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>Making a digital wallet won't increase surveillance...

There is no reason to believe that. You are installing a government app on a gps device with a constant internet connection. Even if it doesn't send such data initially, there is no way for a regular user to know that some forced update in the future wont introduce it. At least before they would have to go through the courts to get a warrant to get it from google or apple.

Disable the app's location permission?

Most of them don't even work without location. The location permission is also tied to the wifi because Google had the means to pinpoint your accurate location using wifi hotspots.

Perhaps don't use Google products if privacy is at all important to you.

> a government login called CSAM, but a lot of people here use a private company called "itsme"

It probably doesn't help that the CSAM term has an overlap with another english abbreviation.

Belgium is not an English speaking country.

> Making a digital wallet won't increase surveillance... surveillance is already possible on all of this,

Sure, because a little minority of people has "the burden" of managing multiple IDs, lets tear down one firewall between citizenry and big-brother for the rest of us.

What's the "firewall" in this case? eIDs already exist all over the place, as demonstrated in parent. They also clearly have their use, even though they are currently frequently broken.

Is the brokenness the firewall?

The firewall is who is accountable, who is responsible to the electorate. "Broken" no, a feature yes, because exploiting technical flaws in a country's digital ID for an attacker becomes more troublesome if each country has a (an even slightly) different implementation.

Labeling it "broken" - we all are using the same password for every account anyways, aren't we?

But we're talking about the EU here, the second largest democracy in the world. Of course they're accountable to the electorate. This isn't a dictatorship.

From my vote to this decision there are so many layers of abstraction that I wouldn't even begin to have a clue who to vote for and in which election if I do or do not want this E-ID.

At least in national elections there are parties campaigning with a platform and then I can decide which platform I like best. How often the platforms of the elected parties get translated into reality is another question, but it can at least plausibly be described as demos kratos. Maybe the EU is "democracy" in some modern sense of the word, but in the original sense of the word it is not. (I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. Maybe it is in fact better to have elites deciding.)

> At least in national elections there are parties campaigning with a platform and then I can decide which platform I like best.

I fail to see how you cannot do that in European Parliament elections. If anything, EUP elections are more democratic than average, by way of using a proportional-representation system that matches voters' preferences more closely than almost any European voting system.

And if you're saying, "but it's the Commission proposing laws!", they don't pull stuff out of thin air: the Commission effectively tries to implement an agenda that European Council members agree together. And who is EuroCouncil? National governments, whom you vote for. Also, the Commission doesn't work alone - directives are effectively drafted in concert with Parliament committees, because in the end they have to be approved by such Parliament.

It's usually the pirate party or the greens. They have no representatives in my country, so good luck with that.

Greece is a democracy, the EU is a bureaucracy.

Totally democratic. Of course. Europeans love it.

From Berlin xHainers to Parissienne Bobos, from Munich Schwabing to Noord Amsterdam, there isn't a single citizen in the EU with discomfort of his vote becoming dilluted from a x-millionth to an x-hundredmillionth.

That's why Ursula von der Leyen is so popular.

But thats just... yknow, how democracies work. More voters = less power/vote.

Are you just unhappy the electorate is so large? What would the appropriate size be? Mayoral? Households? That'd really maximize the power of your vote.

But then, how would we organize at the level beyond that? Warring tribes? Go back to when Germany and France were constantly at war?

I don't love vdL either. I think the EU is in need of reform. But I still think it's fundamentally a good idea and I think vote dilution is just inherent to a large democracy.

There's not much democracy in the EU, and that's by design.

I'm only surprised they haven't got rid of the ability of countries to secede the union yet. I'm guessing all these pushes for further integration are an attempt at de facto making it impossible to secede, even if not legally.

> and that's by design.

And that design is there to keep sovereignty of membership countries - so it is strange that you are surprised that there is still the ability of countries to secede the union. Most powerful entities in EU are national governments of countries. Who is appointing Commissioners? Member states. Similar like national governments are appointing its ministers. Then there is veto and of course, who has last word in everything? Heads of states / prime ministers.

Ah yeah, just like how Von der Leyen, Macron said that they want to abolish the consensual vote, when Hungary didn't play along with sanctions being a landlocked country. Totally democratic and totally designed to keep sovereignty.

Macron can say what he wants, he has not written any treaty yet. The Hungarian government is still free to act as they see fit.

This said, majority-rule can only increase in European mechanisms, because a continent cannot be paralized by the needs of a tiny minority on every possible choice. Does the US Senate (effectively the equivalent of EuroCouncil, with almost-equal representation for each US state) require unanimity on every choice? Obviously not, or it would never get anything done (and even like that, it struggles massively to approve anything these days).

> There's not much democracy in the EU, and that's by design.

[citation needed]. Please don't just throw out wild claims without any proof. As far as I'm aware, every single element of the EU is democratically legitimized in one way or another. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

> I'm only surprised they haven't got rid of the ability of countries to secede the union yet.

Why would they? If you don't want to be on our boat, feel free to sink on your own. We don't need the dead weight.

The appropriate solution would be to reduce the power of the institutions, ideally down to the individual level and allow corporations to provide the services citizens need.

Vote with your money, don't dictate the rest of the country with your wants.

The thing about voting with your money is that rich people get a lot of votes that way while the poor get neglected.

In other words, it's antidemocratic.

Diluted? EU has significantly more power than any single country. More than the sum of the power of each country taken individually. Hence, mathematically, your vote has more power in the EU.

When your vote has a very large denominator it's worthless. You have no chance to influence anything.

Democracy is a scam, it's just an oligarchy.

The wealthiest will do media campaigns to manipulate the public into electing their people and then these people will do whatever the elite want.

Large power of EU = very large nominator, more than compensating for the larger denominator.

That was my point above.

"Democracy is a scam" = trolling, please refer to the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"The wealthiest will do media campaigns to manipulate the public" => that I agree with, but this is really old and has always been like that, not only in democracies. I'd even say that democracies are the places where this is happening the least, compares to state-owned news like Russia or China.

Too many abstraction layers and too much happening behind closed doors withotu elected politicians present. As a citizen of EU member, I find it very hard to define EU as a democracy.

We need Swiss-style referendums-on-everything. Now it feels like oligarchy managed by lobby groups no matter what you vote for.

> We need Swiss-style referendums-on-everything.

Ah, yes, nothing like asking 450M people for their opinion on something they know nothing about.

This is how Brexit happened, isn't it?

Do we want democracy? Or ruling by oligarchs, hoping that oligarch you like will end up ruling?

Obviously democracy needs educated citizens who don't take the responsibility lightly. That's why citizenship shall be a big privilege with even bigger responsibilities. We have to have a lively discussion. Otherwise it's people who cry loudest win.

I love Brexit as a democratical move. People voteds and government followed through. Now citizens will live out consequences, for better or worse. And they can make next decision accordingly. That's so much better than enlightened oligarchy guarding the masses from their own wrong feelings.

That's like raising kids. If you guard kids from their own painful decisions, they'll never learn. Eventually they'll be adults and they'll keep doing dumb decisions. You have to let them experience some pain to teach them a lesson.

The EU is not a democracy. Its only democratic organ is toothless.

It is an association of democracies, led by an undemocratic executive that is increasingly out of control. At the moment it is busily destroying its own economy in a way that is baffling to many of its citizens.

If it doesn't evolve into something more democratic it probably hasn't long to go.

The executive is appointed by democratically elected officials. Y'know, the same way the US president is elected by electors, or Prime Ministers are elected by parlaments. Most democracies work this way.

In fact it's quite different.

The US president campaigns before a democratic election. The people know who they can choose before they vote. Same with the UK.

There is no democratic vote, with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission.

Why the downvote btw? This isn't reddit.

>There is no democratic vote, with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission.

Err, yes there is. The directly-elected European Parliament first elects the President of the European Commission, and then has to vote to appoint the entire Commission.[0]

And before they do they they hold hearings with each of the different commissioner-nominees to evaluate their suitability for the role, demanding that people are replaced or given different portfolios if they are not suitable.

Nominations for the role of President must take in to account the results of the election,[0] and the European Council nominates somebody from the largest party in Parliament. I wish that Parliament had stuck to its guns in 2014/2019 and rejected the nominees that weren't spitzenkandidaten but hopefully the new proposals tabled by Parliament creating transnational lists for Parliament will change this.[1]

[0] Article 17(7) of the Treaty on European Union

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220429IP...

> with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission.

Of course there is. The commission is chosen by the countries elected representatives (and confirmed by the directly elected EU Parliament)

The downvotes are justified

I the US, the electoral college could vote for someone completely different, who might not even be part of the campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

The chances of it happening are low, but the vote of the people might not be upheld.

What do you mean itsme does not support linux? It's a phone app, you don't need to install anything on your linux machine...

However, it's not a good situation that a private company gets such a central role. In fact, Belgian government yesterday announced they're going to make their own implementation. Surely there's already eID login, but that's too cumbersome compared to itsme because it's from the pre-smartphone days.

Are you talking about this?

https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/246070/federal-governm...

The Belgian government already has an implementation: https://www.csam.be/en/egov-profile.html

I don't use itsme, only CSAM, because itsme does not support Linux: I can't log in with Firefox or Chrome on Linux with my eID. But CSAM is not universally supported. Example of a site that does not support it: https://www.proximus.be/ - Major ISP in Belgium)

> Are you talking about this?

Yes, that's what I'm talking about, although brusselstimes seems to report it weirdly (sounds like they want to extend itsme). https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20220627_97617861 -> They want to replace itsme with something build by the government.

> The Belgian government already has an implementation: https://www.csam.be/en/egov-profile.html

You're confusing a couple of things here. CSAM isn't an identity provider. It's like a gateway/umbrella to multiple identity providers like eID and itsme. You can have eID authentication without CSAM and vice-versa.

It doesn't make sense to claim itsme doesn't support linux. It's only a phone app, you dont need desktop software. I can login to proximus.be using itsme on linux.

> It doesn't make sense to claim itsme doesn't support linux. It's only a phone app, you dont need desktop software. I can login to proximus.be using itsme on linux.

I think you're seriously confused. It's perfectly reasonable to claim that itsme doesn't support Linux. Phone have operating systems too, you know - and some phones run a Linux userspace (e.g. the Pinephone and Purism).

"Does not support Linux" means "itsme can't run on a Linux userspace" (as opposed to a Linux kernel but Google userspace, which is what Android is).

The author explicitly says this: "I don't use itsme, only CSAM, because itsme does not support Linux: I can't log in with Firefox or Chrome on Linux with my eID."

The worst part af all this government id story that no one talks about is that Belgian government lost control of its Root Certificate Authority.

It is now handled by Digicert, a US company.

Do you have any source for this ? I know that current root certificates are self signed. [0]

[0] https://repository.eid.belgium.be/certificates.php

You have to look for trusted store updates, here is the first link I googled in 5 sec.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1335253

I read the thread and they were discussing about "audit" made by the Belgium government. I double checked the certificates used for ID cards in [0] and all are self-signed. I don't see any link or ownership to "DigiCert". Perhaps the discussion were related to government's websites.

Example for Belgium Root CA2 in [0]

Certificate: Data: Version: 3 (0x2) Serial Number: 3098404661496965511 (0x2affbe9fa2f0e987) Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption Issuer: C=BE, CN=Belgium Root CA2 Validity Not Before: Oct 4 10:00:00 2007 GMT Not After : Dec 15 08:00:00 2021 GMT Subject: C=BE, CN=Belgium Root CA2

The Belgium Root CA2 in Mozilla discussion is different.

Certificate: Data: Version: 3 (0x2) Serial Number: 04:00:00:00:00:01:41:a1:e1:34:ba Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption Issuer: O=Cybertrust, Inc, CN=Cybertrust Global Root Validity Not Before: Oct 10 11:00:00 2013 GMT Not After : May 12 22:59:00 2025 GMT Subject: C=BE, CN=Belgium Root CA2

[0] https://repository.eid.belgium.be/certificates.php?cert=Root...

The root message is about adding Belgium Root CA to the CRL..

Is there a Belgium Root CA in Mozilla, Windows, Android or iPhone trust stores now?

That's I wanted to say. Belgium Root CA and its intermediates are never used for web connection (TLS) (perhaps used internally in gov intranet). I use my Id card for PDF signing. I presume CAs are added to the trused list of Adobe.

You said DigiCert owns those root CAs and I wanted more information about this.

They were. Now, DigiCert CA is used instead.

Itsme is an authentication token, like eID.

You can login to CSAM protected websites on Linux with Firefox or Chromium and with Itsme token running on Android or iPhone.

You can also login on Linux with Firefox or Chromium and with your eID card inserted in a properly configured card reader such as ACR-38U.

I'm not sure because I don't use itsme anymore (it stopped working on jailbroken devices a while ago, so I just switched to TOTP auth with CSAM) but if I remember correctly the initial setup of itsme doesn't work on Linux, as it requires a browser plugin for the card reader that doesn't run on Linux. CSAM uses a different browser plugin that does work on Linux.

Yes that’s exactly right.

I set up itsme on my android phone using linix. This was a couple years ago, so things likely changed for worse since then.

P.S. If you use a JB device, you should also use Magisk and be ready to troubleshoot.

Worth mentioning that itsme is a private consortium of several banks and phone operators which explicitely says that data collected will be used for marketing purpose and "research".

That you can’t even think of using it if, like me, you are not using a phone operator or one of the few banks which are part of the consortium.

That's not true, in my experience you can even use it if you only have a French phone number and no Belgian bank.

Indeed, they added the ability to create an account with your eid. It was not the case a couple of years ago.

Now you're nitpicking. https://www.proximus.be/ might not support itsme but it does allow login with user name and password.

Is it so difficult to conceive that are people out there using phones that run something else instead of Android or iOS? Even linux.

> When I need to identify myself, depending on the government I have to deal with, I have to use either my "FranceConnect" credentials, or my Belgian e-ID card.

That you even have to identify yourself as often as you do in the EU is a problem the EU countries created. So basically they create a problem (people needing to identify for basically everything: vaccine, going to the restaurant, going to nightclubs, maybe going to the toilet in the future, etc.) and then come up with a solution: "Look, it's going to get easier to identify yourself!" and everybody applauds.

But, wait, why do I need to be identified all the time yet?

Yeah. No. I identify myself when I log in to my utilities providers, my bank, when I do my taxes or handle some other government related stuff.

I have no idea what you’re on and I’d love to know where I can get some.

This might shock you but none of those things need ID in most EU countries.