# EUSI in brief: why Europe needs its own trustworthy part of the internet

### And why that concerns you, even if you have nothing to do with technology

For more than thirty years I have protected sensitive and secret assets, physical and digital. In those years I learned one thing: most damage is not caused by brilliant attackers or by AI, but by systems that were never designed to protect anything. The internet is such a system. It was built without a lock on the door, and by now everyone notices.

That is why I am working, unpaid and together with civil-society organisations, lawyers, fellow professionals and people from politics, on a proposal with the working title **EUSI**: *European Sovereign Internet*. Below I explain in plain language what it is, what it is not, and why it affects everyone.

*A note up front: this is a proposal under development, not a product and not policy. Where I speak about rules or European institutions that do not yet exist, I describe what we propose, not what already applies.*

## The problem, in plain language

- **You are being tracked.** Shops, apps and platforms collect far more about you than they need, and combine it. Every data breach is therefore a gift to criminals.
- **Anyone can pretend to be someone else.** Phishing, fake webshops, fake reviews, sextortion and deepfakes exist because nothing on the internet proves who something comes from. By now it happens to everyone: schoolchildren, entrepreneurs, public figures and politicians of virtually every party.
- **We respond after the fact.** Report, have it removed, prosecute. That is necessary, but it is mopping the floor with the tap running. By then the damage is done.
- **We are dependent.** Our identity, our payments, our cloud and our workplace largely run on non-European parties, under non-European law and at non-European prices.
- **Entrepreneurs pay the bill.** Bureaucracy, expensive intermediaries, and liability for data they do not even want to hold.

## What EUSI is

A European part of the internet where privacy is built in **from the start**, instead of being repaired afterwards. Not a new network, not a ban on the ordinary internet, but an environment with clear house rules, under European law, that citizens and organisations can choose.

Five promises sum it up.

**1. Everyone may be anonymous there.**
You do not have to give your name to shop, pay, read or join a conversation. Those who wish to act under their own name may do so; those who do not, act under a name of their own choosing that nobody else can use.

**2. Nobody can pretend to be someone else.**
Not your bank, not the government, not your neighbour. A party can only act as itself.

**3. Whoever wants to know something about you must first explain why.**
A shop receives a payment confirmation, not an address. The courier receives an address, not a name. The bank knows what the bank has to know, and nobody else does. Two organisations cannot tie together what they each know about you.

**4. Everything you see has a sender.**
Texts, photos, videos, and also what artificial intelligence produces, carry a digital seal of the maker and the publisher. Whoever changes something breaks the seal and must publish it again under their own responsibility. Satire and cartoons remain possible; the law already protects them.

**5. Anonymity yields only to the EU-court.**
Whoever commits a serious crime under an anonymous name (a deepfake of another person, extortion, threats) can be traced, but only after an EU court order and with the cooperation of three EU independent key holders. No platform and no government can do that alone.

> With EUSI, Europe thereby guarantees free speech and becomes its protector: whoever obeys the EU law can speak freely without being tracked or unmasked. Not less freedom in order to protect people, but more.

## What EUSI is not

- **Not censorship.** There are no filters in advance and no committee that decides what may be said. Whoever publishes something stands behind it alone, with their own (if necessary anonymous) signature.
- **Not mass surveillance.** The design is aimed precisely at preventing a central place where everything about everyone comes together. What does not exist cannot leak and cannot be abused.
- **Not a government system and not the company of a single party.** The roles are divided: Europe sets the rules and certifies, European banks and certified identity services establish that you are who you say you are, European providers supply storage and workplace, shops and couriers do their work with as little data as possible, and civil-society organisations watch whether the promise is kept.
- **Not a political project.** Privacy, security and safety should have no political colour; they are founding principles of a free society. EUSI is there for everyone who wants to do something about it, regardless of party, sector or background.
- **Not my product.** My role is the design of the security that makes this possible. I hold no data, no money and no control.

## Why this affects everyone

**Security and freedom belong together.** Online, the rule is: without certainty about who is who, there is no freedom, only the fear of being deceived, extorted or impersonated. EUSI provides that certainty without tracking the citizen.

**Protecting the citizen, also against the state.** Anonymity is the default; only a European Union court can lift it, in case of a breach of European Union law, with a shared key. That is the rule of law, digitally: investigation possible, arbitrariness impossible.

**A social and tolerant society.** Those who cannot pretend to be someone else, and who stand behind their words with their own seal, behave differently.

**Room for entrepreneurs.** Less data means less liability, less bureaucracy and no tolls charged by foreign intermediaries.

**A strong, independent European economy.** Whoever keeps identity, payments and workplace in Europe is less vulnerable to foreign legislation, sanctions and pricing policy.

*— Oskar Wols*