(by Derrick Broze | The Last American Vagabond) – In December 2022, the Better Identity Coalition released a set of policy recommendations for all 50 US government officials focused on “how governments can improve the privacy and security of digital identity solutions.” The report, Better Identity in America: A Blueprint for State Policymakers, outlines the BIC’s vision for how government officials should respond to the digital identity push by groups like the BIC and its partners.
The report calls on state officials to “overcome fear, uncertainty and doubt” about the “ID innovations” that “get most residents into digital ID programs.” The BIC cites mobile driver’s license programs as one such innovation that is helping to drive the push toward digital identity. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators defines mobile driver’s licenses as “a driver’s license delivered to a mobile device with the ability to update in real time” and believes they are the “future of license and proof of identity”.
Interestingly, the report also proposes that governors and state legislatures order state motor vehicle departments to issue these mobile driver’s licenses, as well as provide “identity validation services in conjunction with vital records offices that issue certificates of birth and other government documents”.
When it comes to controversial identity technology like facial recognition, the report doesn’t support an outright ban, instead calling on industry to “follow National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines on identity already needed by federal agencies.” .
The BIC report also calls on government officials to “ensure that programs created to support marginalized populations receive the same attention as the driver’s license effort.”
The recommendation may seem a little out of place, unless you understand that digital ID vendors are focused on bridging the “digital divide” by bringing marginalized populations into the digital ID trap. The only way the Technocratic State can function is if it is able to register the entire population with digital systems. In fact, the report clearly states that “every step that brings a state closer to 100 percent participation with digital IDs is important.”
Critics of digital identity need only look at India and Aadhaar to see how destructive it has been since its implementation.
“Seeking to build an identification system of unprecedented scope, India is scanning the fingerprints, eyes and faces of its 1.3 billion residents and connecting the data to everything from social benefits to cell phones,” The New York Times wrote in 2018. privacy and individual freedom have only increased in the four years since that report. On January 13 this year, Reuters published a report titled “India allows banks to use facial recognition, iris scanning for some transactions: sources.”
The fact is that the digital identity schemes promoted by the Better Identity Coalition will lead to less privacy and less freedom. Is it any wonder that Bill Gates supports this system under the guise of helping the poor and disenfranchised? Read the full article >
