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European Commission has a "Wifi4EU" initative, provides 93k high-speed private access points across the EU, free of charge. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751

The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:

Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens

Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)

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[–] 113 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

It's mind-blowing how at the same time some EU government guys pushing stuff like DSA while other do something like this (which is nice, and a complete opposite, if it's not honeypot anyways).

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What's the problem with the Digital Services Act?

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, of all the things to criticise the EU for the DSA is a bizarre pick. Challenging techbro dominance with simple and technically-sensible demands on the gatekeepers is a win for the average person in my book.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    They tried to push it to the point of stripping encryption from internet altogether and when that didn't work they tried demanding chat apps to be able to scan people messages before they send them. Maybe I'm confusing multiple entirely different things here, but I kinda heard that mostly with the abbreviation DSA flying around so I assumed it was sorta umbrella for all those things.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Indeed from their history of constantly wanting more control and invasive measures, always sold in the name of security, protection of minors, etc.. I'm highly sceptical and always asume the worst.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    But those are all publicly available pieces of legislation. It's quite a leap to go from that to just assuming they'll secretly and illegally spy on you through public wifi networks, without any law allowing them to do so. Besides, if they have no problem doing that, why would internet through your European ISP be any safer?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    Never said the rest is safer, doesn't mean they are 'privacy friendly', they aren't.

    It’s quite a leap to go from that to just assuming they’ll secretly and illegally spy on you

    Plenty of stuff like this or this or this

    And they did as much against Pegasus as they do against israel.
    Some words and recommendations.

    22 EU clients, at least, have acquired it.
    quite a leap to go from that to just assuming they will not spy on you as a collective, more than is already 'publicly available'.
    Organisations that spy usually don't advertise their practices.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Plenty of stuff like this or this or this

    Again, those are all pushes for legislation. None of which are implemented at this point. The EU is, for better and for worse, a bureaucratic monster. Anything it does has to go through a long process involving multiple oversight comittees, the commission, the parliament etc. It really doesn't have the option for much secrecy. National governments are quite a different story.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    . Anything it does has to go through a long process involving multiple oversight comittees, the commission, the parliament etc. It really doesn’t have the option for much secrecy.

    Oh my sweet summer child.

    When a German MEP Patrick Breyer asked the EU to release the names of the people who were a part of the so called High Level Group that wrote this proposal, they replied with a list with all names blacked out. Here is Patrick Breyer’s own blog post on the subject.

    According to Edri ”The HLG has kept its work sessions closed, by strictly controlling which stakeholders got invited and effectively shutting down civil society participation.”.

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