After avoiding the issue for years, the legacy media are now trying to manufacture public complacency and consent for the government’s digital identity — and by extension, CBDC — agenda.
On July 5, the day Keir Starmer became UK prime minister, we wagered that a Starmer government would intensify the push to roll out a digital identity system in the UK — a country that has, until now, resisted all recent attempts to introduce an identity card system, including, most notably, by Starmer’s backroom consultant and mentor, Tony Blair.
Unfortunately, that prediction has proven to be pretty much on the money. Since taking office, the Starmer government has:
- Launched the new Office for Digital Identities and Attributes, with the task of overseeing the country’s digital ID market. As of October 28, almost 50 organizations with DIATF-certified services had been added to the office’s register.
- Pledged to roll out a digital ID card for army veterans. As in the US, the UK government is also looking to launch a digital driving license by next year.
- Announced plans to introduce digital ID legislation for age verification purposes, meaning that young people will soon be able to use digital ID wallets on their phones to prove they are over 18 when visiting pubs, restaurants and shops.
Now, the propaganda is kicking into gear, and the main selling points, as always, are speed and convenience:
The UK government and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology have released a video showcasing their digital identification system, set to be rolled out next year.
In the video, they depict anyone using a physical ID as clumsy and outdated.pic.twitter.com/cfXD0Q0441
— Lewis Brackpool (@Lewis_Brackpool) December 23, 2024
In its first commercial, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology chose a British pub as the venue to showcase the, ahem, benefits of digital identity. In Greece, the government is trying to push the EU’s digital identity wallet on the public by making it obligatory for accessing sports stadiums. In Spain, the government is trying to make it a prerequisite for accessing online porn while Australia has just passed a law making it necessary for all Australians to verify their age (presumably with its fledgling digital ID) to access social media.
As we have noted in previous articles, digital identity programs, and the central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) with which they are inseparably tied, are among the most important questions today’s societies could possibly grapple with since they threaten to transform our societies and lives beyond recognition, granting governments and their corporate partners much more granular control over our lives — precisely at a time when democracy is on the decline across the West, authoritarianism is on the rise and public trust in government is sinking to record lows.
Given what is at stake, digital public infrastructure such as digital IDs and CBDCs should be under discussion in every parliament of every land, and every dinner table in every country in the world. That is finally beginning to happen in the UK, but if early signs are any indication it is likely to be less an open debate than a barrage of propagandistic talking points. In the past three weeks alone, there have been gushing articles, op-eds and editorials on the potential wonders of digital identity in the Daily Mail, the Times of London, the Financial Times and Sky News.
In an op-ed for the Daily Mail, Tony Blair, with characteristic zeal for digital public infrastructure (DPI), touts digital identity as a cure-all for just about everything, from bringing down NHS waiting lists to tracking illegal immigrants, to cutting benefit fraud and resolving the UK government’s fiscal crisis:
Around the world, governments are moving in this direction. Of the 45 governments we work with, I would estimate that three-quarters of them are embracing some form of Digital ID. The President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, has said it is a top priority for the Bank’s work with leaders. But this is only one part of the immense, seismic change which this technological revolution will bring.
It is transforming drug discovery, with a whole raft of new treatments which will give us the chance to shift our healthcare system radically to prevention of disease rather than cure. If we used the potential of facial recognition, data and DNA, we would cut crime rates by not small but game-changing margins. There are interactive education apps now available which could provide personal tutoring for pupils.
But we need the right digital infrastructure to access all of this. And a Digital ID is an essential part of it.
In its article, “Why Britain Needs a Digital ID System“, published last week, the FT concludes that “if Britain wants a truly modern state”, digital identity is “an idea whose time has come”. The article cites estimates from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (who else?) that a digital identity system could boost public finances by about £2bn a year, “mostly by reducing benefits fraud and improving tax collection, on top of broader economic gains”:
It reckons a voluntary system, built in part on the government’s existing — but low-profile — One Login initiative to enable a single sign-in to government services, could be set up within one parliamentary term and 90 per cent of citizens would sign up.
How will they achieve such a large take-up within such a short period, without coer? Yet according to The Times, an overwhelming majority of UK citizens are in favour of digital identity, citing a recent poll for the Times and Justice Commission:
The poll found that more than two thirds of Tory voters backed the introduction of digital ID cards, compared with 12 per cent who opposed it. Sixty per cent of those who voted Labour at the last election were in favour of the policy and 15 per cent were against it. Among Liberal Democrats, 54 per cent supported the idea compared with 16 per cent who did not. For Reform, the split was 59 per cent in favour and 21 per cent opposed.
One should perhaps be wary of reading too much into the results of one poll, especially when said results appear to chime perfectly with the long-term policy goals of the government of the day. Readers may recall that back in 2021, a flurry of polls claimed to show that a majority of Brits support the roll out of digital vaccine certificates, including one by the Serco Institute, an international think tank tied to the Serco Group, a British multinational defence, health, space, justice, migration, customer services, and transport company.
As Blair himself admitted recently, in reality the British public will need “a little coercing persuading” to embrace digital ID. That is presumably where the mainstream media comes in.
What Doesn’t Get Mentioned?
There are so many gaping gaps in the UK media’s no-warts-at-all discussion of digital identity that it’s hard to know where to begin. The FT, to its credit, concedes that “Britain has a dismal record in public sector IT — think of the Post Office Horizon scandal.” What it leaves out is the fact that this disastrous government IT program, which ruined the lives of thousands of Post Office submasters, was the brainchild of Tony Blair, the man whom the media are now treating as an authority on all matters technological.
Nor does the FT article mention that Blair was warned that the Horizon IT system could be flawed before it was rolled out, but chose to proceed nonetheless. When the anticipated problems began surfacing, his government did everything it could to cover them up. Yet somehow Tony Blair and his foundation are still a voice of authority on issues of digital governance.
The Post Office Horizon scandal is just one of a laundry list of IT disasters that successive UK governments have overseen, as our regular UK-based commenter Paul Greenwood recently reminded us:
This is brought to you from the same regime that cannot:
a) get e-Gates at major airports to function,
b) has repeatedly postponed eVisas because they cannot get them to work;
c) has repeatedly postponed Phytosanitary checks on agricultural imports at borders because ……..cannot get it to work…(That’s not to mention) the Great NHS Computer Disaster…….the largest IT Project in Europe… [that cost more than £1 billion and never launched].
The NHS computer disaster, now used as a case study for how large government IT projects can go spectacularly wrong, costing billions of dollars in squandered public funds, was also launched by Anthony Charles Linton Blair. It involved the participation of IT consulting giants like Accenture and Fujitsu, which was the lead company behind the Post Office Horizon system and has been selected to lead the digital ID scheme, despite a pledge earlier this year to refrain from participating in UK government procurement.
Of the four articles on digital ID, not a single one has offered more than a token paragraph on the potential risks and downsides of digital identity. As the leading industry publication Biometric Update gleefully reported on December 16, the UK press has been “won over” on digital identity, and is now setting about “explaining why” to the British public.
Other issues that are completely ignored or glossed over include:
Privacy. All four of the articles pay lip service to the threat digital identity poses to privacy. The FT argues that “privacy arguments have less force when most adults happily carry smartphones stuffed with apps that can track everything from how many steps they do to what colour socks they buy.” However, as some FT readers pointed out in the comments thread, those apps can be turned off at any time. And whose to say that everyone’s mobile phone is “stuffed with apps”? Mine, for instance, has just two on it (Spotify and WhatsApp).
One thing a near-mandatory digital identity system will ensure is that we will never be without our trusted mobile phones. This sort of “digital coercion” — a term I learnt from the German financial journalist and digital rights activist, Norbert Häring — is on the rise just about everywhere. As Häring reported in September, this should hardly come as a surprise given that one of the main organisations pushing for the rapid rollout of digital public infrastructure (digital ID, digital health passes, instant payment systems, central bank digital currency…) is the corporate-controlled, WEF-partnered United Nations.
Security. Another major issue with digital ID is security, though it is totally glossed over in the MSM articles. While the FT mentions “dangers with hacking and cyber attacks”, it also claims that digital ID could help to combat “identity fraud.” Yet Norway and Sweden are suffering an epidemic of identity theft and cyber crime despite having rolled out digital ID systems years ago that are now thoroughly integrated into people’s daily lives? In Sweden, many cyber crimes involve BankID, the ubiquitous digital authorization system used by nearly all Swedish adults.
India, which is home to the world’s largest biometric-based digital ID system, Aadhaar, has suffered huge security problems, from identity theft to innumerable data breaches, including two in which the data of roughly a billion people were compromised. Much of it ended up for sale on the net. Said data included each person’s biometric identifiers (i.e. their iris and fingerprint scans). If this data is hacked, there is no way of undoing the damage. You cannot change or cancel your iris or fingerprint like you can change a password or cancel a credit card.
In South East Asia, cyber criminals have been targeting iOS users with malware that purloins face scans from the users of Apple devices to break into and pilfer money from bank accounts – thought to be a world first. Likewise, in India there have been reports of bank accounts being emptied using compromised Aadhaar numbers and biometric identifiers.
As we shift into a world where digital public infrastructure (DPI) increasingly dominate our lives, the security of our data, including our biometric identifiers, seems to be increasingly at risk. Of all the UK articles on digital identity in the UK, not a single one mentions the word “biometric” once, perhaps because that might actually scare off some readers.
Exclusion. While often touted as a tool for social and financial inclusion, the reality is that digital identity systems are inherently exclusionary. As the World Economic Forum admits, while verifiable identities “create new markets and business lines” for companies, especially those in the tech industry that will help to operate the systems while hoovering up all the data, they also (emphasis my own) “open up (or close off) the digital world for individuals.”
It is not just the digital world that could end up being closed off; so, too, could much of the analogue world. As the now-ubiquitous WEF infographic suggests, a full-fledged digital identity system, as currently conceived, could end up touching just about every aspect of our lives, from our health (including the vaccines we are supposed to receive) to our money, to our business activities, our private and public communications, the information we are able to access, our dealings with government, the food we eat and the goods we buy.
It could also offer governments and the companies they partner with unprecedented levels of surveillance and control powers.
A Gateway to CBDCs. One other thing that doesn’t get a mention in any of the articles is the role digital identity will play as a gateway to CBDCs. In a 2021, the FT conceded that without a government-backed digital identity system, CBDCs would be unworkable:
“What CBDC research and experimentation appears to be showing is that it will be nigh on impossible to issue such currencies outside of a comprehensive national digital ID management system. Meaning: CBDCs will likely be tied to personal accounts that include personal data, credit history and other forms of relevant information.”
Here’s the former governor of Sweden’s Riksbank, Stefan Invges, openly admitting in 2018 that without “a government-sponsored” digital identity, “that explains in a digital form who you are, you can’t run a CBDC system”:
Sweden’s Central Bank Governor just described a six-step plan on how they would implement their own digital currency:
– 24/7 payments anywhere
– Cross currency & borders
– Update legal tender laws
– Issued directly from the bank
– Digital IDs
– Physical cash incase it fails pic.twitter.com/I8XFGt8u4e— Rhythm (@Rhythmtrader) November 22, 2019
So, if digital identity goes hand-in-hand with CBDCs, then surely any balanced discussion of digital identity must take into consideration the potential implications, both positive and negative, of a CBDC — including its likely programmable features. After all, both the Bank of England and the UK Treasury seem fairly intent on developing a digital pound, which is currently in the design phase. Given that most Brits appear to harbour suspicions rather than excitement about such a prospect, its omission from the media coverage so far is hardly surprising.
Clearly, all discussion of digital identity in the UK media will be anything but balanced — unless, of course, the focus is on the digital identity system being rolled out in China. As we reported in August, some of the UK and the US’s biggest media outlets, including Time magazine, New York Times, the Financial Times, The Economist and the US government-funded Radio Free Asia, recently had a field day warning about the Chinese Communist Party’s planned digital identity system.
The ostensible goal of the new digital ID system is to cut down on the personal information that internet platforms can collect from their users. However, in the subheading to its article, “China’s New Plan for Tracking People Online“, The Economist asks whether the digital ID proposal is “meant to protect consumers or the Communist Party”. The FT cites the concerns of a China-based Western consultant that the proposals could “significantly expand the government’s ability to monitor people’s activity online.”
The exact same thing could be said of the digital identity systems being rolled out by almost all Western governments, but never is. The only time Western news outlets deign to cast a critical look at the emerging digital ID systems is when it is in relation to non-Western countries, in particular China and India. By contrast, when it comes to the systems being developed by Western governments, the media’s stock response is silence. In the case of the UK, however, the public’s deep-rooted scepticism of the need for a national ID system calls for a different approach: blatant propaganda. Whether it works, time will soon tell.
