Governments push for data consolidation and easy data access, but a digital ID will make everyone more vulnerable.
March 3, 2025
By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP
A lot is happening. There are wars, inflation and debt, corruption, and civil liberties on first world chopping blocks. It’s madness out there.
It’s simplistic to say any one of those is a distraction from the others. They are all happening with such intensity that subjectively prioritizing one over another seems inconsequential.
The civil liberties piece seems to be the more covert one because it has so many quiet tentacles. For example, the free speech of Germans and British peoples is a pulpy mess right now.
What started off as a method to nip “terrorism” in the bud, has since become a mechanism to quell offensive speech. There’s a great distance between a plot to blow up a building and someone literally THINKING they don’t like abortions.
Germany, same thing. They started out with hate speech laws that prohibited anything that could be construed as “pro Nazi”, or “Holocaust denialism”, and while I don’t even condone that ban, it’s not inexplicable. World War 2 often is viewed as a blight on their history, and avoiding anything that glorifies it might be culturally off sides. But wait… how did it go from that to “you’re under arrest for criticizing politicians“?
It’s not just speech, because that’s one of the more visible civil liberties. It’s privacy. And that is attacked in the shadows, but justified as being the light to keep us all safe! In an effort to digitize everything more of our information is being aggregated into what may become a Digital ID. A digital ID will make everyone more vulnerable.
Remember MyID?
Two years ago, we wrote about a teeny tiny pilot out of a little known hamlet in Ohio called East Palestine. It only popped on the map when a train derailed and exploded there. I don’t think most people in Ohio knew the town existed until that happened, if we’re being honest.
Everyone is freaking out about this train, and meanwhile there’s the MyID pilot rolling out. Back in the day, we would wear bracelets that indicated our allergies and major conditions should we ever be found in distress and need to be taken to a hospital. It was a metal bracelet that had this info punched into it.
MyID made that digital, where a QR code would take them to a site where all their medical information is held.
Let me preface what I’m about to say with this: I fully see the utility in some of these innovations; like the actual vital service it can provide some people. I get it. I also believe that these services should be optional for those who want it, and are willing to risk their privacy. That is a personal choice and should remain that way.
However, if the expansion of the “controlled speech” issues in the UK and Germany are any indication of how quickly and easily missions can change, consider this: while perhaps tracking, monitoring, or social credit scores are not part of the deal today, the infrastructure would be there to activate those things easily down the line. That is, it’s not part of THIS phase, but there’s nothing preventing it from being part of another phase.
This is why any form of digital id will make everyone more vulnerable.
Europe tests their version of MyID
Currently, there are several test programs in Europe for a Digital ID:
The plan is a single government-issued app that holds your medical records, employment records, travel records, education records, vaccination records, tax records, financial records as well as (potentially) copies of your signature, fingerprints, facial scans, voice samples and DNA.
Clearly more than just medical information, but ALL your information. Everything transaction must go through this port. So paying your utilities, paying your taxes, loan and job applications, crossing international borders, and yes, all your medical information from the appointments you make and the prescriptions you pick up. Moreover:
Businesses and government agencies would access this data from the back-end to conduct “automated background checks”.
Currently, all this information is disparate. If an employer, doctor, or loan officer needs this information, you can consent to THAT company or individual getting it, and you allow it for that transaction. They all have to do due dilligence and seek your consent throughout their processes and dealings with you.
Why is it important to have disparate banks of data? Here’s an example out of the United States:
In Arizona, you can apply to get a concealed carry license for a firearm. Open carry is already allowed. With that, once you clear a background check, you don’t have to do it again. You can just go buy firearms. The only list or registry you’d be on is the one with the store itself. There’s no state registry. No federal registry. It’s only the store’s physical hard copy log book. Government would need a physical warrant stating probable cause to access those log books.
This is far more preferable to being on a bunch of digital government lists where data can be hacked, manipulated, or accessed in any way. This also means, you aren’t on some watchlist with a government agent looking to justify his job off your identity.
This notion of Digital ID was born out of Covid, and the whole push for vaccine passports. This isn’t a super new idea. It was one urgently pushed for only five years ago. But it’s rather obvious that a digital id will make everyone more vulnerable.
How do we become vulnerable?
Here’s the thing, because there’s always a thing or two: data breaches happen. They happen a lot. Here’s a list of them in the past 2 years known to Health and Human Services in the US. Here’s another link to eleven major government data breaches. Basically, if you just search for “data breaches” you will get lists on lists on lists of ones just in the last year or two.
You can’t have a headline like this: US Breaches Are Spiraling Out of Control: It’s Time to Protect What Matters Most roll out in July 2024, and think people are going to be cool with more data hubs centralizing their vital information.
The government LOVES backdoors to data. We just talked about what happened with Apple in the UK. Apple was forced to make an impossible choice: create a backdoor workaround for their end-to-end encryption for the UK or else. Apple decided to turn off its encryption in the UK; so instead of compromising all their users around the world, it only did so for the UK.
The Five Eyes back in August 2018 demanded this very thing:
The international pact — the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, known as the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations — quietly issued the memo last week demanding that providers “create customized solutions, tailored to their individual system architectures that are capable of meeting lawful access requirements.”
This kind of backdoor access would allow each government access to encrypted call and message data on their citizens. If the companies don’t voluntarily allow access, the nations threatened to push through new legislation that would compel their help.
On the one hand, government officials are bothered by Big Tech invading private citizens’ privacy… on the other they require the ability to do just that be built into all tech infrastructures.
These backdoors make our information inherently and deliberately more hackable. It ceases to be about “safety” anymore. This is more about “convenience”, and not necessarily private individuals’ convenience either. Digital id will make everyone more vulnerable, so whatever measure of convenience you might get from something like this, it’s important to ask if the time or effort saved was worth it.
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