European e-ID Announced

gbjbaanb writes in with a story about plans to introduce an electronic identity system in Europe. "On Wednesday, the European Commission published a strategy document aimed at setting up systems to protect children online. In the document — but not in the accompanying press release nor the citizens' summary — the Commission mentioned that it will soon propose a 'pan-European framework for electronic authentication,' full details will be announced on 30th May. The launch of the strategy follows a push to strengthen internet security in the EU. It also outlined legal measures to make it easier for people to use a single e-ID for online services across borders, which would underpin a move toward a pan-European framework for electronic identification, authentication and signature (Pefias) framework."

Comments

Mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problems with these systems is once they're in place they come up with the idea "Hey, why don't we mandate the usage of said systems to stop evil XYZ?"

Re:Mandatory

[c0mpliant]

I've become very skeptical of the entire EU project of the last few years. I thought it was democratically based, making rational decisions in the common interest of the people. Introducing common laws to help life easier for people across the EU by identifying areas where individual nations might not be as effective as a unit. But now in the last 5 years I've seen measure after measure which are raw power-grabs by the EU to try an mitigate the sovereignty of individual member states.

Now we have yet another measure to "save the children" because anyone who might be against such a measure is an evil kiddy fiddler. I highly expect this to become mandatory and sprawl into not just children but everyone needs to be on this system. Perhaps I've just become skeptical of my own government and politicians willingness to sign over our hard fought independence that anything the power hungry EU puts down now is another attempt to control the people of Europe under a single entity.

The article itself states that this is likely to become mandatory but that there no clear definitions regarding the limits of the system.

Re:Mandatory

[cornjones]

Meh. I was always told the EU was originally set up to stop Germany ever becoming too powerful again.

Well, that worked well didn't it.

The fear being that Germany (or anybody that got too powerful) would start another war. Considering that we are in the longest time of European peace in recorded history... yeah, i would say it worked pretty well...

Re:Mandatory

[c0mpliant]

Germany is actually quite powerful economically at the moment, mainly because in the last 17 years its had an excess of capital due to the enormous trade surplus which its had thanks to the Euro and smaller nations now having the ability to buy German goods without having to worry about exchange rates between the Deutsche Mark and the Italian Lira, the Irish Punt, the Greek Drachma or the Portuguese escudo.

Now the problem for Germany came when their banks tried to use that surplus cash, they lent it out to institutions for practically nothing. These institions then could then lend to riskier and riskier prospects because the cost of the risk was so reduced by the cheap and availability of money being provided by German and other major European banks so that even if those risky loans collapsed, they could simply avail of the cheap money to correct for such fluctuations.

The EU didn't make Germany weaker, it made Europe stronger as a whole, until they started some high risk enterprises. I'm willing to say that I don't think the EU was designed from the start to become what its become today, but certain financial interests have a way of corrupting things to their way of thinking

Re:Mandatory

[moeinvt]

That's very interesting. I hadn't looked at the EU from this perspective, but it appears that you could following the same trajectory as the USA. Be warned!

The USA (under The Constitution) began as a voluntary agreement between independent states. Exactly as you described, we delegated certain authorities to a central government in a few areas (e.g. a monetary system and military) where it seemed we could be more effective as a unit.

As you can see from our example, the system was ultimately corrupted to the point that we now suffer under the reign of a massive, self-serving central government which has trampled the sovereignty of the states to serve its own self interests.

You're absolutely right to be skeptical of your government and extremely wary of any attempted EU power grabs. I'd caution you not to allow the destruction of your existence as independent states.

Re:Mandatory

[MightyMartian]

As events progress it's hard not to look at the EU and the Eurozone and see them as formative tools for a German dominated Europe. As the golden rule says, he who has the gold makes the rules.

Now admittedly Germany is backing into it, but one gets the feeling that the old Kaiser and Hitler got it wrong and that the best way to dominate Europe wasn't shooting, it was creating vast capital reserves and waiting for everyone else to become insolvent, so Germany can "save" them.

The Euro in particular is the most powerful weapon yet invented for German domination of Europe, and the French, rather than taking on the traditional role of counterweight, has become a lapdog.

Re:Mandatory

[c0mpliant]

The Nice Treaty, which formalised the two tier Europe, the introduction of the Euro and its centralised monetary policy, the aborted EU Constitution which was then morphed into the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact treaty which will reduce a governments ability to adopt fiscal policy. These are just off the top of my head. Now, member states government have had to approve them and in my own national case, a referendum was put had to be run, but in each of them(bar the last one which is due to be voted on at the end of the month), the Irish people voted No, until they were told, no that was the wrong answer, vote again.

Government are so terrified by the loss of structural loans and trade loss that they are unwilling to challenge the EU on these thing, why run the risk of losing out on revenue, we'll sell our sovereignty instead, that has a far less tangible impact on our budgets... until now. Again in my own national case we're told, you have no choice, you need another bailout, do what we want or we pull the trigger on the economic gun to your head. Whatever about the individual directives the EU issues, the macro effects of EU policy is killing national sovereignty and soon we really will have no choice, that "the man in Brussels/Frankfurt" says we have to do it so we have to do it.

Re:Mandatory

[c0mpliant]

Wrong, Germany suffered from a low trade surplus prior to the introduction of Euro in 2001, have a look at the historical balance of trade for Germany here. You can see very noticable climb in trade surplus. This was a direct result of the introduction of the Euro.

Its about tracking and logging

[GeneralTurgidson]

Authentication is just a requirement of those two.

Children Don't Need Protection

[erroneus]

Children need to be taught. They should be taught by their parents.

Once those two things are done properly, the need for "protection" diminishes to nearly zero.

And, in other news...

[DeathToBill]

The UK Border Agency's biometrics system crashed on Thursday, leaving hundreds of previously-legal UK residents without the right to live or work there...

No, I can't see anything that could go wrong.

Re:on thursday

[PopeRatzo]

My problem with this system is, you can't have one without the other, and do we really want the other?

Nobody asked what you want. This is about corporate control, pure and simple. They're not looking to protect you, they're looking to exploit you.

See, anonymity on the Internet is causing lost profits, and we cannot have that. When the Internet became a shopping mall, control was given over to the corporations, and now it's all about what they want. And they want to know exactly who you are and exactly what you're up to.

Re:Let's get Godwin out of the way

[foobsr]

Ihre papiere bitte?

Yet, it is still capitalized 'Papiere', which is also indicated by the fact that one pays Euro 28,80 for a German identity card ('Bundespersonalausweis', obligatory). Add at least Euro 6,00 for a biometric photo. I had pay do this today and I am totally pissed.

I wonder how much 'they' will charge for an eId.

CC.

Re:Thread over.

[Hyperhaplo]

I am very sure that the dead horse is good for another round.

Native American Indian philosophy is that when your horse dies you should jump off.

In modern corporate society this is not the case. After all, the horse is a company asset and ... We can lower the requirements and state that the dead horse its in fact exceeding expectations ... We can claim the dead horse as a tax write off and send it on retraining ... We can promote the dead horse to management and submit it a fine example of the breadth of our equity and diversity program ... We can classify being dead as the perfect state of calm and transfer the horse to manager of HR

this could go on..... I am sure that with this crowd not only can we spend days flogging this dead horse... But we can do it creatively and in techno geek style

Now.. I am late for a meeting to fire a jockey for allowing his mount to.die...

These people won't give up until you need a licence to use the internet. At that point we will need a new internet.

Finally... but not far enough

[staalmannen]

As a European citizen (Swede) working in another country (Belgium), I have often felt that there are a couple of things that actually would do well to get centralized at a EU level. One such thing would be the social security number. All the sillyness that you have to go through before you get a local ID card and then that you have to carry two ID cards, one for each country, makes it rather strange. Especially upon repatriation when social security is transferred and you somehow have to show that the person with one ID is the same as the one with the other ID. There are several other examples of stuff that are still national that simply would be better to put at a federal level (and other things that would be better to transfer down to regional level).

It's typical for the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

That i have to read this news on an American website.