As new security flaws are exposed on a daily basis, and as several hundred scientists and cybersecurity experts from around the world signed an open letter in early March demanding a moratorium on these systems — which they consider a serious threat to privacy — one question demands an answer: what is the actual purpose of the age-verification application proposed by the European Commission, which is, in plain terms, nothing less than an identity check?
Should we read this as yet another brick in the wall of mass surveillance that dares not speak its name, at a time when countries across the globe are rolling out comparable systems? And yet, as Olivier Blazy points out, the technical solution could hardly be simpler: “all you need to do is ask the internet service provider for the connection data.”
Shoddy work. Improvisation. Nothing holds up in this app, built to Brussels’ specifications. For the cybersecurity specialist and professor at the École Polytechnique in Paris, the choice of this technical approach — one that countries like France and Germany are viewing with considerable scepticism, with France actively developing its own sovereign alternative — is deeply questionable.
“Digital identity, done properly, can be genuinely useful to people — but not this,” Olivier Blazy states bluntly. “This age-verification application, as conceived, makes no sense whatsoever.”
Below is the podcast’s summary in English.
