An electronic government platform is essentially a portal that enables access to a variety of governmental services. On these platforms can you manage official documents, registrations, tax payments, (obviously) anything related to your identity as a citizen, and more. These services are accessible with any device that has access to the Internet and a modern web browser. So… What’s Wrong With It Such systems that hold valuable data had better be secure, right?

Read as a PDF by clicking here 1. Introduction Since the 2000’s, usage of internet has risen significantly1, and has become much more integrated in our lives than ever before. As a consequence, with corporations expanding and attempting to handle the huge amount of traffic passed through the world every day; modern data centers, and AI, are draining water supplies fast, and the consumption of natural resources is increasing. 2. Background Today, most people store their data in the “cloud”.

Introduction Today, many corporations and governments are opting for an ID verification before a user can access a service. What gives? What’s Happening This situation started rapidly developing after the UK introduced age-verification-by-ID to the masses under the Online Safety Act. It’s supposed to “protect children, as well as adults, from illegal and harmful content, mis- and disinformation, etc.”. Big goals, for what is a simple ID scan. As for how the identity verifications are handled: There are no regulations!

“Why should I care?” is a question often asked when the concept of privacy is discussed. There are plenty of reasons to preserve your privacy. Before elaborating on this, some terms must be defined: Privacy, anonymity, and security are seperate concepts from each other. This post is about privacy. Not anonymity, nor security. Privacy: When personal data is kept from prying eyes. Personal data as a term includes what you search up on the internet, or a video that you watched.

Before I begin, I will say that for most people this is more a case of damage control than absolute true privacy. Aside from that, I will also not cover threat modeling in this post as there are two blogposts [1] [2] which explain what it is in detail. Please do read them if you do not know what “threat modeling” means. As a TL;DR, threat modeling is defining what you want privacy against.

Introduction Recently, another exploit was discovered on the Turkish government’s web-based platform “E-devlet”. On this platform is stored a high amount of personal data that belong to citizens living in Turkey, such as: Their student certificate/student transcript Criminal record Name, surname, government ID, mother’s and father’s name etc. Unfortunately, this important data is not handled with care at all, and there’s been leaks in the past. In Turkey, as soon as you’re born, you’re already out in the open.