New technical framework for the European Digital Identity Wallet (eIDAS) reveals severe shortcomings, threatening user privacy and contradicting the regulation's intent, rights group says
New technical framework for the European Digital Identity Wallet (eIDAS) reveals severe shortcomings, threatening user privacy and contradicting the regulation's intent, rights group says
We analysed the new technical framework for the European Digital Identity Wallet, revealing severe shortcomings that threaten user privacy and contradict the regulation's intent.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/317047
in February 2024, the EU Parliament adopted the eIDAS regulation, creating the framework for a "European Digital Identity Wallet". This digital Wallet will enable citizens to identify themselves in a legally binding manner, both online and offline, sign documents, login into websites and share personal data about them with others. Recently, the European Commission published the Architectural Reference Framework (ARF) 1.4 for the technical implementation of the Wallet.
The success of the EU Digital Identity Wallet depends on its ability to gain citizens' trust and establish a resilient infrastructure in our current data-driven economy.
"However, after our analysis, we believe that this goal has been missed," says the digital rights group Epicenter Works.
"We see severe shortcomings in the ARF that either contradict the regulation or ignore important elements of it. These issues, if left unaddressed, could significantly undermine user rights and privacy."
Technology @lemmy.world New technical framework for the European Digital Identity Wallet (eIDAS) reveals severe shortcomings, threatening user privacy and contradicting the regulation's intent, rights group says 
Most of these make sense and are definitely blockers for this ever releasing but -
Remove the concept of the Pseudonym Provider and ensure pseudonyms are generated and stored locally without the possibility of linking back to real identities.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this data all has to be signed somewhere right? Like the eID contains cryptographically signed assertions about the user in some standard (JWT?) format.
What use is signing the assertions locally? There would be no way to tell if the citizen actually had any valid id at all. A pseudonym provider is the privacy layer that allows for signing of new tokens after ensuring the validity of the old.
How could you sign an anonymous token using a valid one without it being linked back to the valid one? It seems like impossible constraints.
Am I totally off base here?
8No you’re right. The ARF just ignored that constraint and intentionally built in a back door here. From the linked article:
However, the current ARF stipulates that law enforcement authorities can retroactively trace pseudonyms back to their legal identity. The provisions therefore „strongly contradicts the legal requirements,“ epicenter.works writes.
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To no surprise to anyone half competent
5In no surprise to anyone half competent, crypto sucks
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