The App Security Project’s 2024 Cybersecurity Turkey
This Thanksgiving, Americans will celebrate the journey of our forebearers from the Old World to the New. The Pilgrims set sail to find new freedom and to escape rulers who limited their ability to live as they wished.
Some things never change. More than four centuries later, Americans are still trying to avoid restrictive European policy. Specifically, the European Union (EU) has passed more digital regulations than there are Thanksgiving side dishes. Truly, the EU’s technocratic approach has proved itself to be the weak green bean casserole to the stuffing and gravy that is the U.S.’s free-market approach. Ddue to the global nature of the internet, these policies have followed Americans across the Atlantic. These laws – such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) – carve up users’ cybersecurity protections like so many pieces of turkey. For this reason, the EU qualifies as the App Security Project’s 2024 Cybersecurity Turkey.
With companies required to ensure compliance earlier this year, the DMA needlessly cracks down on popular features that protect users from cyber threats. For example, it would require devices to allow the inherently risky practice of sideloading, the process of downloading apps outside vetted app stores. Even many Europeans recognized the risks. However, the EU plowed ahead anyway like Uncle Bob going back for fifth serving of mashed potatoes.
Benedikt Franke (the vice-chairman and CEO of the Munich Security Conference) argued “that regulations and policies seeking to address new realities need to be ‘security proofed’ before they’re passed” – a standard the DMA fails to meet. “[T]here’s plenty of evidence that it comes with serious side effects, putting millions at risk by overriding central safeguards on the pretense of consumer choice,” he stated.
Meanwhile, even as the EU worked to strip private users of cybersecurity safeguards, officials were rushing to keep those safeguards in place on government devices. “Government agencies, both in the European Union and outside of it, have been quick to recognize the risks created by these new distribution options and the need for protective measures,” Apple reported. “These agencies…have reached out to us about these new changes, seeking assurances that they will have the ability to prevent government employees from sideloading apps onto government-purchased iPhones.”
Fortunately, Americans aren’t directly subject to these regulations – yet. However, there are other ways in which European policy shapes technology stateside. Americans have the EU to thank for annoying cookie pop-up windows and the iPhone’s mandated transition to USB-C charging cables, among other things. Also, there’s a bipartisan coalition of members of Congress who want America to pass its own sideloading mandates. Next year, the new Congress should resist the impulse to reintroduce such bills.
There’s plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. The U.S. is, in many ways, far freer than Europe. It is no coincidence that it is also far more prosperous and innovative.
Published on November 27, 2024