You can just as well say "the correct reaction to having a guns aimed at your head is NOT to give the guy another gun ... you know, in case the first one fails to fire when he starts pulling triggers".

Plus, the net difference is that this gives Google and Apple the ability to kill the ability of individuals to make payments (and tax them) ... do you want that?

(And I would say, compared to having European banks tax them, the answer is not so obvious)

The real issue is, of course, that this moves the burden of keeping phones secure onto Google and Apple, who are very willing to take on that burden in trade for a percentage of all consumer payment traffic in Germany. It's yet another choice between "spend money now to build a government department to secure payments ... or have Apple/Google do that for you". And they're choosing to save a little bit of money in the short term in trade for what is effectively a new tax.

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subscribed 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh, but Google doesn't really excel in making phones "secure".

Sure, their researchers are great, but Google itself claims that several years old phones running Oreo are safe and secure. They also extended the time for vendors to bring patches to the new vulnerabilities, they themselves slowed down - compare timeframe between patches released by GrapheneOS and patches released by Google - the latest GOS release provides patches for vulnerabilities that will be fixed by Google in.... October 2026: https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026040300

	▲	spwa4 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Compared to EU governments' security for their citizens Google has absolutely perfect, world-class, bullet-proof, iron-clad ultimate security. I do get that that's not exactly impressive. It isn't.