostile when possible.
kmeisthax 5mo ago
We (America) made the decision for them. The EU's member states were either: 1. Explicitly designed as client states for the US 2. Explicitly designed as client states for the Soviet Union, with alliances switching over as the Soviet Union fell apart 3. Great Britain, a country whose electorate would probably only reconsider rejoining if the EU agreed to explicitly become British client states, because the only thing Britain hates more than France is those dastardly American upstarts[0]. The reason why this persists despite an openly hostile American president is the fact that the EU has no real alternative. The EU has a shitton of internal political distrust between member states, and the US was offering a lubricating alternative: "Just trust us." Politically distributed alternatives require balancing coalitions that are far more fragile. [0] The history of European anti-Americanism is extremely fascinating, because it's effectively a Reactionary meme - as in, "wanting to restore the Ancien Regime" Reactionary, not "funny way to say Nazi Party member" Reactionary. And yet it's jumped across so many incompatible political ideologies that the average European probably had no clue why they hate America until Donald Trump gave them a good reason to.

So with a single flip of the switch, the president of the USA can shut down our EU Digital Identity Wallet. Why was this decision ever made?

by retired 5mo ago

So with a single flip of the switch, the president of the USA can shut down our EU Digital Identity Wallet. Why was this decision ever made?

onlytue 5mo ago

I hate to beat a dead horse and have people downvote me but: the EU has always been corrupted. The knowledge and effects are not evenly distributed until it hits each niche group. Then they find out the hard way that they were useful idiots. It’s ok to be wrong/admit. Let’s just move past the infighting and see those in power for the evil that they are.

rvz 5mo ago
Exactly. I have said this for a very long time and the EU (and many other governments) are not our friends and they are just as corrupt. Remember ChatControl? Anytime anyone criticises the EU here, you will get downvoted even after trying to warn the EU defenders that they are not our friends at all. I was asking for evidence about the EU digital ID wallets about what the "disinformation" was around it 3 years ago [0] and not a single link of it was given. At this point, being an EU defender and supporting the "open web" are incompatible since you will be using your EU digital identity wallet [1] with your phone to login to your bank and the internet will push age verification with it, locking you out if you don't sign up. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36105002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36105002 [1] https://eudi.dev/latest/ https://eudi.dev/latest/
- palata 5mo ago
  > Remember ChatControl? That thing that got refused multiple times already? Because not all politicians think like you does not mean they are corrupt. Seems like enough politicians have voted against ChatControl until now. I always wonder what people who say stuff like "politicians discussed this topic I hate and refused it, but the mere fact that they discussed means that they must all be corrupt" understand about politics. You know that it is about people with different opinions (representing people with different opinions) discussing stuff, right?
  - miohtama 5mo ago
    The Commission got it through on the last round, though, so eventually it passed.
    - palata 5mo ago
      So ChatControl was accepted and is in the process of being implemented is what you say?
    - surgical_fire 5mo ago
      Bullshit. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eu-parliament-blocks-mass-scanning-our-chats-whats-next https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eu-parliament-blocks-m...
    - EmbarrassedHelp 5mo ago
      Chat Control hasn't passed yet. But the Chat Control lobbyists are still lobbying for it behind the scenes, and are currently pushing for all phone calls in the EU to be covered. Source: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/8612-2026-Document-CSAM-%E2%80%94-presidency-compromise.pdf https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/861... https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer
      - izacus 5mo ago
        So what should be done about it? EU Commission issue a decree that it should never be spoken or debated again in public? Never proposed? Any other tyrannical idea? Do you have a list of other things that shouldn't be brought in front of the elected parliament?
- dijit 5mo ago
  (ignorant) people proposing things does not mean corruption: the fact that these things are voted down and never pass is proof that the system works, not evidence of corruption. Corruption would be if it passed despite it being unpopular, because some corporate or rich peoples interests desired it.
- surgical_fire 5mo ago
  > Exactly. I have said this for a very long time and the EU (and many other governments) are not our friends and they are just as corrupt. Remember ChatControl? The EU parliament shot down ChatControl. In fact, without the EU, most likely many member states would have ChatControl in some shape. National governments are the ones all in on this crap.
graemep 5mo ago
Governments are place a higher priority on controlling internal threats than external ones. In this case the EU wants to control its own people more than it wants to avoid deoendence on the US. It would like both,but the former is more important
epistasis 5mo ago
The question isn't if there's corruption, the question is who is behind the corruption. Condescendingly and incorrectly assuming that others think that corruption is impossible is kinda rude and also dodges attempts at correcting the corruption.
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
  Not only that, "corruption" is pretty squishy. Let's apply Hanlon's Razor for once. Google et al go to the government and say they've got this attestation thing that can something something security. No one is taking a bribe but also no one they're hearing from is telling them that doing this is going to cement the incumbents. "Security" is good, right? So it makes it into the law. That doesn't meet most formal definitions of corruption. It's more like incompetence than malice. But the outcome is indistinguishable from corruption. The bad thing gets into the law. The difference is, if the politicians are taking bribes and you get mad at them, they fob you off because they're more interested in lining their pockets. But if the politicians are just misinformed bureaucrats and you get mad at them, they might actually fix it. And attributing everything to "corruption" discourages people from doing the latter even in cases where it would be effective.
  - fragmede 5mo ago
    > Google et al go to the government and say The money that goes into lobbying in order to have that say is, depending on who you ask, corruption. I, as a random citizen, don't get the same say that a multi billion dollar international corporation does.
    - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
      That seems like a pretty useless definition of corruption. It implies that retirees writing letters to Congress is "corruption" because working people don't have the same amount of free time to do that. It's also kind of weird to propose it as an asymmetry. Google's parent company spends around $4M on lobbying in the US: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000067823 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... That's around $0.01 per capita. Your per capita contribution for individuals to out-spend Google on lobbying is two cents.

varispeed 5mo ago

Corruption. A taboo topic people prefer to downvote and pretend it does not exist. But even bigger problem is that institutions designed to prevent this from happening are not doing their job. Thousands security service and civil servants take their wages and look the other way.

kyleee 5mo ago
No doubt there is corruption; but it’s also momentum. There aren’t stable and good alternatives for so many reasons so the duopoly has momentum
- varispeed 5mo ago
  I understand, but this is a national security matter. The focus should be on developing matching domestic capability.
  - cyanydeez 5mo ago
    you know that domestic capability means putting taxes to take things into a public good and corporations and paranoia are the bigger problem to overcome than anything technical. Any endevour will be cast as some kind of fascist takeover of governance.
    - bornfreddy 5mo ago
      Well no, there is no need to develop domestic capability. Put laws in effect which disable foreign capabilities and which reward domestic ones, and they will be developed. No endeavor from government needed (which is a good thing, since governments are not really great at doing such stuff).
      - cyanydeez 5mo ago
        Well yes, just because you think it's a public good worth competing over doesn't mean there's anyone who thinks it's a viable business model.

Gravityloss 5mo ago

Is some party or coalition putting forth candidates that stand against this?

tardedmeme 5mo ago

They can also shut down all European payment cards.

OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
Maybe not all of them, but certainly a few large, popular ones. You bring up a good point though, it seems surprising that Wero/PEPSI don't have more momentum. Maybe Europeans hate their continental neighbors more than American financial conglomerates.
- PunchyHamster 5mo ago
  Just big systems having even bigger inertia
- lxgr 5mo ago
  The EU might have slept on Russia having to urgently come up with its own payment systems after the 2014 Crimea annexation (which in turn enabled it to deal with the complete Visa/Mastercard exit in 2022) because political goals were aligned and transatlanticism was still alive and well. But they've been wide awake ever since ICC employees have been personally sanctioned by the US as well [1]. Big ships turn slowly, but I give it at most two more years until at least one pan-European retail payment scheme (cards, QR, or maybe the "digital Euro") has been regulated into existence. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...
- sudahtigabulan 5mo ago
  We just don't know much about one another. I never really thought about it until I saw this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993140
  - reddalo 5mo ago
    Unfortunately, each European country has a different "national" payment method. Swish in Sweden, MobilePay in Denmark/Finland, iDEAL in the Netherlands, etc. Of course you can't sign up to a specific country payment system if you're not a resident there. And systems from different countries don't work with each other. Luckily, there's now an initiative called EPI [1], which is an alliance that wants to make all these apps interoperable and call them "Wero" [2]. There are two problem with this system though: - Wero insists on making you use your own bank app to send/receive payments. That's a terrible choice, because most bank apps are huge behemoths that are slow and heavy. People don't want to use them: PayPal is so much quicker and easier. They should develop a new, lightweight app that only does payments. - The Italian member of EPI is "BancomatPay", which nobody uses. Sure, Bancomat is a huge company in the debit cards world, but no sane person uses BancomatPay in their daily life (also, BancomatPay forces you to use your bank app). In Italy, Satispay is way bigger and widely accepted, especially in the North (i.e. richest) part of the country. I'm surprised Satispay didn't get into EPI. [1] https://epicompany.eu/ https://epicompany.eu/ [2] https://wero-wallet.eu https://wero-wallet.eu

dathinab 5mo ago

> Why was this decision ever made? because it wasn't made the decision which was made was having a digital ID wallet, that this needs hardware attestation (or something comparable) is somewhat of a direct consequence of existing laws/regulations regarding making IDs forgery safe it also is a phone only application the huge huge majority of phones runs Googled Android/iOS, so you support them if there where a relevant 3rd party competition it would (most likely) supported it, too going back to the "the president .. shut down .." argument: The US can shut down >90% of all smart phones used in the EU. I don't think the US being able to shut down something which in the end is fundamentally just a minor convenience feature is making much of a difference here. But I also think that whole identity wallet (the regulations behind it) is approaching things from the wrong direction, carrying a credit card sized ID with you isn't really a problem or very inconvenient. So instead of having the whole attestation nonsense it would be more practical to simply not have attestation and in turn allow the digital ID only for usage where the damage it can cause is quite limited. Especially given that device attestation systems have a long history of being circumvented... As a side note this whole app is distinct from the "use you ID with through your phone/NFC with applications" thing many EU countries have, through that solutions also tend to have attestation issues in most cases. But again most relevant use-case of it can be done just fine, without the security level attestation tries to provide, if approached pragmatically.

reactordev 5mo ago
Have you seen our President? Minor conveniences are what trigger him into launching full blown DOJ investigations, wars, and economic disaster. If he realizes he can just "turn off" the EU, oh, he will threaten that on Truth Social tonight in a rant about how they should make a deal or else.
- like_any_other 5mo ago
  An open threat like that would be the best case scenario, as it would (hopefully) cause a reaction in EU countries trying to get rid of this yoke. Instead usually it happens through backroom dealings, or just the services being a nuisance to competitors while being helpful to friendly companies, and thus the target country is drained of its resources and economic independence, slow enough to not provoke retaliation. With the exception of the current US administration, hostile countries and corporations try to appear non-hostile when possible.

kmeisthax 5mo ago

We (America) made the decision for them. The EU's member states were either: 1. Explicitly designed as client states for the US 2. Explicitly designed as client states for the Soviet Union, with alliances switching over as the Soviet Union fell apart 3. Great Britain, a country whose electorate would probably only reconsider rejoining if the EU agreed to explicitly become British client states, because the only thing Britain hates more than France is those dastardly American upstarts[0]. The reason why this persists despite an openly hostile American president is the fact that the EU has no real alternative. The EU has a shitton of internal political distrust between member states, and the US was offering a lubricating alternative: "Just trust us." Politically distributed alternatives require balancing coalitions that are far more fragile. [0] The history of European anti-Americanism is extremely fascinating, because it's effectively a Reactionary meme - as in, "wanting to restore the Ancien Regime" Reactionary, not "funny way to say Nazi Party member" Reactionary. And yet it's jumped across so many incompatible political ideologies that the average European probably had no clue why they hate America until Donald Trump gave them a good reason to.