5 ms·

The fact that government agencies, particularly those that deal with international concerns like these are using non sovereign tech for communications is mind-b

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.

fc417fc802 4mo ago
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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.nl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.nl
- closewith 4mo ago
  That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.
  - fc417fc802 4mo ago
    Ah. Just a blatant inaccuracy on wikipedia I take it. That does make a bit more sense.
    - robin_reala 4mo ago
      Yep. gov.nl is in the PSL[1] and there are plenty of used subdomains (e.g. https://business.gov.nl/ https://business.gov.nl/) [1] https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat
    - djaro 4mo ago
      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.
      - jurgenburgen 4mo ago
        This makes sense because gov is anglocentric and would make the URLs sound weird in non-English countries.
        closewith 4mo ago
        And overheid.nl is their government site for that reason.
        rafram 4mo ago
        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.
  - djaro 4mo ago
    It exists, but the vast majority of government services dont use it (i.e. taxes are just done through belastingdienst.nl).
    - closewith 4mo ago
      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.
- pjc50 4mo ago
  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.
  - reactordev 4mo ago
    Ah yes, the art of making things shitty. https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ
  - fc417fc802 4mo ago
    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.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
    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.
    - fc417fc802 4mo ago
      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.
spwa4 4mo ago
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.
mrtksn 4mo ago
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.
- hnben 4mo ago
  > America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor wat
  - noir_lord 4mo ago
    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.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus
28304283409234 4mo ago
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 https://vimeo.com/13224190

fc417fc802 4mo ago

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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.nl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.nl

closewith 4mo ago
That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  Ah. Just a blatant inaccuracy on wikipedia I take it. That does make a bit more sense.
  - robin_reala 4mo ago
    Yep. gov.nl is in the PSL[1] and there are plenty of used subdomains (e.g. https://business.gov.nl/ https://business.gov.nl/) [1] https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat
  - djaro 4mo ago
    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.
    - jurgenburgen 4mo ago
      This makes sense because gov is anglocentric and would make the URLs sound weird in non-English countries.
      - closewith 4mo ago
        And overheid.nl is their government site for that reason.
      - rafram 4mo ago
        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.
- djaro 4mo ago
  It exists, but the vast majority of government services dont use it (i.e. taxes are just done through belastingdienst.nl).
  - closewith 4mo ago
    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.
pjc50 4mo ago
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.
- reactordev 4mo ago
  Ah yes, the art of making things shitty. https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  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.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
  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.
  - fc417fc802 4mo ago
    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.

spwa4 4mo ago

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.

mrtksn 4mo ago

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.

hnben 4mo ago
> America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor wat
- noir_lord 4mo ago
  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.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

28304283409234 4mo ago

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 https://vimeo.com/13224190