How Sovereign Do You Want to Be?
25th May 2024
Sovereignty is a great word, and it has a nice ring to it. Everyone would like to be sovereign, but being so comes with costs and inconveniences. Therefore, it’s useful to break down the concept to see what we really mean by it and what we’d be prepared to do to be “sovereign”.
Confidentiality is often the first thing that comes to mind. Who can read all our communications and files? And will they sell our data? Or feed it to their AI? The Dutch Senate and House of Representatives recently decided that it’s no problem if Microsoft and the US government have access to their data. The Dutch government cloud policy requires a careful risk analysis for such a decision. Unfortunately, many parts of the government don’t actually fall under this policy, and therefore such a risk assessment is not publicly available for our houses of parliament, or it might not even exist.
It would be nice to read that though, because either it says “we don’t mind the Americans having access” or “we think they could spy on us but won’t”. Both would look pretty weird on paper .
Confidentiality is more exciting for a government than for a shoe store, so it’s not the most important aspect of sovereignty for everyone from a practical perspective.