The EU’s Digital Agenda Is A Danger to Privacy

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BrusselsReport.eu
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By former Dutch diplomat Johannes Vervloed

The European Commission presents its Digital Agenda as a necessary modernisation of society. A European digital identity (EU-ID), a digital wallet (EUDI Wallet), age verification for social media, stricter rules for online platforms and a new Chat Control Regulation are intended to protect us against identity fraud, child abuse, disinformation and cybercrime. At first glance, these measures appear justifiable.

But anyone who looks more closely and considers the potential consequences of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda will quickly conclude that the proposed digital infrastructure offers unprecedented opportunities for the surveillance of citizens. The question here is not only what the current Commission intends to do with these tools, but above all what could be done with them in the (near) future.

This is not a conspiracy theory, but a classic principle of constitutional law. Freedoms are protected not only against today’s leaders, but also against tomorrow’s.

‘Privacy-friendly design’

The EUDI Wallet is at the heart of the system. The aim is for every citizen within the EU to identify themselves digitally. Officially, the wallet is voluntary. It is intended to make it easier to log in to government services, store qualifications, present licences or prove one’s age online.

The European Commission emphasises that the EUDI Wallet has been designed to be privacy-friendly. Thanks to what is known as ‘selective data sharing’, citizens would only need to share information that is strictly necessary. For age verification, for example, it would only be necessary to prove that someone is over eighteen years of age, without revealing their date of birth.

That sounds reassuring. But the fundamental question is a different one. As more and more public and private services start using the same digital identity, a digital key to access society is gradually emerging. ‘Voluntary’ can thus, in practice, become ‘indispensable’.

Those who do not use a digital identity will find it increasingly difficult to participate in economic and social life. That is precisely why the debate on the European Commission’s digital agenda deserves more attention than it has received so far.

A second development concerns the plans for European age verification on social media. The EC wants to protect minors from harmful content and addictive algorithms. Several Member States are now also calling for stricter age limits.

Once again: the aim is – at first glance – understandable. Virtually no one would deny that social media can have harmful effects on children. But age verification immediately raises a question: how is that age verified?

The most privacy-friendly solution is a system that merely confirms that someone is old enough, without revealing any further personal data. The European Commission says it wants to move in that direction and has already commissioned the development of an app designed to do just that. Without much success, incidentally: the app had barely been released when it was hacked.

No more anonymity on the internet

But ultimately, the issue is something else. Why should the European Commission be responsible for protecting children? That is the parents’ job. It has always been that way; why should that suddenly no longer be possible? Most social media platforms already have a ‘parent control’ setting. Parents can use this to gradually grant their children more access.

What isn’t being said, but is apparently the case, is that it’s not just children’s ages that are checked, but everyone’s. Anonymous internet use will then no longer be possible. In effect, this would trample on the privacy of correspondence enshrined in Article 13 of our Constitution.

A complex balancing act

The European Commission’s original proposal obliged communication service providers to detect material relating to child sexual abuse, even when messages are end-to-end encrypted. This led to strong criticism from privacy organisations, cybersecurity experts and various Member States. They pointed out that breaching confidential communications affects not only criminals, but all citizens.

The proposal has therefore still not been adopted. Only a restricted version (Chat Control 1.0) is temporarily in force. There remains division within the Council of Ministers and also the European Parliament over the question of how the protection of children can be reconciled with the right to confidential communication.

This debate illustrates just how complex the trade-off is. Child abuse must be combated. But if the price for doing so is the abolition of the secrecy of correspondence, the child (the secrecy of correspondence) is being thrown out with the bathwater (child abuse).

If all citizen communications become, in principle, subject to monitoring, the relationship between the state and the citizen shifts fundamentally. That is a fundamental point. Freedom is not just the right to speak. Freedom is also the right to communicate without the state or private parties looking over one’s shoulder.

Although EU-ID, the EUDI Wallet and age verification are still at the project stage, and chat control – as mentioned – is currently only in force in a restrictive manner, the European Union has already introduced the Digital Services Act in recent years. Large online platforms are obliged to tackle risks relating to illegal content, manipulation and certain forms of disinformation. Transparency regarding moderation decisions is required, and platforms must explain how their recommendation algorithms work.

Here, too, the objective is understandable at first glance. Foreign influence, online scams and organised disinformation are real problems. But that is precisely why we must guard against another risk: that the fight against disinformation is gradually shifting towards the regulation of legitimate political differences of opinion.

Ongoing debate

For who decides what constitutes misinformation? The fact-checkers? These are so-called ‘independent’ experts, who in reality are usually affiliated with left-leaning NGOs. They determine when a dissenting analysis is deemed to be dangerous disinformation.

In a mature democracy, such questions should never be answered definitively. It is precisely ongoing debate that protects freedom of expression. This is all the more true now that artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly significant role in detecting suspicious content. Algorithms can analyse millions of posts, but often struggle to understand context. As a result, satire, political criticism or strong opinions can more easily be wrongly flagged as problematic. The combination of AI, identity verification tools and automated moderation therefore warrants much stricter democratic oversight than is currently the case.

We must prevent the European Commission’s digital agenda from creating an infrastructure in which identification, communication and digital services become increasingly intertwined. Technical possibilities create political possibilities. What is used today solely for age verification may be deployed for other purposes tomorrow. What is voluntary today may become de facto compulsory tomorrow. And what applies today only to the fight against serious crime may, under pressure from new crises, be gradually extended in the future.

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History teaches us that powers, once established, rarely disappear. And this is certainly often the case in the EU. Temporary measures become permanent; exceptions become the rule.

Both in terms of substance and for this reason, the Digital Agenda deserves a much broader public debate than it is currently receiving. Privacy is not a luxury for people who have something to hide. It is a necessary prerequisite for a free society. The same applies to confidential communication and the freedom to express criticism without constantly feeling that every digital action is becoming part of an ever-expanding surveillance system.

The Member States of the European Union face a fundamental choice. Will they accept the Digital Agenda, which involves building a digital infrastructure that facilitates the monitoring of citizens’ actions? Or will they opt to preserve anonymity, ensure citizens’ control over their own data, and limit the European Commission’s powers to a strictly defined scope?

 

Originally published in Dutch by Wynia’s Week.

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