Tag: digital id

Lawmakers and Tech CEOs Push Online Age and ID Verification Proposals During Hearing on Child Safety

As we reported previously, US lawmakers are intent on pushing online ID, age verification, and causing an end to online anonymity – despite constitutional concerns.

And during a hearing today, tech CEOs supported proposals that would greatly expand the requirements for online ID verification and erode the ability to use the internet without connecting your online activity to your identity.

The proposals are being pushed in the name of protecting children online but would impact anyone who doesn’t want to tie all of their online speech and activity to their real ID – over surveillance or censorship concerns.

In response to criticism from lawmakers, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed for far-reaching online age verification standards that would impose age verification at the app store level — a proposal that would mean the vast majority of mobile app usage could be tied to a person’s official identity.

Keep reading

WEF: Biometric Digital ID Cards Could Track Vaccination Status, Dutch Queen Máxima Says at Davos

The introduction of biometric digital identity cards could be used by governments to track “who actually got a vaccination or not,” Queen Máxima of the Netherlands said at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this week.

Queen Máxima, a longtime social justice campaigner who has served as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA) since 2009, urged for the wider adoption of biometric digital ID cards globally during a WEF panel discussion titled “Comparing Notes on Financial Inclusion” on Thursday.

“When I started this job, there were actually very little countries in Africa or Latin America that had one ubiquitous type of ID, and certainly that was digital and certainly that was biometric… We’ve really worked with all our partners to actually help grow this, and the interesting part of it is that yes, it is very necessary for financial services, but not only.”

Aside from financial services, the Argentinian-born Dutch Queen went on to argue that the use of digital IDs could be used to keep track of “school enrolment” and to help people to receive welfare from the government.

In addition, Queen Máxima argued that digital IDs are “good for health” in that governments could use the system to track “who actually got a vaccination or not”.

The Dutch Queen has also been one of the leading proponents of the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) to increase “financial inclusion”. While CBDCs function similarly to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, they are not based on a decentralised network but rather controlled by a central bank, which critics argue could potentially give the government the ability to track all financial transactions made by the public.

Keep reading

The Digital ID Rollout Is Becoming a Hacker’s Dream

Governments and corporations around the world are showing great enthusiasm in either already implementing, or planning to implement some form of digital IDs.

As it turns out ironically, these efforts are presented to citizens as not only making their lives easier through convenience, but also making sure their personal data contained within these digital IDs is safer in a world teeming with malicious actors.

Opponents have been warning about serious privacy implications, but also argue against the claim that data security actually gets improved.

It would appear they are right – at least according to a report by a cybersecurity firm issued after the hacker attacks happening around the Christmas holiday, something that’s now been dubbed “Leaksmas.”

Not only governments, but hackers as well love digital IDs and huge amounts of personal information all neatly gathered in one place, and, judging by what’s been happening recently, in many instances, sitting there pretty much easily available to them.

And hackers have expressed this love by making digital ID data their primary focus, the firm, Resecurity, said in its report. Resecurity claims that this is a clear fact, and that it was able to discern it by analyzing data dumps once they started appearing on the dark web after the Christmas-time “digital smash-and-grabs.”

In numbers, a staggering 50 million records containing personally identifiable information have surfaced on the dark web. The reason so many stolen datasets have made it to the black digital market all at once appear to be “technicalities” related to the time window during which most of it will be “sellable”.

Keep reading

Eye-Ball Scanning Digital ID Company Worldcoin Integrates With Reddit, Telegram, and More

Worldcoin, the eye-ball scanning protocol co-founded by Sam Altman, is cracking open a wider integration network by adding support for platforms such as Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify, and Mercado Libre to its World ID offering. This comes on the back of the cohesive upgrades it has already sealed with Discord, Talent Protocol, and Okta’s Auth0.

Digital ID systems, like the one used by WorldCoin, raise significant privacy concerns due to the sensitive nature of the biometric data they collect and store. The other issue is that identity becomes immutable.

Consider a scenario where your digital identity becomes inaccessible, perhaps due to regulatory action or technical issues. In conventional financial systems, including traditional cash and most cryptocurrencies, you can simply create a new wallet and start over. However, with systems tied to unique biometric identifiers, such as iris scans, you can’t easily replace your identity. Unlike a plot from a science fiction movie, obtaining a new iris scan is not a feasible option.

Keep reading

EU Committees Vote in Favor of Mandatory Interconnected Digital Patient Health Records for All Citizens

The EU’s next legislative goal post that opponents see as part of a big push to strip citizens of their privacy, has now reached medical histories and associated data.

Interconnecting – in effect, centralizing (and making remotely accessible) – that data is the key premise of what has now emerged as European Health Data Space (EHDS). The upcoming bill has been backed by the European Parliament (EP), its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), and Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI).

EP member (MEP) and lawyer Patrick Breyer, a long-time critic of this type of policy, explains that EHDS – which he voted against – would “bring together information on all medical treatments received by citizens.”

Doctors will have to submit summaries of treatments they provide to “the new data space” – with the initial proposal not containing provisions that would allow for objections or exceptions. And while access can be restricted if a patient so wishes – the actual creation of the database can’t be prevented.

And let’s just reiterate that this might concern some of the most sensitive personal medical information: “mental disorders, sexual diseases and disorders such as impotence or infertility, HIV or drug abuse therapies,” writes Breyer.

“The EU’s plan to collect and interconnect records on all medical therapies entails irresponsible risks of data theft, hacking or loss. Even the most delicate therapies can no longer be administered off record in the future,” the German Pirate Party MEP further warned, blasting the idea as the end of medical confidentiality in the EU.

He makes a particular note of the danger that those who are less both computer and politically literate – such as the elderly or those not paying enough attention to bureaucratic decisions made by the EU (that nonetheless end up defining their lives), as well as those with actual lower level of education – all especially vulnerable in a scheme like this – would simply not be fully aware of the long-term consequences.

Keep reading

UN & Bill Gates Launch “50in5” Global Digital Infrastructure Plans

Last week the United Nations Development Program officially launched their new initiative promoting “Digital Public Infrastructure” (DPI) around the world.

The “50in5” program – so-called because it aims to introduce DPI in fifty countries in the next five years – began with a live-streamed event on November 8th.

For those of you unsure what “Digital Public Infrastructure” is, the 50in5 website is quite clear:

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) – which refers to a secure and interoperable network of components that include digital payments, ID, and data exchange systems.

There’s nothing new there, for anyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention. Digital identity and digital payment systems are self-explanatory (and we’ve covered them before). “Data Exchange Systems” essentially means national governments will share identity and financial records of citizens across borders with other nations, or indeed with global government agencies.

The key word is “interoperable”.

As we have written before, the “global government” won’t be one single health care system, identity database, or digital currency – but dozens of notionally separate systems all carefully designed to be fully “interoperable”.

As well as being a project of the UNDP, UNICEF, and the Inter-American Development Bank, the 50in5 is funded by various globalist NGOs and non-profits including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and (indirectly through an NGO called “Co-Develop”) the Rockefeller Foundation.

The eleven counties taking part in the program so far are Bangladesh, Brazil, Estonia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Moldova, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Togo. A careful spread from every continent, including first, second, and third-world nations.

It is a list noteworthy for including NATO, EU, and BRICS members. Interesting implications on supposed “multipolarity” there.

In related news, on the exact same day the 50in5 program launched, the European Parliament and Council of Europe agreed on a new framework for a region-wide European Digital Identity (eID) system.

Keep reading

EU Parliament Agrees on Digital ID Introduction and Pro-Censorship Chief Suggests CBDC Integration

The European Parliament (EP) and the bloc’s member-countries have reached a provisional deal on the digital ID framework, and now EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton is reported as suggesting CBDC (central bank digital currency) integration should follow.

The provisional agreement on what’s known as the eID (European Digital Identity) regulation is being presented by the EU Council (that worked on the agreement together with the EP) as a safe and trusted option, and also one that “protects democratic rights and values.”

Opponents, like Dutch EP member (MEP) Rob Roos, took to X, though, to announce the news, and brand it as “very bad.” The reason, according to Roos, is that in the process of striking a deal the two EU institutions “ignored all the privacy experts and security specialists.”

Commissioner Breton wasted no time – perhaps on purpose, building on a momentum that was no doubt difficult to get going – to say that now that there is a Digital ID Wallet, “we have to put something in it.”

Keep reading

The World’s Largest Biometric Digital ID System, India’s Aadhaar, Just Suffered Its Biggest Ever Data Breach

In one fell swoop, roughly 10% of the global population appears to have had some of their most valuable personal identifiable information (PII) compromised. Yet Aadhaar continues to receive plaudits from Silicon Valley. 

An anonymous hacker claims to have breached the digital ID numbers, as well as other sensitive personal data, of around 815 million Indian citizens.

To put that number in perspective, it is more than 60% of the 1.3 billion Indian people enrolled in the government’s Aadhaar biometric digital identity program, and roughly 10% of the entire global population. Thanks to the breach — the largest single one in the country’s history, according to the Hindustan Times — the personal data of hundreds of millions of Indians are now up for grabs on the dark web, for as little as $80,000.

To register for an Aadhaar card, Indian residents have to provide basic demographic information, including name, date of birth, age, address and gender, as well as biometric information, including ten fingerprints, two eyeball scans and a facial photograph. Much of that data has apparently been compromised.

Media reports suggest that the source of the leak was the Covid-19 test data of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which is linked to each individual’s Aadhaar number.

Keep reading

The Great Reset Part 2 – A Camp With No Outside

In Part 1 of this article, I identified the apparatuses of biopower by which our freedoms and our democracies are threatened in the West today, and which I described as the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’.

As I devote a chapter of my new book, The Great Reset, to each of the last three of these apparatuses of biopower — the UN’s Agenda 2030, the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty and Central Bank Digital Currency — I’m only going to discuss the first of them here, although it comes up throughout my book, because a system of Digital Identity is the gateway to the digital camp in which the other three will imprison us.

They all rely on it being in place for their own enforcement, and in this respect it is the most important and the one that has to be most resisted and defeated. Some form of Digital Identity has been talked about for some time, and although everyone appears to know what it is, there doesn’t seem to be much opposition to its implementation in the UK, which I’d suggest indicates that in reality we don’t understand it at all.

Keep reading

How Mastercard’s Digital ID Project Is Being Used by Governments To Track Health and Vaccination

In Mastercard’s ongoing technological pursuits, there seems to be an agenda of consolidating digital dominance. The so-called “Community Pass” project, helmed by Tara Nathan, Mastercard’s executive vice president, claims to integrate marginalized communities into the digital world. However, with only 3.5 million users so far, skeptics of digital ID plans may wonder about its real reach and intentions.

Nathan’s recent appearance on the company-sponsored podcast “What’s Next In,” touted the supposed merits of the Community Pass. Launched in 2019, this platform ostensibly provides individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific with a digital ID and wallet, allowing them access to services such as government benefits and humanitarian assistance.

Nathan waxed eloquent about the supposed benefits of digitization for developing economies. But her emphasis on using offline digital channels to supposedly empower marginalized individuals raises eyebrows. Is this another case of a multinational company trying to sell its tech solutions to unsuspecting communities under the guise of altruism?

Keep reading