Tag: digital id

Launching a High Court Challenge Against Australia’s Social Media ID Check Law

Australia’s online digital ID checks and under-16 social media ban are now facing a constitutional challenge, with a coalition of Australians led by NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick preparing to contest the new law in the High Court.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, scheduled to take effect on December 10, 2025, will require all users to prove they are over 16 before accessing major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, and Snapchat.

To comply with this, people will have to give up their privacy by verifying with a government-issued ID.

John Ruddick announced the challenge after being elected President of the Digital Freedom Project (DFP) at its inaugural general meeting this week.

Ruddick said the DFP’s mission is to “raise public awareness about this East German-style intrusion by the state into our private lives” and to “launch a High Court challenge that argues the law is unconstitutional as it is a violation of the long-accepted ‘implied constitutional freedom of political communication’.”

He argued that the new law will be burdensome for both social media users and platforms, with companies facing fines of up to $53 million per day for breaches.

“The guts of the matter is that to have a social media account in Australia from 10 December, you will need to prove to the social media platform you are over 16,” Ruddick said.

He added that the verification process could require uploading identification documents, which would enable the eSafety Commissioner to “track what websites you visit to double check you really are over 16.”

Keep reading

Texas: ID Will Be Linked to Every Google Search! New Law Requires Age Verification

Texas SB2420, known as the App Store Accountability Act, requires app stores to verify the age of users and obtain parental consent for those under 18. This law aims to enhance protections for minors using mobile applications and is set to take effect on January 1, 2026.

Texas has joined a multi-state crusade to enforce digital identification in America—marketed as a way to “protect children.”

Yet privacy experts say the real goal isn’t child protection—it’s control. 

Roblox insists its new “age estimation” system improves safety, but it relies on biometric and government data—creating the foundation for permanent digital tracking. With Texas now the fifth state to join the campaign, one question remains: how long before “protecting kids” becomes the excuse to monitor everyone?

From Reclaim the Net:

Texas Sues Roblox Over Child Safety Failures, Joining Multi-State Push for Digital ID

Texas has become the latest state to take legal action against Roblox, joining a growing number of attorneys general who accuse the gaming platform of failing to protect children.

The case also renews attention on the broader push for online age verification, a move that would lead to widespread digital ID requirements.

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on November 6, alleging that Roblox allowed predators to exploit children while misleading families about safety protections.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Keep reading

Apple Launches TSA-ready Digital ID for Domestic Travel

Apple has launched Digital ID for the iPhone and Apple Watch. Drawing information from a user’s passport, the new feature is marketed as an “easy, secure, and private” way to verify identity during domestic travel, with additional use cases promised soon. With iPhones holding about 58 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, the update reaches a user base large enough to alter everyday identification practices.

Digital IDs sit at the center of a broader global system built through what officials refer to as “public-private partnerships.” These alliances shape policies, set technical standards, and define the rules of planet-wide “digital governance.”

Within that structure, Apple’s new update fits seamlessly. While offered to the public as a convenience feature, it will move society closer to a model in which identity, access, and compliance operate through a single device that people already carry without much thought.

Rollout

The company made its announcement on Wednesday:

Apple today announced the launch of Digital ID, a new way for users to create an ID in Apple Wallet using information from their U.S. passport, and present it with the security and privacy of iPhone or Apple Watch. At launch, Digital ID acceptance will roll out first in beta at TSA checkpoints at more than 250 airports in the U.S. for in-person identity verification during domestic travel, with additional Digital ID acceptance use cases to come in the future.

Apple stresses that Digital ID “is not a replacement for a physical passport” and will not work for international travel (at least not yet). The company also frames the feature as a help for people who lack a REAL ID-compliant document. That pitch reads two ways at once. It gives travelers a practical workaround, but also nudges the public toward a digital identity system that aligns with federal priorities.

Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, described the rollout as a natural step. “We’re excited to expand the ways users can store and present their identity,” she said. She noted that users “love having their ID right on their devices,” adding that the new feature brings that option to “even more users across the country.”

The message is simple. Your phone can now be your identification. And it can now place you inside a much larger shift in how identity works.

Keep reading

Australia Turns the Rental Market into a Digital ID Testing Ground

Governments around the world are steadily advancing their digital identity programs, presenting them as tools for convenience, security, and modernization across daily life.

Australia has now taken another step in that direction, trialing a new digital ID system in the rental sector while also preparing to introduce nationwide online age verification requirements by the end of this year.

Both systems rely on identity verification and could eventually become interconnected.

The new federal pilot will allow tenants to confirm their identity and financial information online rather than repeatedly providing hard copies of personal documents such as passports, driver’s licenses, or bank statements to multiple real estate agents.

Announced by Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, the trial is intended to test whether digital ID technology can streamline rental applications while reducing the privacy and security risks that come with traditional document sharing.

Led by the Department of Finance and the Treasury, the project combines the government’s Digital ID system with the Consumer Data Right (CDR) framework.

PropertyMe, one of Australia’s largest property management software providers, will oversee the trial in partnership with ConnectID, developed by Australian Payments Plus, and Cuscal, a payments and data services company. Together, they aim to see how digital verification can simplify renting while offering stronger protection for personal data.

“Right now, renters are asked to upload anything from driver licenses and passports to bank statements and payslips, often to several platforms,” said Scott Shepherd, PropertyMe’s Chief Product Officer.

“Products and services now exist that enable us to reimagine that. Renters should be able to prove who they are and their ability to pay rent, without handing over additional information.”

REA Group senior economist Eleanor Creagh supported the pilot’s potential benefits, saying, “The pilot is a sensible reform that may help cut red tape for renters while strengthening data security and transparency in rental applications.”

With the upcoming rollout of age verification laws expected to require proof of identity to access certain online services, there is concern that Australia’s digital infrastructure could gradually merge into a single, far-reaching identity framework.

Such a system could allow both public and private entities to authenticate users across multiple sectors, raising questions about how much control individuals will retain over their data and who will have access to it.

Globally, similar moves are underway in countries such as the UK, Canada, the EU, Singapore, where governments are promoting digital identity systems as a way to verify citizens online.

Keep reading

Court Keeps California’s Online ID Law Dream Alive

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to rehear NetChoice v. Bonta, leaving intact its earlier decision that upheld most of California’s new social media law, Senate Bill 976, also known as the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act.

NetChoice, the tech trade group behind the challenge, said it “will explore all available options to protect free speech and privacy online” after the denial of its petition for rehearing on November 6, 2025.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 976 into law in September 2024.

The legislation compels social media platforms to implement “age assurance” measures to identify whether users are adults or minors.

This would likely mean platforms have to introduce some form of digital ID check to allow people to view or post.

Those requirements are not yet active, as California’s Attorney General has until January 1, 2027, to finalize the specific rules.

Attorney General Rob Bonta began the initial rulemaking process in October 2025.

NetChoice first sued in November 2024, arguing that SB 976 forces Californians to hand over personal documents just to engage in lawful online speech, a demand the group says violates the First Amendment.

On September 9, 2025, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel mostly upheld the law, finding that it was too soon to determine whether the age assurance mandate would restrict free expression before the details of that process are set.

As a result, the Attorney General can continue developing the state’s age assurance framework, while NetChoice or other organizations may bring a new legal challenge once the regulations are issued.

In its prior decision, the Ninth Circuit also removed one element of the law requiring children’s accounts to automatically hide likes and comments. Writing for the court, Judge Ryan Nelson concluded that the rule “is not the least restrictive way to advance California’s interest in protecting minors’ mental health.”

The rest of SB 976, including its age verification and content feed restrictions, remains largely intact.

The panel emphasized that without finalized regulations, it cannot yet decide whether these requirements would suppress lawful speech or create privacy risks.

NetChoice has continued to warn that the statute grants the state too much power over how people access and share information online. “NetChoice is largely disappointed in the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and we will consider all available avenues to defend the First Amendment,” said Paul Taske, Co-Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center.

He added, “California’s law usurps the role of parents and gives the government more power over how legal speech is shared online. By mandating mass collection of sensitive data from adults and minors, it will undermine the security and privacy of families, putting them at risk of cybercrime such as identity theft.”

Keep reading

MAHA: Monitoring Americans’ Health Attributes — or CCP-style Digital Control Grid?

This summer, President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping plan to “bring healthcare into the digital age.” He calls it the “Digital Health Tech Ecosystem.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also announced the launch of a digital health ID initiative in conjunction with Amazon, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The latter is an AI startup that received most of its $580 million seed funding from the now-bankrupt FTX under convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

This “Ecosystem” is part of the artificial intelligence (AI) venture Stargate Project, which Trump excitedly announced on his first day in office. Stargate is the reason you may have noticed large AI facilities springing up across the country, driving up energy prices with their unprecedented demand for electricity, and threatening aquifers with their unprecedented demand for water.

Trump declared Texas-based Stargate to be a $500 billion collaboration between leading tech companies that will make the United States the global leader in AI. Among investors are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. During the White House unveiling, Ellison bragged that Stargate’s AI would be able to produce cancer vaccines in 48 hours.

Microsoft and NVIDIA are two other U.S.-based investors, while Emirati state-owned MGX of Abu Dhabi and U.K.-based Arm Holdings, Inc. are also involved. Stargate’s chairman is Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who also chairs Stargate investor SoftBank.

Data Not Secure

Naturally, the healthcare component of this technological boom is supposed to help the little guy: improving patient care through earlier disease detection and — you guessed it — vaccinations. But are we to believe that this international consortium of businesses has our best interests at heart?

For that matter, do our own politicians? During testimony before Congress earlier this year, Kennedy admitted: “My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable [health-related monitor] within four years.” But he dodged a follow-up question about plans to secure that personal health data. That’s disconcerting, considering the vulnerability of personal information in federal hands. Remember the early 2025 reveal that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gained illicit access to 19 sensitive U.S. Health and Human Services databases, exposing everything from electronic health records to Social Security and bank details? 

Wearables

The “wearable” health monitors would expand that data collection astronomically, creating a “digital twin” of yourself as government officials harvest vital signs, movement and sleep patterns, and other physical metrics in real time.

Moreover, Trump signed an executive order in March calling for data-sharing of personal information about Americans across federal agencies. His administration has since awarded more than $900 million in contracts to Peter Thiel’s data analytics company, Palantir, while even current and former employees have petitioned the company to pull out of the plans.

The HopeGirl Alternative News channel on Rumble depicts what healthcare in this modern Fourth Industrial Revolution will look like. Healthcare 4.0 works with a constant stream of data from wearable devices to analyze us — individually and population-wide — at every hour of the day in all settings. This system is already in operation. Starting in 2020, U.S. hospitals implemented “body area networks” (BAN) to deliver real-time vitals to the Pentagon’s Project Salus during the Covid “public health emergency.”

The REAL ID Connection

This helps explain why U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem finally enforced the REAL ID Act of 2005 this year. (Right now, it’s mandatory for domestic air travel and entering federal buildings, but the legislation allows for unlimited expansion of REAL ID requirements.) Until this year, various states stymied REAL ID, correctly labeling it a gross violation of Americans’ constitutionally protected rights. Now, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration boasts on its website about its biometric overhaul.

Indeed, the REAL ID Act allows states to collect biometric data (fingerprints, facial geometry, triangulated body measurements) on each of us. The Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) explains that the “purposes could include banking, employment or health care.”

CCHF warns: “REAL ID provides the digital and biometric infrastructure to implement a China-like control grid, where your access to services could depend on behavior, beliefs or health status.”

Keep reading

Wisconsin Lawmakers Propose VPN Ban and ID Checks on Adult Sites

Wisconsin legislators have found a new villain in their quest to save people from themselves: the Virtual Private Network.

The state’s latest moral technology initiative, split into Assembly Bill 105 and Senate Bill 130, would force adult websites to verify user ages and ban anyone connecting through a VPN.

It passed the Assembly in March and now waits in the Senate, where someone will have to pretend this is enforceable.

Supporters are selling the plan as a way to “protect minors from explicit material.”

The bill’s machinery reads like a privacy demolition project written by people who still call tech support to reset passwords.

The law would apply to any site that “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors.” It then defines that material as anything lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

The wording is broad enough to rope in half the internet, yet somehow manages to exclude “bona fide news” (as to be determined by the state) and cloud platforms that don’t create the content themselves.

Whether that covers social media depends on who you ask: lawyers, lobbyists, or whichever intern wrote the definitions section.

The bill instructs websites to delete verification data after access is granted or denied.

That sounds good until you recall how the tech industry handles deletion promises.

Au10tix left user records exposed for a year after pledging to delete them within 30 days. Tea suffered multiple breaches despite assurances of immediate deletion. In the real world, “deleted” often means “archived on an unsecured server until a hacker finds it.”

The headline feature is a rule penalizing anyone who uses a VPN to access restricted material. VPNs encrypt internet traffic and disguise user locations, which lawmakers apparently see as a threat to order.

The logic is that if people can hide their IP addresses, the state can’t check their ID to ensure they’re old enough to view certain content. That’s technically true and philosophically disturbing.

Officials in other places are already cheering this idea. Michigan introduced a proposal requiring internet providers to detect and block VPN traffic.

If Wisconsin adopts the rule, VPN users would become collateral damage. Journalists, activists, and everyday users who rely on encryption for safety would be swept up in the ban.

Keep reading

Carbon taxes and Digital ID systems in 50 countries by 2028: Albo has signed up with UN

Two months ago, just before the UN gathered in New York, I warned you that a decisive moment was coming.

That moment is now.

The moment the globalists move from plans on paper to control in practice—unless we stop it.

On my long flight to Doha, Qatar, I couldn’t shake one thought: how fast things have escalated. In just a few short weeks, the agenda has accelerated at breakneck speed… and it’s nothing short of chilling.

  •  In the UK, digital IDs are now being pushed to access employment.
  • In Vietnam, millions of bank accounts were frozen overnight for failing to comply with new “social responsibility” regulations.
  • The UN is calling for a global carbon tax to pump massive amounts of tax money into its Socialist and Globalists coffers … YOUR tax money to control YOUR economy and decisions
  • The plan call for imposing digital ID systems in 50 countries by 2028—tracking people from birth to death. Your right to travel or work could be canceled with the click of a button.
  • The EU continues pushing forward with its programmable “Digital Euro,”—where access to your own money could be restricted by unaccountable bureaucrats because of an action or statement.

This is no longer a theory. It’s already underway, touching finance, work, and speech, and targeting every corner of our lives.

In just hours, the UN will open its World Summit for Social Development—where they intend to lock in Agenda 2030 as the world’s official roadmap. Not mere guidelines, but binding frameworks pushed into national laws, school curriculums, funding programs, and more. All funded with buckets of your tax money.

Let me be clear: this summit isn’t about development. It’s about centralizing control.

They’re assembling the machinery of a global system—one that dictates how you live, what you can buy, where you can travel, even what you’re allowed to say or believe.

This is where it all comes together …censorship, digital surveillance, control over farmers, families, faith, finance … you name it!

But here’s what they didn’t count on: you and thousands like you speaking up—right now.

Keep reading

Russia Moves to Mandate State Biometric ID for Online Age Verification

Russian lawmakers are moving forward with a proposal that would make the country’s biometric and e-government systems the mandatory gatekeepers for online age verification.

If implemented, the measure would tie access to adult or “potentially harmful” content directly to a person’s verified state identity, dissolving any remaining expectation of online anonymity.

The plan, discussed on October 28, is being marketed as a child protection initiative. Officials insist it is designed to keep minors away from dangerous material, yet the scope of what qualifies is remarkably broad.

According to TechRadar, one official included pornography, violent or profane videos, and even “propaganda of antisocial behavior” in the list of restricted content.

The main part of the proposal is the use of the “Gosuslugi” digital services portal, which already functions as Russia’s main interface for state verification.

This system connects directly to the Unified System of Identification and Authentication (ESIA) and the national Unified Biometrics System (UBS), both of which are controlled by the government.

State Duma deputy Anton Nemkin, a former FSB officer, suggested that these networks “could be used to verify age without directly transmitting passport data to third-party platforms.”

In effect, the state would become the universal intermediary between citizens and the internet.

Legal experts specializing in digital rights argue that this initiative continues a long-established trajectory.

Since 2012, when Russia began constructing its online censorship framework under the pretext of protecting minors, each new regulation has chipped away at personal privacy while expanding government visibility into everyday digital life.

The current proposal also fits neatly within Moscow’s broader strategy of “digital sovereignty.”

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Andrei Svintsov recently claimed that every Russian internet user will lose their anonymity within “three years, five at most,” TechRadar reported.

This vision aligns with another state project approved in June, the development of a national “super app” integrating digital ID, government services, and payment systems, which would even let users “confirm one’s age to a supermarket cashier.”

Keep reading

Google Adds Age Check Tech as Texas, Utah, and Louisiana Enforce Digital ID Laws

Google is preparing for a new era of digital age checks as state-level rules in Texas, Utah, and Louisiana begin to reshape how app stores operate.

To get ahead of these requirements, the company has introduced the Play Signals API in beta, a system built to help developers adapt to laws that will soon mandate age-based controls.

Starting in early 2026, each of the three states will enforce its own version of the App Store Accountability Act.

Texas’s law takes effect first, followed by Utah and Louisiana a few months later. Each statute requires app marketplaces to confirm the age range of their users through “commercially reasonable” verification methods.

Developers will be responsible for interpreting those signals and tailoring their apps accordingly. In some regions, they will also have to inform Google Play if a product update could require new parental consent.

For testing purposes, the company is providing a FakeAgeSignalsManager so that developers can simulate data before the laws officially apply.

Google’s rollout of its new Play Signals API is part of a broader shift toward a verified internet, one where digital access is increasingly tied to proof of identity.

The company’s beta API is being framed as a neutral compliance tool, but its function sets the stage for a more monitored web.

While the stated purpose is child safety and regulatory compliance, the architecture being built threatens to erode one of the internet’s core principles, pseudonymity.

The data points that determine whether someone is over 13 or over 18 can easily evolve into a persistent set of identifiers, linking activity across apps, accounts, and even devices. Once these signals are standardized, nothing prevents them from being combined with advertising, analytics, or behavioral tracking systems.

The result could be a world where age verification quietly becomes identity verification, and where “commercially reasonable” checks amount to permanent user profiling.

Keep reading