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0 pointsp2detar2mo ago0 comments

Do we have stats how many germans use something else than Google Android, Samsung Knox or Apple? I recon it should be less than 1% which quite honestly is in fact „all“ citizens.

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10 comments · 4 top-level

elric2mo ago· 6 in thread

Sure, let's just arbitrarily exclude ~1million people because they're not running the government's preferred American spyware.

ryandrake2mo ago

This is a very, VERY stereotypical Tech Product Manager viewpoint: "N% of users are hard to support edge cases, so we should exclude them." You see this justification everywhere in business. "We'll drop support for [old OS] once it gets to 1% of our user base." "Only 1% of our users have non-Latin characters in their usernames so it's OK to not support that." "1% of our users are on 3G or slower Internet connections, so we don't have to consider them in our performance metrics."

It's a pragmatic, profit-oriented point of view, but not one that makes sense when your mission is to be inclusive of everyone.

p2detarOP2mo ago

This is an unfair and a straw man argument, is it not? Are you also unhappy that in a democracy the 51% choose how the other 49% are going to be governed?

Why device attestation is required is quite well explained by this github comment [0]. I am in the industry and I agree fully with it, because it is a fact a problem for most smart phone users in terms of security.

0 - https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...

Hackbraten2mo ago

I think your analogy is flawed. I can be part of the losing 49% and still be entitled to receive the same services as the 51%, whereas people who chose a privacy-oriented OS are essentially going to be excluded from essential governmental services. That's a whole different kind of thing.

I'm not going to replace my 1200 EUR smartphone with a device that forces me to have an account with Apple or Google. I've been issued a German identity card, which is its own computer that includes a digital identity already. I also own an expensive card reader, which together forms a system that is completely capable of supporting any attestation anyone would need. They should just stop excluding me already.

2 more replies

elric2mo ago

That's a silly argument, not only because many important changes require a 2/3 majority.

My point was that the government and its services (German or otherwise) should be available to all citizens/residents, regardless of their choice (or lack) mobile device.

shakna2mo ago

If it requires a Google or Apple account, then it also requires those companies never cease an account, either. Or vulnerable people will be harmed.

nothinkjustai2mo ago

> Are you also unhappy that in a democracy the 51% choose how the other 49% are going to be governed

Yes of course. That is one of it’s fundamental issues.

account422mo ago

And backup software should also remove the "restore" option because hardly anyone needs that, right?

Same here, the government shouldn't build a system where two American mega-corporations have the keys to everyone's lives.

class4behavior2mo ago

There's a big difference between having to run a particular company's OS and being forced to share private data (whether that's merely your DNS requests or your ID documents and full financial history). with said organization.

type02mo ago

In fact „all“ citizens who are willing to be surveilled by Google and Apple, unless German government provides each citizen with similar eID hardware there won't be any digital equality any time soon. Maybe they should pay to some subsidiary company of IBM (like RedHat) to do this, they already have such a good track record of storing nationality on their machines /s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag#Holocaust

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