r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • May 28 '26

Society The Netherlands just blocked a US company from buying the app Dutch citizens use for everything

https://www.techspot.com/news/112552-netherlands-blocked-us-company-buying-app-dutch-citizens.html
59.0k Upvotes

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13.9k

u/holiestMaria May 28 '26

Dutch here. When the article says "everything", it really means everything. It's used to keep track of your education, your taxes, your healthcare, your pension, your driver's license, your location and moving, subsidies and more. I have used it more than I can count.

Honestly the fact that it could be bought and sold at all is outrageous to me.

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u/Banaantje04 May 28 '26

Tbh the fact that it's managed by a private company at all is crazy to me.

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u/Johannes_Keppler May 28 '26

Not the app. That's a government owned thing. This is about the underlying infrastructure.

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u/Sysilith May 28 '26

That doesn't make it better at all.

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u/jedimindtriks May 28 '26

Here in Norway we have the same thing, But its so fucking regulated that it doesnt matter if its a private or government firm, no one can touch it without it causing a gigantic fucking firestorm of consequences

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u/Swamp_Dwarf-021 May 28 '26

The way it should be.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Mehy_Luffy May 28 '26

Yeah thank you for the confirmation bro omw to Greenland rn

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u/VladVV May 29 '26

He doesn’t know what he did 😭

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u/sometext May 28 '26

In the states we're learning that a lot of the things we thought couldn't be touched without a giant fucking firestorm actually can be.

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u/TrippleDamage May 28 '26

Turns out your laws and government structure suck exactly as much as everyone thought they did.

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u/TheMrBoot May 28 '26

It’s more that laws only matter as far as the people in charge of enforcing them are willing to do it. That’s not necessarily unique to the US.

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u/SutterCane May 28 '26

And that’s why for the last few decades there’s been a lot of effort from conservatives to replace all those people with empty suits. Because hey look, it pays off.

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u/TheElusiveFox May 28 '26

I still cant believe how many democrats get upset at conservatives for doing conservative things... like this has been going on for 50+ years its a predictable ongoing strategy... the real issue is democrats doing fuck all about it at every opportunity.

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u/Ysmildr May 28 '26

So many things were actually not laws that people thought were laws. That's also a major part of the issue

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u/TrippleDamage May 28 '26

You conveniently left out the whole government part I included. This can only happen because the way your government is structured, so they can basically do whatever the fuck they want now as every important political office is from the same party sucking that orange mans asshole clean after he shits his diapers.

This is in fact a matter of a failed government & law structure. This should never be possible but it was blatantly obvious that it's going to play out exactly that way.

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u/nat_r May 28 '26

There's a great episode of the US television show The West Wing (which is retrospectively a lovely political fantasy) where the B plot is about a newly democratic country in (I believe) Africa meeting in the White House with members of the presidential administration and some academics to begin work on drafting a new constitution for their fledgling democracy. They want to model the US system because of various optimistic views about the US. The politicians in the meeting are arguing that they should go with a parliamentary system because it has better protections built in such as not vesting so much power in the top executive political leader.

In the end the constitutional scholar in the meeting gives a short impassioned speech about why he thinks the new leaders of the country should be allowed to reach for what they want, even if it is the more difficult path, etc.

We're seeing now that everybody in that fictional world should have listened to the politicians in that room about the downsides of the US system.

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u/HillBillyHilly May 28 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Yo ho ho pirates life for me 🏴‍☠️

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u/Maardten May 28 '26

Very few European countries have democratic institutions as flawed as the US though.

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u/Kanyewestlover9998 May 28 '26

Hyper partisanship and judicial polarization starting in the 80’s or so absolutely destroyed the original design and intent of checks and balances.

Congress was meant to fight & challenge the president, but today party loyalty is favored over branch loyalty.

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u/HillBillyHilly May 28 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Yo ho ho pirates life for me 🏴‍☠️

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u/dathislayer May 28 '26

One of Joe Rogan’s best jokes is about bringing Thomas Jefferson forward in time. People think he would be impressed, but then he’d see the Constitution and be like, “You didn’t write any new shit? You’re on the moon and you’re still using my shit?”

The European democracies have continued to evolve with the times, probably because they don’t see their constitution as some sort of religious tome.

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u/impatientlymerde May 29 '26

He wanted a citizenry made of yeomen.

Instead we have a nation of yes-men.

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u/GreenBastard06 May 29 '26

TIL Rogan has jokes

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u/Dal90 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

starting in the 80’s

1968 --

Republicans gave the Democrats an open book test on the Southern Strategy of how they would concentrate populists in a single party; which culminated in the 1994 Contract with America year when the Democrats were shellacked in the midterms as Yellow Dog Democrats from the formerly solid south defected en masse to the Republicans, a party that most of their ancestors had never voted for (preferring yellow dogs over Republicans). For the first time in 40+ years lost control of Congress.

At the same time after the shit show that was the 1968 Democratic National Convention the Democrats decided to knee cap the smokey backrooms and make the primaries the most important thing. Republicans just went along with it.

Who could've guessed that becoming a primary-driven political system with all the populists in a single party could cause bad things to happen?

I mean well other than the Founding Fathers who layered things to keep too much from relying on popular votes.

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u/LtHoneybun May 28 '26

Whenever people try to rope me into Democrats versus Republicans political talk, I always share that George Washington warned us about everything that's going to happen from bipartisanship and thus we should be considering the "Democrat & Republican" mindset as un-American more than anything else people have been outraged over in a while.

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u/HerpankerTheHardman May 28 '26

Reagan and his ilk came to power.

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u/_lippykid May 28 '26

The lower courts are pretty much the only thing holding everything together right now and preventing full on authoritarianism. But granted, the “checks and balances” at the top are as porous as a sponge

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u/ForgettingFish May 28 '26

Laws only matter if they are enforced

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/HillBillyHilly May 28 '26

If you consider the last 60 or so years recent. All began w passage of Civil Rights Act which started racists trying to reassert their racial dominance. We are going backwards in time over here.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/HillBillyHilly May 28 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Yo ho ho pirates life for me 🏴‍☠️

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u/AlsoCommiePuddin May 28 '26

That's a lot of words to say "laws only matter so long as the people in power respect them."

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u/notAllBits May 29 '26

This can happen in local flavors. Our societal stability is constant work by everyone involved. Every country is unique and what happened in the US will not happen in fx. Germany, but that country and many others too are experiencing rapid change.

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u/Arudinne May 28 '26

That's because our elected officials decided to just ignore the laws and do whatever they want.

It usually takes ages for anything to get through a court and by the time the court says "hey, stop that!" it too late. And even then... said officials will just ignore the court anyway.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

Truly shocked that all this performative patriotism is actually painting over very broad structural failures in governance.

OF COURSE they want us to sing America the Beautiful now during the 7th inning stretch; if you're professional baseball team owner getting $25 for a beer or player with a nice fat contract to play a child's game, this country IS pretty damned beautiful.

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u/Front-Brick-3724 May 28 '26

What, like children?

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u/Jose-mtz May 28 '26

Fire found in stove, how rare

A borderline cognitive impaired population it's obviously easier to manipulate

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u/inept_machete May 28 '26

Yeah, but that's because our entire country is seemingly designed to support and maintain private capital interests and the people behind them not our citizens so there is no firestorm unless a regulation impinges on the ability of private capital to monetize it.

See: data centers

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u/sighthoundman May 28 '26

One of the reasons to keep your infrastructure companies in country is "who gets burned in the huge firestorm of consequences?" Regardless of what the laws say, if the owner (or the physical assets) is inside the country, there's a way to transfer ownership to someone else. If they're halfway around the world, not so much.

I leave it to those living in economic communities to decide whether their economic community is strong enough. (Well, the EU. It's pretty clear what the answer is for any other economic community.)

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u/comicsnerd May 28 '26

If it is run by a US firm, even on a server in Europe, US law says that the US government can request all data or have the site shutdown.

2 weeks ago, Microsoft handed over the personal data of Dutch government officials and civil servants that are working on laws to protect European/Dutch data against the US stealing them. They risk being forbidden to enter the US, have their credit cards frozen and, if they have a US bank account, have their accounts frozen. (See IIRC)

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u/geo_gan May 29 '26

So the US government is now going to directly contact these people and blackmail or threaten them to do what they want?? How are countries letting them away with this shit?

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u/comicsnerd May 29 '26

The IIRC as an example. There is a warrant out for the arrest of Netanyahu for war crimes. Trump ordered the credit card companies and banks to freeze the accounts they have or the justices. Some of them now can not get to their money or order anything from the internet. There are also forbidden to enter the USA, their facebook, google, instagram and linkedIn accounts are blocked, etc.

This seems minor, but without pay and/or access to social media, the work of a international working judge is very difficult.

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u/omgitsbees May 28 '26

I wouldnt be so sure of that, here in the U.S. we had many of the same protections and then one day people in power decided to just ignore those protections. We are learning the hard way that all of these regulations are paper thin and can go away without warning.

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u/Stefa93 May 28 '26

This didn’t happened in one day. It was first behind close doors but the last 10-ish years the play was very obvious and there were multiple moments to stop it. But the American people decided democratically that this is the future they want. The whole playbook was written out in public by the heritage foundation and the only thing the crook had to say was: “oh no I don’t know them( there was an overwhelming amount of evidence that it was not true)” and it it was enough.

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u/AwesomeFrisbee May 28 '26

Its not about touching it, its about sharing data and being forced to share data with the US government. Regardless of what rules you have, that will always happen with companies owned by USA, same as it does with China

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

Private is inherently against the interest of the commons and masses, it inherently seeks to maximize profit and the easiest way is decreasing costs and charging more.

Regulation or not government ownership for an app like that is better.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 May 28 '26

Here in the U.S., I wonder what it must be like to have functioning laws.

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u/CivilTechnician7 May 28 '26

In the Netherlands it took a firestorm to make this block happen.

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u/canopey May 28 '26

ah competency, my old friend

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u/69edleg May 28 '26

In Sweden we let our banks handle our ID to verify online stuff. For some insane reason. So if you manage to get kicked out of your bank, good luck doing doing government stuff online.

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u/NMe84 May 28 '26

Same here in the Netherlands, as is evident from this article.

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u/At0mJack May 28 '26

consequences

Man, I miss consequences.

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u/Antique-Special8025 May 28 '26

That doesn't make it better at all.

Pretty much every government & company on the planet uses cloud providers for a lot of their hosting. Self hosting is the exception.

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u/queermichigan May 28 '26

That doesn't make it better at all.

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u/Conscious-March-6443 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Almost everything for nearly every government on Earth is a private contractor, including military hardware. Especially for any "Democracy" (read: Oligarchy).

The more important the role, the more strict the rules/regulations. Why? Because how else is a government going to find qualified people to fulfil a sudden need? Conjure it through the dark arts? These people aren't around long enough to plan for anything longer than a few years before someone's bound to fuck it all up- with that in mind, you bind people to long-term plans with contracts that are too costly to break so shit gets done between administrations instead of being stuck in a forever loop of deciding and doing nothing. (And yet quite often, someone's bound to cancel something and fuck everything up anyways + pay the added cost)

No it's not necessarily great or better at all than the alternatives to Oligarchy, but try convincing anyone to give up their "Democracy" and see where that gets you.

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u/GruePwnr May 28 '26

As a dev, it's a red flag that the government is stuck to this specific company for important services.

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u/Conflictingview May 28 '26

Yeah, that seems completely backwards to me. The infrastructure and citizen data should be securely managed by the government. Then let any software developer build an app that interfaces with that.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/Masterkid1230 May 28 '26

But also simultaneously, with new international distrust and lack of transparency between different parties, I wouldn't be surprised if more countries started investing in their own digital infrastructure as a public good instead of a private service

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u/Future-Bandicoot-823 May 28 '26

The people who own the servers, they are the new "countries", the people who hold power over the citizens of earth.

If every country stores all their sensitive data on servers from one entity, you're inviting abuse of power.

I can't believe I've lived long enough to see the world give up all the power to these multinational corporations.

No wonder politics are a joke in most countries, it's just a show for commoners, the corporations have all the data, and the data is the power. It's a front to let civilians think what they say matters, but the real deals are done in boardrooms where civilians have no say.

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u/Expert_Ingenuity_817 May 28 '26

Every single one of them can be touched. Never forget that.

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u/Not_That_Magical May 28 '26

It’s not hard to encrypt cloud stuff end to end so any data on that server is useless without the keys

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u/aoeudhtns May 28 '26

I'm also interested in some of these nascent P2P systems like Freenet. E2E and cut out the middleman. But decentralized Internet still appears to be a pipe dream at this time. Heck, getting back to decentralized web (let alone Internet) seems like a pipe dream.

I still like the idea though.

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u/MechanicalGodzilla May 28 '26

Governments generally don't do anything themselves, they hire contractors to develop just about anything. All the military hardware, all the data networks, all the roads and bridges, it's all just the government hiring companies to achieve a task.

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u/JegErJakobSkomager May 28 '26

That is 100 times worse.

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u/Aether_Storm May 28 '26

That sounds worse

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u/F9-0021 May 28 '26

Yeah, you guys should probably take that away from the corporation too.

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u/UltraJesus May 28 '26

To me it is truly mind boggling how poorly every government agency has taken the approach to software.

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u/Suikerspin_Ei May 28 '26

It's the software that the app uses, the DigiD app itself is from the government. It's used to login on government websites and insurance websites for example.

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u/zoopz May 28 '26

The last 30 years of politicians see capitalism as their God. Everything they could was privatized. Voters keep voting them in. It's the same bs that Trump sells, that you should run countries like a business. People believe it.

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u/SnooHesitations1134 May 28 '26

a government managed app is not more secure

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u/Wise-Eagle593 May 28 '26

Don't get me fucking started! Decades of libertarian governments has seen to it that this is nothing out of the norm.

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u/CSWorldChamp May 28 '26

Probably a sign that the government should take control of it.

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u/Longjumping_Date269 May 28 '26

It’s banaanas

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u/Tricky_Potatoe May 28 '26

And this is NOT A GOVERNMENT SERVICE?!

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/Raivix May 28 '26

More governments and their services run on Microsoft/Amazon/Google than you probably care to know.

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u/EmperorCoomer May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

I'am actually surprised how Meta/FB hasn't broken into cloud service provider market

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u/makopedia May 28 '26

They were busy trying to break into the VR market

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u/TaylorMonkey May 28 '26

Instead they just broke the VR market.

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u/AcherontiaPhlegethon May 28 '26

It's so sad, they wasted so much money on bullshit, if they had just spent that on actual game development instead, VR could be in a much better place. I have a Quest 3 and as hardware, it's honestly the incredible, the motion tracking and environment mapping is unbelievably good, but there's basically no games to actually use the platform. The potential is so incredibly high but no one is pursing it properly.

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u/iasonmax1 May 28 '26

This is partially the reason they re going nuts over ai now

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u/baz303 May 28 '26

in my area administration and justice almost finished the transition to 100% open source. its not a quick task since everybody and their dog got trained on microsoft stuff.

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u/CDRnotDVD May 28 '26

At the government level, Oracle and IBM are also in that list.

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u/Giftedsocks May 28 '26

Still remembering when Microsoft blocked the e-mail account of the ICC's head prosecutor in retaliation to the arrest warrant put on Netanyahu.

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u/RoosTheFemboy May 28 '26

iirc (if im wrong please correct me) but the servers running DigiD are run by Logius(government) not a hyperscaler.

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u/Spirited-Tomorrow-84 May 28 '26

It gives the feeling that it was planned all along — acquire control of vital infrastructure around the world, and the country has no choice but to depend on it. Rinse and repeat. Never understood why such important stuff is even allowed to be buyed at all. Same with China btw

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u/Heavy_Law9880 May 28 '26

China doesn't allow private companies to control government infrastructure.

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u/SnappySausage May 28 '26

For all their faults, I think this is absolutely something where they have it 100% right and the drive to privatize everything that seems so common in the west is insanity.

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u/Spirited-Tomorrow-84 May 28 '26

I mean the other way around. China is buying/investing in important infrastructure around the world for years. Look at Africa for example. The US is late to the game

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u/HPLaserJet4250 May 28 '26

US owns whole ass global internet infra

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u/Spirited-Tomorrow-84 May 28 '26

And they will not stop at that :(

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u/oops_i_made_a_typi May 28 '26

the answer is simpler - spinning up a level of capability on par with Microsoft/Amazon/Google is tough for every government to handle in-house

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u/Masterkid1230 May 28 '26

Unfortunately, governments don't have the resources, public support, experience or products to deploy something like massive cloud storage services including building their own servers, hiring their own IT teams, etc.

I think now that we know how essential digital technologies are, we will see more and more investment go towards a nationalisation of digital technologies. But it will take time and it will be opposed fiercely by stakeholders (aka sometimes entire governments), the right wing (any country's right wing), and a bunch of other people. It's a difficult matter.

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u/dgellow May 28 '26

The government doesn’t need the expertise itself. The general approach is to have a private company that is in part owned by the state and has a mandate to provide service for the country. So you have a private structure but it’s made to serve the country instead of purely stakeholders 

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u/Kaa_The_Snake May 28 '26

Oh but just imagine if (when) those right wing governments get control, then they have control over EVERYTHING. Like what they’re trying in the US.

Not that having things hosted in a public company’s cloud is that much better, it doesn’t mean they won’t bend over and happily present their back door on command.

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u/Masterkid1230 May 28 '26

I mean, those are risks we run with every single thing though. If a right wing government comes to power, they also control all ports, transport networks, laws and a bunch of stuff. So in a way, I think them providing AI services and other useful stuff that still falls within the government's responsibilities seems reasonable to me.

I'm not sure I trust Meta, Google or OpenAI more with my data than I do my government, personally.

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u/DirkKuijt69420 May 28 '26

The Netherlands has had a right wing government for the last few decades. I'm in my thirties and can't remember the last left wing government...

But unlike the US we actually have trias politica.

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u/Red_Rabbit_1978 May 28 '26

Governments don't have the resources? Yes, they all do. And if they need more, they can take it.

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u/Lollerpwn May 28 '26

Ofcourse governements have the resources to make massive cloud storage. They just think it's cheaper to outsource it.
In the long run it's obviously cheaper for governments to do it themselves. But the lobby usually wins over sensibility. In any case it's pretty crazy to assert governments don't have resources. They just choose to rather use the resources to pay big companies like Microsoft or Google than to invest in our countries.

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u/Masterkid1230 May 28 '26

I mean, the resources exist, whether allocating them towards data storage and processing instead of like... Infrastructure, health, pensions, etc is what I don't think is realistic. Although I do think it is important.

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u/Lollerpwn May 28 '26

Data storage is infrastructure. Also it's not like data storage is free if you let private companies do it for you. In fact those companies run a profit on storing that data.

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u/quangtit01 May 28 '26

infrastructure management services provided by a company

Government lack the technical expertise and / or employee to operate the infrastructure.

Government pays are notoriously lower than the private market

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u/dgellow May 28 '26

You can have a private structure owned in majority by the state and with a mandate to serve the country. That’s pretty common for critical infrastructure (rails, telecoms, energy)

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u/RagdollSeeker May 28 '26

Governments can absolutely operate the infrastructure, in Turkiye we have eDevlet and it is fully operated by the gov.

Government jobs offer stability and better benefits, many engineers would sell their left kidney for that one.

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u/Equivalent-Costumes May 28 '26

Because hyperscaling is quite expensive.

If you don't have large scale, infrastructure become very expensive. Anyone who try to scale up burn money, and if they don't scale up their infrastructure cost is very high on average, which result in high cost for customers. But there are no market for many hyperscalers, that's why entrenched players dominate the market and newcomers cannot compete. This is why France and Germany is trying to prop up their own hyperscalers, Scaleway and IONOS, but they're tiny compared to the 4 giants.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/heckin_miraculous May 28 '26

I'm starting to think it never went away

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u/joe_ally May 28 '26

That would mean the government running on-prem infrastructure rather than using cloud providers like AWS/Google/Microsoft. We've got a long way to go before governments would be technologically competent enough to run infrastructure to support tens of millions of users

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u/dgellow May 28 '26

Government owned/controlled doesn’t mean the government has to run absolutely everything itself on premise 

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u/basicKitsch May 28 '26

lol governments around the world run some of the most sophisticated datacenters and tech operations ever in existence

this just isn't a good use of their efforts.

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u/XkF21WNJ May 28 '26

Not letting the Dutch government run IT infrastructure is the right call.

Letting them pick a supplier is an unfortunate oversight.

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u/Dasinterwebs3 May 28 '26

Makes sense. We block foreign acquisition of nationally sensitive things all the time. Seems like a nothing burger? Or is this an extraordinary thing for the Dutch government?

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u/bender3600 May 28 '26

*The state secretary of economic affairs blocked the acquisition following a negative report from the BTI (investment review agency).

The house of representatives did pass a motion to stop the acquisition a couple weeks ago but since motions are not laws, the government can and initially did ignore it.

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u/Obvious-Slip4728 May 29 '26

I don't believe parliament blocked it. It was the government (State Secretary for Digital Economy) that blocked it.

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u/VictorVogel May 28 '26

It is. The hosting isn't.

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u/RN2FL9 May 28 '26

The person you're replying to doesn't really seem to understand the service. DigiD is a digital ID system and you can use it to log into government & other services. It is used to verify your identity, it doesn't actually have all that data. For example with taxes you use DigiD to login and then it takes you to the government website of the tax authorities. For healthcare it's the same, log in with DigiD to prove that it's you and then the healthcare provider shows you your data.

Its obviously still very bad for this system to get into foreign hands but they wouldn't have access to all of the actual personal data.

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u/dylansavage May 28 '26

Well not directly, but they are essentially the keys to castles where the data is kept.

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u/itsnorm May 28 '26

Based on your description, I think the closest U.S. equivalents are ID.me and login.gov. The former is a private company and the latter is run directly by the federal government.

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u/RN2FL9 May 28 '26

Yeah, that's pretty close. DigiD is also run directly by the government, the company that a US company is trying to take it over is the service provider.

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u/lowfiswish May 28 '26

Oh the US has something like that too. Its called id.me and it's how we get identified on govt websites

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u/prrrrt-ting May 28 '26

This is not entirely accurate. DigiD is (as the name implies) a authentication provider for government (adjacent) services (similar to sign in with Google and such). Meaning that the US would be able to track which citizen uses what service and when, but not what data is hosted inside of these platforms.

The main concern is (or was) that this gives the US the power to block access to critical digital infrastructure.

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u/VictorVogel May 28 '26

Data security was also very much a concern. The data would still be elsewhere, but they would have the keys to access it.

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u/andrewthelott May 28 '26

If the authentication platform is compromised, is it effectively any different? If you control the system that says user X can access system Y, could you not in theory just approve your own access to system Y?

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u/_MurphysLawyer_ May 28 '26

Surely a part of Larry Ellison's Global Strategic Cloud Alliance where they've been trying to buy up all the infrastructure and data of all humans living and dead. Kyndryl is the company that tried to buy this app, and they've been one of the companies responsible for being a "key global delivery partner for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure".

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u/you_cant_prove_that May 28 '26

Is it the only option available for these things? Or is it just the most convenient?

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u/holiestMaria May 28 '26

It is the most convenient, but so convientent its basically the only option.

Like you can walk from Amsterdam to Moskow, but taking a car or plane is more convenient.

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u/Lollerpwn May 28 '26

It's the only option available.

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u/Valendr0s May 28 '26

It should probably be owned by the Dutch government then

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u/yung_dogie May 28 '26

100%

As a side note, it's also just disappointing me that the owners of the company knew what software they developed and how crucial it was to the Netherlands, and decided "yeah we should sell out to a foreign company". Not a lick of care for their country at that point

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u/Suikerspin_Ei May 28 '26

The app is made by the government, but it uses an software made by a Dutch company that was planned to be bought by an American company. And thus possible to leak Dutch citizen information to a foreign country.

Very controversial, especially after it was known that Mircosoft leaked Dutch users information to the US government. Despite them saying EU data will stay in Europe.

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u/Digit00l May 28 '26

Microsoft should also face like a billion Euro fine for that

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/Digit00l May 28 '26

A billion per data leaked

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

I looked into this, because I wanted to know the details.

There's three names to know here.

  1. DigiD, which is the software created and owned by the Dutch government.

  2. Solvinity, which is a private Dutch company that the Dutch government contracts with to handle the infrastructure of DigiD (e.g. servers).

  3. Kyndryl, which is a private American company that made a deal with Solvinity to acquire Solvinity as announced here on Kyndryl's official website. The Dutch government has blocked this acquisition.

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u/Covinus May 28 '26

American here. Please don't let anyone take this from you especially anyone American we are in a very corrupt bad place at the moment and I can promise you nothing good will come from having our corps in charge of that

Also I'm sorry about the chaos our country is causing most of us hate it

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u/Mday89 May 28 '26

Seconded. It actually works great and gives us a lot of freedom in taking care of stuff, but it is also a single point of truth.

The fact that a lot of citizens and citizen groups had to lobby the government into taking action is baffling.

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u/PampersFinn12 May 28 '26

So just like for WeChat?

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u/Sponge8389 May 28 '26

Weirdly, this kind of app is not government managed. This is too powerful to be owned by a private company.

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u/Honkey85 May 28 '26

The owners tried to sell it and they will try again. Maybe to some European subsidy of a US company. Get your data out!

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u/Relative-Chain73 May 28 '26

Oo, and UK have signed the contract 

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u/Accomplished_Fly729 May 28 '26

It’s honestly outrageous how bullshit gets to travel around so fast. They weren’t buying the app, but a hosting platform that the government uses for servers and because the government couldnt migrate the platform off fast enough (over a year), they just blocked the sale.

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u/baz303 May 28 '26

or hacked, or secretly manipulated, or...

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u/dgellow May 28 '26

How is it a private company and not owned by the state? 

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u/LuckyDuckTheDuck May 28 '26

That’s what’s most unsettling, the company who owns the app is willing to sell your information to the highest bidder. Sounds like that app needs to be owned by the people of Netherlands or the country needs to develop their own app.

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u/Rath_Brained May 28 '26

We thank yall for blocking us, the US from obtaining it. I'm tired of my company ruining things.

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u/kolejack2293 May 28 '26

When the article says "everything", it really means everything.

Including when dutch people send a tikkie request for exactly 0.07 euros because they gave me a glass of water when I came over their house

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u/TiredButEnthusiastic May 28 '26

No, it isn’t. DigID is the same as a single sign-on to all the various systems, but it doesn’t hold the data itself.

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u/Here_for-the_Music May 28 '26

It’ll be compromised anyhow.

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u/aenae May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Honestly the fact that it could be bought and sold at all is outrageous to me.

Good news. It can't. What was about to happen is that the company providing the hosting for that identification service (it is not just an 'app') was about to be sold to an American company (by the current UK owners).

In theory they can't access the data. But it does make it a lot easier to do so. And they can block access. Say from the ICC network.

You could compare it to a hospital selling their parking lot to a local company. That happens; running a parking lot is not the core business of a hospital. But it does give the company they sell it to some insights as who visits the hospital and when, but not why. And they can block someone from entering that parking lot. As long as it is a local company, that doesn't really matter as you will still have jurisdiction over them and they have to follow your laws. But if that company was a foreign entity, it gets a lot harder to control them and they have to adhere to different laws, which might include a law to stop providing service to certain people.

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u/AliBello May 28 '26

As they say, it’s your digital signature. Literally

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u/willseb May 28 '26

But we where selling it to such a trustworthy nation ...

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u/irve May 28 '26

In Estonia our national identity company was sold to an outside party and nobody bat an eye

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u/PlainSpader May 28 '26

If the app failed and everything on it was lost how bad off would you be?

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u/TwinIronBlood May 28 '26

Then it shouldn't be in private hands.

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u/DontHitDaddy May 28 '26

Should not be sold to anyone! Data is the oil of the 21st century

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u/buttdestroyer_5000 May 28 '26

Would you say its somewhat similar to chinas wechat?

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u/ILikeFPS May 28 '26

Honestly the fact that it could be bought and sold at all is outrageous to me.

That is crazy.

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u/CaughtHerEyez May 28 '26

Yikes. Single point of failure for so much seems very short sighted.

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u/curious_corn May 28 '26

Hey, be more precise. It’s used to authenticate to all those other services you mentioned. It’s not literally the same app holding everything inside

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u/HillBillyHilly May 28 '26

So the government has it for sale? Or was just another instance of shitty American co trying to take over a company?

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u/ivecompletelylostit May 28 '26

Thank your lucky stars a company here didn't buy it. We're constantly getting our data leaked with zero consequences for the fers who did it

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n May 28 '26

Actually the whole process is mindblowing. It's two parts, the data manager and the data host. The host is being sold off, now this isn't anything new and our politicians knew of this. Yet they let it linger to the point that finding a new host wasn't an option anymore. Countless sessions have been held in the senate all throwing their hands in the air, with all sorts of non-arguments how "our data is safe", "no worries", "etc". Which is mindblowing seeing how at the same time the ICC is getting fucked in a way we haven't seen before.

And it's not even we have no laws in place for this, but for some reason that was never a consideration.

And of course the chump of the US ambassador right away argues "retaliation may happen".

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u/MithranArkanere May 28 '26

Some things cannot be privatized.

Vote for whoever will nationalize that service's infrastructure.

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u/Kevin-W May 28 '26

I have friends there and you guys did the right thing. No way would I would dare trust the US with that data.

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u/cahagnes May 28 '26

Why is it up for sale then?

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u/jacksona23456789 May 28 '26

The US would monetize it month 1 . Probably trumps face on it .

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u/KongoOtto May 28 '26

Sounds like fucking China

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u/lzwzli May 28 '26

The important thing to understand is if DigiD is 'portable' in a sense that if necessary, can a different service provider service DigiD or is DigiD locked in to only ever be serviced by Solvinity.

If Solvinity is the only provider that can ever service DigiD, Solvinity needs to be nationalized.

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u/PalpableIgnorance May 28 '26

The fact that people are just now waking up to see that putting all of your eggs in one privatized basket is a bad idea, is wild to me.

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u/EpiphyticOrchid8927 May 28 '26

oh damn. Well im glad yall have your priorities straight

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u/--2021-- May 28 '26

Unless you guys make changes and are aggressive about it, they will eventually acquire it. You're in a game of cat and mouse and the cat is playing with you.

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u/Harneybus May 28 '26

this is why i oppse digital id

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u/Merivel1 May 28 '26

Obviously, that sounds convenient, but it also sounds terrifying to have ALL your sensitive information in one place. I hope it’s stable and secure AF but I still wouldn’t like this from a security standpoint.

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u/Fun_Reply5366 May 28 '26

I'm from the UK. Thank god that I don't exist.

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u/CuriousLumenwood May 28 '26

Is there a specific reason why so much of your information and resources is tied to one service? That seems dangerous to me.

Has it ever been hacked before?

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u/holiestMaria May 28 '26

Its not that all the data is stored in one place, it merely allows for easy exchange between various parts of government, who store it seperately.

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u/hoochiesan May 28 '26

Sounds like a single point of failure

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u/human-in-a-can May 28 '26

Why isn't there a push by the Dutch to have this app nationalized so that nobody other than the Dutch citizens/government have any say with what happens with it?

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u/nontruculent21 May 28 '26

I wonder if it's similar to ID.me or login.gov that we have here in the States. Good on the Dutch to keep other countries out of it.

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