Tag: digital id

Digital ID And You

As the United Nations gears up for its Summit of the Future, to be held in September during the 79th General Assembly, I am offering a series on Agenda 2030, the agenda that the Summit is intended to advance. One of the outcome documents that the member states will sign is the Global Digital Compact. And one of the major elements of that agreement is the establishment of digital identity for every single person on the planet.

You’ve probably read about digital identity but you may not know what the entirety of the project entails and signifies. And you may be contributing to your own digital identity without knowing it. For reasons that will become clear, this is not something that you want to do. Read to the end to find out how you can elude the clutches of this globalist, totalitarian surveillance system.

Keep reading

Americans who refuse to sign up for “voluntary” government-issued digital ID may be DENIED health care services

Before his term ends, President Joe Biden is planning to sign an executive order (EO) to speed up the nation’s adoption of a standardized digital identification platform controlled by Washington, D.C.

The digital ID system will require Americans to verify their identity and age in order to access certain public websites and services. This includes Obamacare and other government-run health care plans that will only be available to Americans who agree to participate in the digital ID program.

A nonprofit media outfit called NOTUS obtained a draft copy of Biden’s EO, which states that “It is the policy of the executive branch to strongly encourage the use of digital identity documents.”

The program is “optional,” but in order to access health care services, renew one’s driver’s license, or log onto public services portals online, users will have to agree to participate otherwise they will not be allowed to access anything controlled by the government online.

According to NOTUS, Biden’s EO “could reshape how Americans access government services, and potentially behave online.” Biometric technologies like facial recognition are included as part of the system to “help better verify identity online,” we are told.

Keep reading

Big Brother Goes Digital: The Feds’ Race to Integrate Mobile IDs in America

The push to develop digital ID and expand its use in the US is receiving a boost as the country’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is launching a new project.

NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has teamed up with 15 large financial and state institutions, as well as tech companies, to research and develop a way of integrating Mobile Driver’s License (mDL) into financial services. But according to NIST, this is just the start and the initial focus of the program.

The agreement represents an effort to tie in yet more areas of people’s lives in their digital ID (“customer identification program requirements” is how NIST’s announcement describes the focus of this particular initiative). These schemes are often criticized by rights advocates for their potential to be used as mass surveillance tools.

Keep reading

Digital IDs are coming, whether you like it or not

The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to launch an initiative that could significantly alter the way Americans prove their identities. A draft executive order, which has been reviewed by journalists from Notus (a new, Washington DC-based publication), would push for the widespread adoption of mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) and other forms of digital identification.

If implemented, this would mark a fundamental shift in how citizens interact with government and private sector services online — everything from how you access public benefits to how you verify your age before viewing adult-only content online.

The party line is that we need digital IDs because the government incurred staggering losses as a result of fraudulent claims during the pandemic. Over $100 billion was reportedly lost to unscrupulous unemployment claims between March 2020 and March 2023. Rather than understanding that government had failed in its duty to properly vet claimaints, the Biden administration would rather have us believe these failures highlight vulnerabilities in current identity verification systems such as physical driver’s licenses, which have proven easy to forge. The rise of AI-driven “deep fake” technology just makes matters worse.

They say digital IDs, supported by biometric technologies like facial recognition, are a robust solution. By moving identity documents onto smartphones, the government hopes to create a more secure and efficient way for Americans to verify their identities when accessing both public and private services online.

According to the draft of the executive order obtained by Notus, the Biden administration intends to “strongly encourage the use of digital identity documents” across federal and state levels. The order would mandate federal agencies to adopt a unified identity verification system, Login.gov, as the primary gateway for accessing federal websites. This system would also be made available to state and local governments for integration into their services.

Keep reading

California’s Digital Plates Plan Raises Privacy Fears

California is one of the US states that have introduced digital license plates, amid opposition from a number of rights advocates.

Now, there is a legislative effort to have GPS location tracking embedded in these, to all intents and purposes, devices attached to the car.

Sponsored by Democrat Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, Bill 3138 is currently making its way through the state’s legislature. It refers to “License plates and registration cards: alternative devices,” and the bill has another sponsor – Reviver.

The company was founded by Neville Boston, formerly of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and promotes itself as the first digital license plates platform. It has made its way to both this proposal, and the law the current draft builds on – AB 984 (also sponsored by Wilson) – which was signed into law two years ago.

The problem with Reviver is that it has already had a security breach that allowed hackers to track those using the company’s digital plates in real-time. It doesn’t help, either, that the company is effectively a monopoly – the only one, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, “that currently has state authorization to sell digital plates in California.”

Meanwhile, the key problem with AB 3138, warns EFF, is that it “directly undoes the deal from 2022 and explicitly calls for location tracking in digital license plates for passenger cars.”

Keep reading

Report: Biden Administration Rushes Digital ID Plans

The Biden administration is working to expedite widespread adoption of digital IDs, including driver’s licenses, a draft executive order indicates.

Digital IDs are a contentious concept primarily because of the concentration of – eventually – the entirety of people’s sensitive private information in centralized databases controlled by the government, and on people’s phones, “client-side.”

That in turn brings up the issues of technical security, but also privacy, and the potential for dystopian-style mass surveillance.

Proponents, on the other hand, like to focus on the “convenience” that such a shift from physical to digital personal documents is promised to bring.

In the US, some states have started this process via digital driver’s licenses, and the executive order is urging (“strongly encouraging”) both federal and state authorities to accelerate this, as well as other types of digital ID.

Where this policy seems to be converging to is coming up, at long last, with a functional way to carry out online identity verification. Namely, digital ID would be combined with biometric data obtained through facial recognition, and other forms of biometrics harvesting.

Centralization of data – opponents say to better control it, even if that makes it less secure – is a key component of these schemes, and so the Biden executive order speaks about making it obligatory for federal agencies to join “a single government-run identity system, Login.gov,” reports say.

Keep reading

Senate Passes Kids’ “Safety” Bills Despite Privacy, Digital ID, and Censorship Concerns

Two bills combined – the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) – have passed in the US Senate in a 91-3 vote, and will now be considered by the House.

Criticism of the bills focuses mainly on the likelihood that, if and when they become law, they will help expand online digital ID verification, as well as around issues like censorship (removal and blocking of content).

Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda

The effort to make KOSA and COPA 2.0 happen was spearheaded by a parent group that was pushing lawmakers and tech companies’ executives to move in this direction, and their main demand was to enact new rules that would prevent cyberbullying and other harms.

And now the main sponsors, senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Republican Marsha Blackburn are trying to dispel these concerns, suggesting these are not “speech bills” and do not (directly) impose age verification.

Further defending the bills, they say that the legislation does not mandate that internet platforms start collecting even more user data, and reject the notion it is invasive of people’s privacy.

But the problem is that although technically true, this interpretation of the bills’ impact is ultimately incorrect, as some of their provisions do encourage censorship, facilitate the introduction of digital ID for age verification, and leave the door open for mass collection of online users’ data – under specific circumstances – and end ending anonymity online.

The bills are hailed by supporters as “landmark” legislation that is the first to focus on protecting children on the internet in the last 20 years, with some lawmakers in the Senate, like majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, describing the result of the vote as “a momentous day.”

Keep reading

Biden-Harris Task Force Urges Online Age Verification Digital ID Tool Development

The online digital ID age verification creep in the US continues from a number of directions, through “recommendations” and “studies” – essentially, the government is nudging the industry to move in the direction of implementing digital ID age verification tools.

At this point, it is happening via various initiatives and legislation, still, without being formally mandated.

One instance is a recommendation coming from the Biden-Harris Administration’s Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force, which is telling online service providers they should “develop and inform parents about age verification tools built into the app or available at the device level.”

The task force is led by the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS (its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, SAMHSA,) in what is referred to in official statements as “close partnership” with the Department of Commerce.

Keep reading

Senate Passes Kids’ “Safety” Bills Despite Privacy, Digital ID, and Censorship Concerns

Two bills combined – the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) – have passed in the US Senate in a 91-3 vote, and will now be considered by the House.

Criticism of the bills focuses mainly on the likelihood that, if and when they become law, they will help expand online digital ID verification, as well as around issues like censorship (removal and blocking of content).

The effort to make KOSA and COPA 2.0 happen was spearheaded by a parent group that was pushing lawmakers and tech companies’ executives to move in this direction, and their main demand was to enact new rules that would prevent cyberbullying and other harms.

And now the main sponsors, senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Republican Marsha Blackburn are trying to dispel these concerns, suggesting these are not “speech bills” and do not (directly) impose age verification.

Further defending the bills, they say that the legislation does not mandate that internet platforms start collecting even more user data, and reject the notion it is invasive of people’s privacy.

But the problem is that although technically true, this interpretation of the bills’ impact is ultimately incorrect, as some of their provisions do encourage censorship, facilitate the introduction of digital ID for age verification, and leave the door open for mass collection of online users’ data – under specific circumstances – and end ending anonymity online.

Keep reading

New UK Government Signals Potential Backtrack on Plans to Drop Digital ID

It’s been mere days since former UK Labour PM Tony Blair, a globalization extraordinaire, and a (digital) ID cards enthusiast remarked that it might take “a little persuading” for his country’s new government to get with that particular program.

And it seems the new Labour government really only needed a little persuasion – after “rejecting” Blair’s call to implement digital ID cards on July 7, by July 10 there were statements by an influential party figure calling that path “inevitable.”

However, that figure – former Home Secretary David Blunkett – is not a member of the just-formed cabinet, and was with his statements challenging current Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who opposed the idea.

But, Blunkett – who served in Blair’s government – said that “the government would have to streamline (growing digital records) into a single ID.”

Fast forward one week, and it seems Cooper’s cabinet colleague, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle, is starting to reverse course.

Somewhere in the meanwhile, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds first said the government would be “looking at all sources of advice” – only to quickly backtrack and say there were no ID card plans.

All this leaves observers puzzled as to what the government’s actual stance on this important issue is.

Keep reading