Belgium has adopted an “official” app so that anyone can signal for help, so long as they belong to this exclusive group:
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Must be a trusting patron of #Google or #Apple. Consequently,
- must needlessly buy a GSM subscription and surrender to surveillance advertisers who require¹ your mobile phone number (which in Belgium must be registered to an ID) — even though the app can make emergency contact without phone service… thus imposing a needless cost on users and also causing a #GDPR minimisation breach.
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Must install and execute proprietary closed-source software. Consequently,
- must trust closed-source software (by #Nextel or #Telenet?)
- must be ethically aligned/okay with running #nonfreesoftware (which does not respect your freedom)
- must maintain recent hardware, buying a new phone every few years to keep up with the version requirement imposed by the closed-source app, thus:
- incurs needless hardware cost
- produces needless e-waste
-
Must be willing to leave Tor to access the access-restricted 112.be website.
① see attached image of Google demanding SMS verification for a new account. (untested: whether a mobile number is demanded when registering outside of Tor; please reply if you know the answer to that; #askFedi)
I mentioned that issue in the title as well as the 3rd bullet: “Must install and execute proprietary closed-source software”.
Italy is perhaps the only country in the world forward-thinking enough to have a “public money → public code” policy. If public money finances the creation of software, the public should also benefit from access to the source code. It’s an injustice to spend public money on software then withhold the source from the public.
I said this is not a /me/ problem. It’s a community-wide social problem. It’s an unjust deployment of a public resource. Solving the problem for just one person (for myself) does just that – it solves the problem for one person. And you can’t solve the problem for me because even if I could obtain the app without Google patronage and in a GDPR respecting way, it’s still closed-source software in the end.
Many people living in Brussels don’t have a car. Is it fair that taxpayer money is used for highways, while people without a car cannot use them?
You can complain about this how much you want, you also need to be realistic. Governments in Belgium are known to be highly inefficient, to you really expect them to create free software? As you said, Italy might be the only country doing that (by the way, do you have any source on this? I’m curious)
I’m one of those car-less people, and I much appreciate having the infrastructure of roads to cycle on. Some highways even have a cycling lane. Everyone who eats uses that infra.
Belgium was sensible enough to write an open data law, whereby the gov is required to make data their data publicly accessible (e.g. train schedules rely on this and irail.be demonstrates). Software is even easier because there are software forges that make it more trivial than sharing a database. Inefficiency would benefit from FOSS devs. They could even just focus on the API and perhaps audit the app’s public development.
There was a FOSDEM talk about it, I think around 2018ish. Italy would likely be in the title in the archives.
(edit) found it:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/public_money_public_code/
If you think that bicycle roads require the same maintenance ad highways for 35 tons trucks, then good for you.
Who is going to pressure any Belgian government to release free software? Is that a constitutional right?
To answer to your other comment
Didn’t you read what I said in that comment? Mullvad browser is free, for everyone, no need to use Mullvad VPN.
Remembering a 3 digit number is now a public healthcare resources
Why? Why should someone accept the consequence of travel more than using a burner email for a Google account?
https://www.rtbf.be/article/la-flandre-transfere-chaque-annee-7-milliards-a-la-wallonie-8969884
As a Flemish tax payer, that’s money that doesn’t benefit me.
Those 35 ton trucks are needed to bring me a bicycle. The food I buy from the grocer does not get there without roads.
Whether the right exists or not is an interesting question. The GDPR enshrines a number of transparency rights on how our personal data is processed. It makes no direct overt mention of open source code but I have yet to investigate whether code disclosure can be derived from GDPR transparency clauses. Certainly if there is no right, this thread is the bug report illustrating why transparency rights are needed. It’d be a bit premature to expect the right to be in a national constitution, but in 2024 it’s surprising how little headway has been made outside of Italy.
It is interesting that Mullvad’s browser is gratis and functions without the tunnel. For that reason, I will be looking into it and I appreciate your tip. But I must say you’ve lost track of why you brought that up: the gov website blocks the IPs of Tor exit nodes. Using a different browser makes no difference in that regard because the blockade impacts before the webserver even knows what browser is in play. This is why you suggested a VPN.
A VPN would solve the problem well enough, and the Mullvad browser would help to increase the level of anonymity (though not to the extent of Tor), but I did not intend to ask for support with this thread. This thread calls out injustices in how an app is deployed. I personally can circumvent various problems (apart from the closed-source problem), but the real fix needs to be with the app deployment so everyone can benefit.
You still need to eat. You still need public services. Even if you live off grid, you still benefit from police, fire, ambulance in particular. Those all depend on the road infrastructure.
You had a legally entitled opportunity to attend school. Even if you chose not to take it, you still benefit from others using that opportunity, such as the doc who operates on you.
You could make the same argument for having a phone at all. The same logic leads you to tear down the 112 number. OTOH, if you have no phone and you need urgent help, you will shout for it and someone will contact emergency services for you using whatever tool they have. More tools enable more people to respond quickly. A tap on a button in the app will send location info faster than a voice conversation. So I don’t have a problem with the existence of the app. I only have a problem with the exclusive way it was deployed to select groups using artificial and unnecessary requirements.
I just added emphasis where needed. Equal access means a mechanism to request healthcare should not be restricted to Google and Apple patrons as Belgium signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees access to public healthcare in one article and equal access to public services in another article.
Because the consequence of travel is inherent in the choice to live far away. Google patronage is not inherent in the choice to have a phone.
It’s a progressive tax system where the taxation is proportionate to the wealth. It’s really a big can of worms to get into whether the relatively wealthier per capita benefit from such system. That’s not really a good conversation for this thread but I will say that developed countries use a progressive tax regime and advocating for the contrary is to advocate for the sort of state you have with underdeveloped countries, which benefits the fewest numbers of people.