European Commission has a "Wifi4EU" initative, provides 93k high-speed private access points across the EU, free of charge.
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Plenty of stuff like this or this or this
Again, those are all pushes for legislation. None of which are implemented at this point. The EU is, for better and for worse, a bureaucratic monster. Anything it does has to go through a long process involving multiple oversight comittees, the commission, the parliament etc. It really doesn't have the option for much secrecy. National governments are quite a different story.
. Anything it does has to go through a long process involving multiple oversight comittees, the commission, the parliament etc. It really doesn’t have the option for much secrecy.
Oh my sweet summer child.
When a German MEP Patrick Breyer asked the EU to release the names of the people who were a part of the so called High Level Group that wrote this proposal, they replied with a list with all names blacked out. Here is Patrick Breyer’s own blog post on the subject.
According to Edri ”The HLG has kept its work sessions closed, by strictly controlling which stakeholders got invited and effectively shutting down civil society participation.”.
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Literal eu law that says they can't charge roaming?
- Not everybody in the EU is living in the EU.
- I didn't mention roaming. Not everybody has the same unlimited data for cheap package
- From my understanding, the no-roaming charge law is being ignored pretty widely, in spirit if not in letter (different quota if at home vs roaming).
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I feel like the OP you're responding to. Explain how I should be comfortable? The idea creeps me out, but I admit I haven't delved into security for a few years.
What the others said. If you want a practical example of this working, have a look at eduroam. It's the joint WiFi of all European universities and I cannot recall that there ever were any privacy issues.
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This seems a bit wasteful. Everyone already has a phone with network connection, most having infinite data, and statistics are rapidly improving. I don't remember the last time I had to use public wifi, feels a bit outdated and insecure.
most having infinite data
That's a bold claim. Do you have some official figures to back that up?
Where I live, I don't know of anyone with truly unlimited mobile internet.The cheaper unlimited tariffs cost around €30, but have at least one of the following restrictions:
- Speed limit after x volume used
- Poor network coverage
- <15MBit/s speed
- Significantly increased costs after 2 years of contract term
- Cancellation by provider if consumption is too high
- only a few Gb at full speed included in EU roaming
Genuine unlimited contracts with stable network coverage and 300 Mbit/s usually cost around €80-100 per month here. And unlimited EU roaming is still not included by default.
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Literal eu law that says they can't charge roaming?
Not charging roaming does not mean that your unlimited plan carries over abroad. It just means you can't be charged more for using your plan abroad.
It is still legal and widely done to have different limits abroad vs domestic.
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This seems a bit wasteful. Everyone already has a phone with network connection, most having infinite data, and statistics are rapidly improving. I don't remember the last time I had to use public wifi, feels a bit outdated and insecure.
Just because you have the option and can afford it does not mean every european citizen can have it or afford it.
EU policies aren't just for the privileged.
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Well I don't know if that's a good use of EU money. I'd rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we're currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.
End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that's such a small benefit...
As always, it's not like both aren't possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time, to only quote one of your examples.
A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.
It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.
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Classic European flavored racism. Are you aware that you are promoting racism or not? I think mindfulness is key here. People should consider their own internal biases and adjust to help make a better world.
If Hule wants to make cheapskate Romanian sounds he's allowed to. It's his goddamn choice whether he wants to be a cheapskate or not.
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most having infinite data
That's a bold claim. Do you have some official figures to back that up?
Where I live, I don't know of anyone with truly unlimited mobile internet.The cheaper unlimited tariffs cost around €30, but have at least one of the following restrictions:
- Speed limit after x volume used
- Poor network coverage
- <15MBit/s speed
- Significantly increased costs after 2 years of contract term
- Cancellation by provider if consumption is too high
- only a few Gb at full speed included in EU roaming
Genuine unlimited contracts with stable network coverage and 300 Mbit/s usually cost around €80-100 per month here. And unlimited EU roaming is still not included by default.
Here in France we have "Free" (which is not free, costs 20€/month) which is not unlimited but something like 250GB/month last time I looked, and frequently increasing. I never ran out of data.
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But why an App & not a PWA ?
Why not both?
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So, if I live in the EU, what's stopping me from cancelling my home plan and making the wifi experience worse for everyone?
Limiting the bandwidth use of individual devices is pretty easy, and basically standard procedure for public networks. Even cheap consumer routers that come with ISP subscriptions can do that.
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If I had this in the US, I'd be cancelling my cellular service entirely, I'd still keep my home service though, to VPN into it for a bit more security when using a public wifi connection.
I would also just transfer my phone number to one of those cheap voip providers, then just use voip from my phone everywhere.
Ehhh... I would maybe cancel the data part of my plan, but I dunno how comfortable I would be relying on notoriously spotty and insecure public Wi-Fi services to make or receive phone calls.
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What's the problem with the Digital Services Act?
They tried to push it to the point of stripping encryption from internet altogether and when that didn't work they tried demanding chat apps to be able to scan people messages before they send them. Maybe I'm confusing multiple entirely different things here, but I kinda heard that mostly with the abbreviation DSA flying around so I assumed it was sorta umbrella for all those things.
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You don't have to trust them any more than you trust your local Starbucks WiFi. We're at the point where your traffic should no longer be vulnerable just because you're on the wrong WiFi network.
You don't have to trust them any more than you trust your local Starbucks WiFi
I don't really trust that either
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Been that way since https became common
How do we know intelligence agencies are not in collusion with certificate authorities though? What if they actually have access to ROOT CA private keys and can just automatically strip https from most of the traffic in their mass surveillance software? This is something I found with a very quick search: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar
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Ehhh... I would maybe cancel the data part of my plan, but I dunno how comfortable I would be relying on notoriously spotty and insecure public Wi-Fi services to make or receive phone calls.
In my case, it'd be fine. I already mainly use data for phone calls, and I also have 2 phones, one of which is work-provided, so I'll still have communications...
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If I had this in the US, I'd be cancelling my cellular service entirely, I'd still keep my home service though, to VPN into it for a bit more security when using a public wifi connection.
I would also just transfer my phone number to one of those cheap voip providers, then just use voip from my phone everywhere.
you wouldn't be happy with that. i looked up how the Wifi routers are distributed, and (in Austria at least) small towns have 1-2 routers placed in the municipal buildings they have, servicing the town square. Which means you would have to sit around inside or outside of city hall all day.
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As always, it's not like both aren't possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time, to only quote one of your examples.
A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.
It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.
I would say it's a small benefit for anyone. It's not like people will walk to the town square, or the park or the hospital to use some free EU Wifi.
The title is also very wrong I found out. It's not being launched. It's not even funded any more.
Wifi4EU ran from 2018 to 2020 with a funding of 120 million EUR. They paid up to 15 thousand EUR for equipment and installation per municipality, the local municipalities had to pay for the internet service and maintenance.
This is the result: https://wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/#/list-accesspoints
Still looks like a pointless exercise to me.
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751
The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:
Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens
Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)
Title is wrong. It's an old initiative, not even funded anymore. Ran from 2018 to 2020 with 120 Million EUR.
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They tried to push it to the point of stripping encryption from internet altogether and when that didn't work they tried demanding chat apps to be able to scan people messages before they send them. Maybe I'm confusing multiple entirely different things here, but I kinda heard that mostly with the abbreviation DSA flying around so I assumed it was sorta umbrella for all those things.
Nah that's Chat Control. DSA is about online platforms while Chat Control is about private chats.
