Reinurb

Privacy & Digital Sovereignty

3 min read

Even before America became an enemy, I was already aware of the need for digital sovereignty. The necessity for this became clear in 2017. There was a referendum in the Netherlands at the time. The two most dangerous political parties in the Netherlands back then (CDA and especially D66) betrayed the Dutch citizens. They pushed through the so-called “Sleepwet” (Dragnet Act), even though the citizens had rejected the law in the referendum. For me, that was the trigger to secure my digital sovereignty.

Nowadays, with Trump in his second term as President of America, this country is our number one enemy. Economically, digitally, and perhaps even militarily. Few people are truly convinced of this yet, but many Europeans are now realizing that consuming American digital services is a bad idea. Unfortunately, people are quite late to this realization, and strange decisions are still being made. But fortunately, awareness is beginning to dawn.

For America, this has been a modus operandi since June 6, 1944, or April 3, 1948. It depends a bit on how you look at it. With Trump as president, it is now clearly coming to the surface a bit more, but in general, not all that much has changed.

What Trump does very well, however, is show the world how it all truly works. And that is shaking people awake.

But enough about the Americans. Other countries are also difficult to trust. The Netherlands is one of them as well. All of my sensitive data is stored inside my own house or in another country. Not in the Netherlands.
I don’t believe in European sovereignty, it’s just a buzz word for CEOs, CIOs and politicians to gain some useless trust. There is only two types of sovereignty:

  • Personal sovereignty which gives it to an individual person and its life.
  • Corporate or organizational sovereignty which gives it to an organization, and to the processes or products it creates.

Those two types should empower each other in society.

Sovereignty doesn’t have anything todo with countries or continents. Off course there are countries like the US, Russia, Brasil, The Netherlands, North Korea, France, the UK and a lot of others, where true sovereignty is impossible to begin with.
Not to say I don’t prefer EU tech over US tech. ;) But there is also a LOT of poisoned EU tech.

I also have a strong opinion about companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and OpenAI, which I will let you guess.

  • Can European alternatives compete with American big tech?
  • What does “good enough” self-hosting look like for non-technical users?
  • Is leaving platforms individually enough, or do we need regulation?

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