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-cr...

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

Just big systems having even bigger inertia

I'd like to see if he can be convinced into going after Google and effectively stopping remote attestation. One can certainly dream...

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.

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Friendly advice: please don't capitalize random common nouns like the president does. It's a marker of one's affinity toward precision (among other things).

I think they are saying the signed ID can be copied to another device. Unless such ID needs to have acces to some TPM that can be trusted, which likely requires then specific trusted hardware and software

I feel like we need a war or something to show everyone how brittle we've built everything, and how unnecessary it all is.

Gaming consoles typically have hardware attestation (as in verified software on verified hardware, sealed), and it has been broken many times in the past.

most times it's done by (reliably re-)rooting a attested phone in a way which bypasses detection of the attestation system

so not really useful for 3rd party ROMs

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.

> 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?

(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.

> 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.

The EU Commission was caught breaking the law in order to lobby for Chat Control: https://noyb.eu/en/gdpr-complaint-against-x-twitter-over-ill...

The EU Commission also gave a foreign tech company called Thorn (they pretend to be a charity), special access to government officials: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho...

I think both of those cases would be examples of lobbying and corruption.

I think a hearty fuck off is warranted for responses like this. What the shit do you base the converse off? Pretend there's no corruption and there won't be any??

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> I don't think most EU politicians are corrupted by these companies.

Well, of course not! They're corrupted by the other companies who benefit from the DSA and DMA.

A lot of the suggestions do actually sound pretty good at a quick glance, but have far-reaching consequences that are not instantly obvious if you don't know your tech/security/privacy or otherwise value a specific topic highly. The average HN reader is likely more concerned about privacy and less so about crime and safety than the average guy on the street, and politicians need to handle and balance a lot many more interests than only that of privacy advocates.

"Securely signed/verified devices for accessing your bank" or "increased surveillance and tracking of criminals" sound like splendid ideas and direct solutions to immediate problems. Now, how to actually implement them and how it will affect society in the long run might seem less important when you've got increasing crime rates, a slowing economy, displeased voters or whatever looming. In short, some dilemmas have very clear answers when you (willingly or through unawareness) only concern yourself with a subset of the effects of a decision, and this goes both for politicians and special interest groups. That being said, I'm very pro-privacy and it's the job of policymakers to know the details of what they're deciding on. Reality is however usually very complex and nuanced with several things being true because they all contribute a part to what's going on.

e: what am I doing, speaking like I actually know how things work? Nothing is absolute and nuance is important, but sometimes it is also very useful to simplify and generalise to get things done. If no one had any conviction, not much would ever happen. But moderation in all things.

> I think it is far more likely that it is a lack of knowledge and incompetence.

I agree with that. Reading HN comments, where people are supposed to be generally tech-savvy, I see a ton of "lack of knowledge and incompetence" (not in a negative way, just "uninformed"). Why should politicians know better than the average tech-savvy person?

But politicians get yelled at by everybody, saying everything and its contrary, while the tech-savvy people can comfortably take a condescending tone explain why "being so stupid is impossible so it has to be corruption".

I understand, but this is a national security matter. The focus should be on developing matching domestic capability.

> Lazy cynicism is itself a form of corruption of one's own mind

I love this way of thinking. I might use this quote down the road