Why the Dutch government blocked the takeover of DigiD infrastructure by an American company, and what that says about privacy, digital autonomy, and European data sovereignty.
The cabinet decided to block the takeover of Solvinity the company that manages the infrastructure behind DigiD by the American IT company Kyndryl.
The cabinet is getting waaay to much credit here, they initially wanted to go through with the deal. It wasn’t until major public backlash, multiple experts putting their jobs on the line by going on television saying how bad an idea this was and an official committee strongly advising against it that cabinet changed their mind and chose to block the takeover. They were sitting their pants because of how the US would respond. Had they acted earlier, this could’ve gone much smoother: they could’ve just ended the contract at the company that’s being taken over, move the data to another company that isn’t being taken over. Or even better, they could have ordered to move the infrastructure in-house instead of having some commercial party handle the security of the population it’s most sensitive data.
This blog post is making my AI-senses tingle
they don’t explain what this has to do with ‘our photos’…
PixelUnion originates from the Netherlands as well, i guess that’s why they felt like writing about it. The relevancy is there, but i agree the writer didn’t really achieve to convey that.
