{"id":482906,"date":"2026-05-13T17:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/482906\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:12:13","slug":"von-der-leyen-tech-world-must-adopt-covid-digital-id-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/482906\/","title":{"rendered":"Von der Leyen: Tech World Must Adopt COVID Digital ID System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>The entire tech world must now adopt the EU\u2019s COVID ID system to verify users\u2019 ages, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking at an EU conference billed as pushing for online child safety, the senior Eurocrat lambasted technology firms for allegedly looking to \u201cprofit from children\u2019s vulnerability\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Such actions, she continued, justified the union\u2019s efforts to censor the internet, with her decision to repurpose the EU\u2019s system of digital COVID passes part of this ongoing process.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to von der Leyen, the COVID pass system \u2014 which she claims is now open source \u2014 allows tech companies to definitively verify the ages of their users, arguing this leaves no more room for opposition to the bloc\u2019s online edicts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is built on the success of our European COVID App; you might recall that one. That App was used in 78 countries on 4 continents, so it is a proven and reliable model,\u201d she said, adding that member states will soon roll the product out as part of their digital ID systems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have made the technology open source, so online platforms can easily adopt it. In other words, no more excuses \u2013 the technology for age verification is available.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Von der Leyen also reiterated her calls for children to be banned from all social media platforms, insisting that the bloc would be pushing through the change over the summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe question is not whether young people should have access to social media, the question is whether social media should have access to young people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Von der Leyen\u2019s claims that the EU\u2019s reworked COVID pass system is safe and sufficiently open for public adoption have been called into question in recent days.<\/p>\n<p>Security experts have claimed that the system is extremely easy to hack into, leaving anyone who signs up for the digital ID system at risk.<\/p>\n<p>Others questioned the validity of von der Leyen\u2019s open source claim, saying that the program\u2019s heavy reliance on closed products owned by Apple and Google renders it not fit for purpose.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The entire tech world must now adopt the EU\u2019s COVID ID system to verify users\u2019 ages, Commission President&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,211161,101283,2219,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,82,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-482906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-covid-pass","tag-digital-id","tag-european-union","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-technology","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116568388289071407","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}