"The EU is set to unveil detailed plans for a bloc-wide digital wallet on Wednesday following requests from member states to find a safe way for citizens to access public and private services online.
The digital wallet would securely store payment details and passwords and allow citizens from all 27 countries to log into local government websites or pay utility bills using a single recognised identity, said people with direct knowledge of the plans."
Iâm interested in the good and bad of how this might interact with /e/ OS, if anyone has insight. It seems to me to be something that might soon be essential to have access to, while at the same time being a nightmare of data harvesting. Thoughts, @Manoj and anyone else?
Some EU countries already accept each otherâs digital identity documents, but not all. The commission wants to change this by introducing a âdigital walletâ in which a passport, driving licence, marriage certificate or other document can be stored. EU citizens can then share some of their data with authorities and companies. For example, their age, to show in a bar that they are old enough for an alcoholic drink. All EU Member States will have to recognise each otherâs national digital IDs. But citizens are not obliged to use them. They can also continue to use their old-fashioned paper documents. But the âEuropean IDâ has an important advantage. Those who now have to identify themselves on paper often reveal much more information than necessary. In the future, it will be sufficient for them to provide only the information that an authority or company actually needs. Moreover, it will soon be possible for people to use it to log on to large Internet platforms. This will allow them to avoid, for example, a Facebook or Google account, which these companies currently use to gather a lot of information on their users. The European Parliament and the EU countries still have to agree to the plans. It will take at least another year and a half before they can become reality.
