The Cyber Security Council (CSR) calls on government to better protect citizens and businesses by making secure login resources more widely available; the government has a facilitating and coordinating role in this. The council urges the creation of a system in which citizens and companies can safely do business digitally with both public and private services. This will enable them to conduct safer online transactions and make them less dependent on the big American players in this field, such as Google and Facebook. This takes an important step in protecting our privacy and also benefits our country's digital security. Citizens and businesses also need digitally secure login tools, and haste is needed.
This is the thrust of the advice "Towards a secure eID system" that the council presented today to Minister Knops of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. Minister Knops has received the advice positively. The advice was also presented by mail to State Secretary Keijzer of Economic Affairs and Climate Change and Minister Grapperhaus of Justice and Security.
To simplify login, many websites offer citizens the option of logging in with their account at one of the major foreign platforms, such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, or soon possibly Alibaba or Tencent. This creates large concentrations of both Dutch corporate and personal data at these platforms, which directly affects our privacy and digital sovereignty. This must change quickly if the Netherlands is to be and remain a safe, open and prosperous society. The council therefore recommends that the government coordinate and facilitate the development of a reliable eID system in such a way that the right to privacy, autonomy and self-determination are central.
Trust in society and its structures is of crucial social and economic importance. Secure identification and authentication, secure login, secure sharing of data as well as secure (digital) signing and adequate shielding (encryption) of data is part of the necessary basic infrastructure of a digital world. Rijksoverheid s efforts in this regard focus on logging in citizens and businesses in the government domain, but not on logging in on websites of private parties, such as web shops. This one-sided concentration not only leads to fragmentation and confusion, but results in insufficient guarantees of privacy and security in a society in which the physical and digital worlds are becoming increasingly intertwined and faster. As a result, our digital security and privacy are under pressure. It is therefore important for the government to assume a coordinating and facilitating role so that an eID system is created through public-private cooperation.
View the report here: CSR Opinion eID NED
