On Thursday, the EU Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a new framework for a European digital identity (eID) known as eIDAS2.0. A key part of the new legislation is to provide digital wallets linked to national digital identities. However, more than 500 cybersecurity and privacy specialists signed a letter objecting to the draft law shortly before signature. With privacy as one of the key concerns around a digital euro, passing controversial legislation claimed to enable Big Brother surveillance won’t help.
The letter asserts the legislation would enable a single government to snoop on all EU citizens’ web browsing. And the wallet lacks an important privacy safeguard. It needs to make it compulsory to prevent linking separate pieces of data about an individual.
Amongst the signatories to the letter are the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and hundreds of academics from around the world. More than a dozen industry members wrote a separate, less emotive letter objecting to the change that potentially enables web browsing surveillance. The industry letter avoids mentioning snooping but raises concerns about the impact on the security of the internet and the likelihood of fragmenting the internet – some websites may not be available to EU citizens. Signatories include Akamai, Cisco, Cloudflare, the Linux Foundation and Mozilla.
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