[reacharavindh]

The fact that government agencies, particularly those that deal with international concerns like these are using non sovereign tech for communications is mind-blowing. They might as well use public gmail.. atleast it would be cheaper. If you want it not exposed directly, host it yourself and take measures to secure it for intended eyes only. This should be common sense.

[fc417fc802]

It's mind blowing that government bureaucrats would be permitted to use commercial providers for official business at all. The provider being foreign is merely the cherry on top.

I was going to ask why something like mail.gov.nl doesn't exist but it turns out [0] (edit: wikipedia is full of lies) that they don't have a reserved second level domain for official government services to use? Is this really one of the countries pushing digital IDs?

> Official second-level domains do not exist.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.nl

[closewith]

That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.

[djaro]

It exists, but the vast majority of government services dont use it (i.e. taxes are just done through belastingdienst.nl).

[closewith]

Yes, which I think is also very common, but what Wikipedia was referring to is that there's no official second-level domain for Government, unlike say gov.br or gov.uk).

Gov.nl is just a domain owned by the Dutch Government, like gov.ie or belgium.be.

[fc417fc802]

Ah. Just a blatant inaccuracy on wikipedia I take it. That does make a bit more sense.

[robin_reala]

Yep. gov.nl is in the PSL[1] and there are plenty of used subdomains (e.g. https://business.gov.nl/)

[1] https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat

[djaro]

As far as I can tell .gov.nl is only used for pages aimed at i.e. expats and businesses. Most services dutch people use simply have a .nl page like the digital id or filing taxes.

[jurgenburgen]

This makes sense because gov is anglocentric and would make the URLs sound weird in non-English countries.

[rafram]

There’s no reason they couldn’t have picked a different second-level suffix. Spanish-speaking countries use e.g. .gob.mx, France uses .gouv.fr.

[closewith]

And overheid.nl is their government site for that reason.

[pjc50]

Privatization: in much of the (neo)liberal West, it is seen as better to use commercial providers. They're supposed to be cheaper and better, because they're not using (union) civil service staff.

Yes, this results in enshittification.

[AnthonyMouse]

The thing that results in enshittification is market consolidation. Notice that Comcast sucks whereas there aren't a lot of complaints about Big Shampoo because that's a fairly competitive market.

If the government needs trucks then they should just buy trucks, not build a factory to make trucks and then another factory to make lead acid batteries for the trucks and then start mining lead to make the batteries etc.

At some point they have to interface with the market and you still have to solve the problem of keeping the market competitive and keeping the bidding process from being captured. If you're not doing those things then you're screwed either way; if you are doing them then it's better to just buy finished goods than to have civil servants manufacturing doorknobs and operating rubber tree plantations to make weather stripping.

[fc417fc802]

I think that's true for widgets but it becomes much more opaque when it comes to digital services, particularly those that handle sensitive information. Sure there's govcloud and fedramp these days but if the US federal government had chosen to build that hardware out in house I think that would have been a reasonable decision. It's similar to private versus in house security personnel where there are arguments in favor of both.

[danaris]

There's a big difference between physical products, which, once the government has them, it can just use them, and digital infrastructure, which has a number of issues.

The two big ones I see off the top of my head are:

1) Once the government has paid for digital services from some private company, they are then providing those digital services to their country's public.

2) Because of that, they are then also storing their people's data in those systems.

If (say) Ford decides they don't like the government of (say) Belgium, and don't want to sell them any more transit vans (or whatever), that's not really a huge deal. Belgium has the vans already, and they can just get another supplier for the next set.

If Microsoft decides they don't like the government of Belgium, even if they don't decide to do anything nefarious with the data (which is absolutely a real concern, both from malice and incompetence), they can shut off their services overnight and then the people of Belgium have no governmental websites or digital services. (And if they have a contract that says they can't...well, what's Belgium going to do about it? Ask Trump real real nice to make Microsoft keep the lights on?) Or, even if they're perfectly polite and commit to an orderly transition, Belgium still has to put in absolutely massive amounts of time, effort, and money to select a new vendor and migrate all their data and retrain all their people on the completely different interfaces and such.

Whereas when they start buying new vans from Mercedes...the drivers might have to remember that the radio's volume knob is 5cm away from where it was in the Fords...?

[fc417fc802]

I'd understand contracting a commercial provider to run the government infra, with extensive contractual obligations surrounding exactly how data is to be handled. What's wild to me is turning government bureaucrats loose to send and receive likely very sensitive information using the third party provider of their choice.

[reactordev]

Ah yes, the art of making things shitty.

https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ

[28304283409234]

I remember 15 years ago when our Minister of Foreign affairs was gleefully telling a gadget-vlogger about his personal setup where he was not using 'official email', but his own private Blackberry / iPhone (I forgot) and email for communicating all things. Out of 'frustration with how long it took for official IT to get things sorted'. Video is still online even: https://vimeo.com/13224190

[mrtksn]

I don't think Americans understand what US used to mean for the rest of the world.

America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old world where you invest or you go to build things, where your past or identity wasn't the primary concern but your dreams your abilities were. It wasn't nationalistic place, it was open to all and pretty much it was the group work of humanity. When aliens arrive, they arrived to US and even if not, they certainly wanted to speak to the US president as the leader of humanity.

Unlike Europe it wasn't stuck into petty identity conflicts, unlike Russia or China it was governed by the law and the law would protect you from the sneaky politicians. Unlike Europe, US companies were fair businesses that could protect you the customer from bad things even if America developed European or Asian habits.

Why wouldn't you use anything from America? Americans don't understand how transactional they are becoming and that from now on they will need to perform. Like the Tesla boycott, suddenly Tesla had to price their vehicles to match the functionality they provide in order to be able to sell cars again.

Currently the US tech tools are better as they were refined for decades with huge resources and user bases, so it is hard to switch away and at this time it's the perception of risk and US no longer being cool are what pushes for the transition but if EU is lucky Trump will invade Greenland and will make people take the inconvenient path and US tech industry will compact into 350M US market. Europeans will have a few years of sub-par tech and then will have good sovereign tech.

[Epa095]

This reminds me of a 1995 Norwegian song, freely translated by me and chatgtp:

    We dreamed of America
    where the soft wind lives.
    We dreamed of America
    where honey flowers grow,
    where the sky is vast and blue
    with stars and stripes upon it too.
    We dreamed of America,
    but not anymore,
    no, not anymore.

    I don't know when people first began dreaming of America.
    Long before Columbus, people dreamed of America, I think.
    A place of everlasting flowers where everyone was free and happy, and
    no one had to take off their hat for anyone unless they wanted to themselves.
    A smiling paradise where love lasts forever,
    and old age is beautiful, a place without any smell.

    In 1945—before that too, but certainly in 1945—I knew what I was going to be
    when I grew up.
    I was going to be an *American*.

    That spring, the first films from the Pacific War arrived,
    where the Americans stood with bent knees on jungle paths and shot Japanese soldiers with U.S. carbines.
    The Japanese were ugly, with protruding teeth and protruding ribs,
    while the Americans were brave, handsome, clean-cut, and immortal.
    And even if they did die, they died with a courageous smile and said:

    "Give this letter to my mother; she will understand."

    While the Japanese died like grubs and worms,
    and we felt no pity for them.

    Besides being ugly, they were portrayed as horribly stupid—so stupid that they spoke broken English even when talking to each other.

    I know that we dreamed of America well into the 1960s.
    A scentless land beyond the sea,
    where everyone had cars and white teeth.

    I don't know exactly when it stopped.

    But one day in the 1960s, we not only stopped loving America as a god;
    we began hating America as a fallen god.

    And nothing falls so heavily, so hard, and so deep
    as a fallen god
    who turns out not to be a god at all,
    but merely America.

    Then America was blamed not only for the Vietnam War and environmental disasters,
    but also, for example, for car culture.
    And the greatest share of the blame fell on the man who discovered America.

    Now, 487 years after his death, Christopher Columbus is blamed not only for the slave trade from West Africa,
    but also for the murder of Kennedy,
    and for all the worlds traffic accidents.

    Now they say Columbus was a bastard.

    Because it was he who discovered America in 1492.

[hnben]

> America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor

wat

[AnthonyMouse]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

[noir_lord]

Indeed, hilariously blind to the actual history of the US.

They’ve (just like any powerful country) never been good though they do have excellent propaganda.

[surgical_fire]

Sometimes I envy the illiterate.

At least they cannot read this ridiculous load of propaganda.

[mrtksn]

Don't go too hard on yourself on this, you are doing just fine.

[surgical_fire]

Given enough time on HN, we will all get there someday.

[icantevenhold]

This kind of sums up my sentiment.

All throughout my adult life the US (for all its apparent faults) was to me a shining example of progress and humanity. It was the best large scale implementation of human rights, laws, and democracy. Sure it was far from perfect but “as good as it gets, for now”

Became very disillusioned with that image of the US in the last couple of years. Maybe it’s always been like that - but the recent cronyism, the blatant openly displayed corruption and complete disregard for all the values it used to champion really destroyed the good image I had of the US.

In years to come they will realise what this loss of image (or “aura” as the kids would say) really means in a very practical and blunt sense.

[j_maffe]

> was to me a shining example of progress and humanity.

Which country was the US bombing to the ground at this period you're reminiscing on?

[mrtksn]

You don't get it, the US government could have been bad or good but that wasn't the concern when it comes to America. America was a separate thing from the folks in Washington, some politicians and might have done very bad things or the military industrial complex might have pushed the politicians to start wars but this wasn't what America stands for. Americans used to be the good guys, even when bombing kindergartens in the Middle East because whoever was responsible for that would have had paid for it in front of the American legal system or American people.

[j_maffe]

> because whoever was responsible for that would have had paid for it in front of the American legal system or American people

That literally never happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre?wprov=sfla1

> By June 17, 2008, six defendants had their cases dropped and a seventh was found not guilty.[5] The only one of the eight charged to face punishment was Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich. On October 3, 2007, the Article 32 hearing investigating officer recommended that charges of murder be dropped and Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide in the deaths of two women and five children.[6] Further charges of assault and manslaughter were ultimately dropped. Wuterich pled guilty to the only remaining charge, one count of negligent dereliction of duty, and was convicted on January 24, 2012.[7][8]

[mrtksn]

It doesn't matter, that was the perception and the expectation. Americans themselves were used to seen as blameless, since those things were against what US stands for.

[bulbar]

It's really hard to distinguish this from satire, because it's so much detached from reality. I deduce it's not satire from the other posts here.

Labeling 300+ million people as "the good guys" grouping then by nation (I assume with "Americans" you mean US American citizen and not, for example, Mexicans?) but then trying to detach a nation from its politics is wild and the notion of "they are the good guys even when they do terrible things" is some weird circular or contradicting argument (depending on how I've wants to play that).

[ForHackernews]

American soldiers committed the Mỹ Lai Massacre.

American soldiers trained their weapons on those Americans to halt the killing.

America has always contained multitudes, but chose to see the best in itself and the world saw it reflected in that light.

One of the most shocking things to me was visiting Vietnam and going to the Museum of American War Crimes in Ho Chi Minh City and almost the first thing you see walking in is the words of the US Declaration of Independence in enormous letters, printed across an entire wall: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

They are throwing America's own principles back in its face, castigating America for behaving in a way that is un-American. The world believed in what America claims it believes.

[SidewaysView]

The constitution is a piece of paper written by dead white men.

Principles have never been about that. The world has never been about that. It's never been something anyone who wasn't "that kind of nerd" could believe in. Not even up for debate.

[ForHackernews]

You say that, but pieces of paper written by dead white men have remade the world for good and for ill. All of 20th century history stands in the shadow of Das Kapital.

[mrtksn]

Yes, US was also the guide star when it comes to dilemmas. When not sure, check out what Americans do and they will probably have it figured it out without the bias that we may have due to historical reasons.

I firmly believe that the dominant feeling towards US today isn't anger or hate, its heartbreak and disappointment.

[RetroTechie]

As a kid, I used to regard US culture as a source of inspiration. Be awed by its achievements, innovation & military strength. Have great respect for its founders & various US-based historic figures. Be greatful (to this day!) for the sacrifice US soldiers (among others) brought to help free Europe in WWII.

As I grew older, I'd learn more about bad things US did throughtout history. Downsides of its policies. Some of the burdens it placed on other nations. Shortcuts it took to enhance the American way of life @ the cost of people elsewhere. Examples are just too many. The shining beacon became a grey area. But overall, tended to regard US' influence as a net positive.

These days, it's crystal clear to me why so many people cherish a deep hatred towards the US. Again: reasons are many & complicated. I don't happen to be among them, but understand their reasons.

US has fallen from being a shining example for the world, to a dumb & selfish kid doing damage everywhere. Damage the rest of the world scrambles to route around.

Sadly, this is not the result of external pressures on the US. Nor the (sole) fault of its current leadership. It came from within. It's damage the US is doing to itself, and to others.

This will not improve any time soon, I think. We'll take Lady Liberty's flame on your way out, thank you very much.

[icantevenhold]

That’s a good way to frame it.

It might be different for US Americans themselves and a lot of other countries as well; but for a large part of the west this was/is true

[spwa4]

Ah, come on, now that those government agencies and their employees are using "non-sovereign tech" (ie. chatgpt/claude/gemini) for thinking, the emails are basically not a concern at all.

This is ignoring that AI also, of course, lets spying agencies move from having every email ever sent in most countries to actually reacting to every email ever sent in most countries. They can move from helping Boeing make foreign airline companies ignore door closing issues to influencing every last restaurant's drinks buying decision individually.

I mean, I doubt they're there yet, but that's what they'll want to do.

Disaster, meet Catastrophe.