The European Union announced its intention to have its own public DNS, and did so through an initiative named DNS4EU. The novelty was made known in the last week with the opening of a call for proposals on the European Commission's website, but it was only in the last few hours that more details began to be known.
“Equipping backbones with high-performance and secure DNS resolution infrastructures” is the title of the DNS4EU project. Apparently, what the European Union is looking for is to have an alternative to no longer depend on the US public DNS, taking into account that the most popular ones operate from North America. The most notorious cases are those of Cloudflare, OpenDNS and Google Public DNS, although they are not the only ones.
The existence of public and free DNS has several benefits. Users are not tied to a predetermined configuration, which translates into the possibility of using servers that offer better speed or more robust security. And in the specific case of DNS4EU, what the European Union is proposing is to have an infrastructure that allows the processing of DNS resolution data within Europe, under the promise of protecting the user data and their privacy.
For the latter, it is not surprising that among the requirements of the proposal the need to comply with both the General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) as well as with national regulations, where applicable, is mentioned.
DNS resolution, a critical backbone function for accessing resources on the internet, is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few non-European operators, creating general weaknesses in the resilience of the internet and being potentially insecure in terms of to ensure the protection of privacy in accordance with EU rules and regulations.
The European Union, on the motivation behind DNS4EU
DNS4EU, the proposal for a public and free DNS of the European Union
Photo by ALEXANDRE LALLEMAND in unsplash Documentation related to DNS4EU states that your DNS should be easy for end users to discover and configure; It must also comply with the main security and privacy protection standards on the web. But it also opens the door to the inclusion of free parental control tools, as well as other paid services. The latter would be for corporate users to access advanced security options or optimized performance, they explained.
However, what is also generating noise is the section that speaks of “legal filtering”. There it is mentioned that with the implementation of the public DNS the European Union will seek to block access to websites with “illegal content” . Although specific cases are not mentioned, it is impossible not to think about the pages that are dedicated to the distribution of piracy, among others. In any case, it is indicated that the filtering of the URLs will be carried out when there are court orders. This has already been viewed with controversy, claiming its detractors that it could facilitate censorship.
“A government-run DSA scheme carries the risk of online censorship. Blocking access keeps content online and therefore easily circumventable, often resulting in excessive blocking and collateral suppression of speech.” that is hosted on the same website, by the same provider or through the same network,” explained Patrick Breyer, Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, according to TorrentFreak.
As indicated on the website of the European Commission, the deadline for the call is March 22. The DNS4EU initiative will have a budget of 14 million euros, according to official information. The evaluation of the proposals will be made between April and July, while the results will be announced in August. While it was only between November and December that the agreement would be signed with the winner to develop the European public DNS.
