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MANDATORY DIGITAL ID: A Point of No Return…

Digital Enslavement

“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on…”

Guess who said that a year ago? I’ll tell you shortly.

But… one piece at a time.  

That’s how you build something without letting it be obvious what it is you’re building. A piece at a time, over a number of years: each time using a different pretext or reason, so that each piece appears unconnected to the others.
 
If, for example, you’re building an oppressive surveillance state Dystopia, you don’t just implement the whole system all in one move – because people would see it for what it is and be startled.
 
So you move the pieces into place carefully and incrementally. As we often say, it’s the frog and the boiling pot analogy: you turn up the heat slowly so that the frog doesn’t panic and leap out.
 
I’ve been covering that gradual police state construction here for a number of years now: as far back as here, for example.
 

It’s stage-by-stage construction has been obvious to anyone paying close attention.
 
So, what’s the latest piece of this construction that we’re looking at? It is of course the spectre of mandatory digital ID – which Prime Minister Kier Starmer says will now be fully implemented by 2029.
 
We’ll talk about Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel and the Palantir connection shortly: but let’s start with the basics.
 
The British government claims this is the way to combat illegal immigration and the ‘dark economy’. That’s only the current pretext.
 
But of course this mandatory ID has been pushed for many years – including back in the days when mass  immigration was being championed by the government and was therefore not the reason.
 
 
Keir Starmer, DIGITAL ID scheme
 
 
Tony Blair was pushing for compulsory ID years ago. He’s also been campaigning for it in recent months, which is no doubt significant to why Starmer’s government is now running with it. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) has been advocating for this for some time.
 
The idea is always met with resistance: so they tend to pull it back for a few years and wait for an opportune moment to start pushing for it again.
 
The current unrest over illegal migrants is the useful new pretext/opportunity to get this system into operation.
 
This time, it seems to be the decisive, final push: Starmer seems determined to get this piece of the control system fully implemented as quickly as possible.
 
On the more innocuous seeming side of it, arguments can be made for the convenience factor, the supposed efficiency, etc, and the ability to root out illegal activity. On the less innocuous side of it is the potential implementation of a system that reduces every citizen to a tech/digital slave, whose entire identity and life is dependent on a singular piece of digital code.
 

Some argue that we’ve already given up our privacy, our data and our right to not be constantly monitored – and that we’ve done so willingly: by embracing our smartphones, our apps, our social media, and other modern conveniences.

 
This is true: most walked into that compromise willingly, trading privacy for both convenience and participation.
 
But if that was enough, then they wouldn’t be pushing for this mandatory ID system. The fact that they are pushing so hard for it means that we’re still not compromised enough for an effective system of control and coercion.
 
Here’s the obvious point of anxiety: that the forced introduction of mandatory digital ID is for surveillance and control purposes of the general population. Even if we say that this control system isn’t the primary aim, it is nevertheless the obvious outcome – the very likely direction of travel.
 
In other words, irrespective of the intentions or trustworthiness of the government, the system itself is inherently liable to abuse – even *designed* for it.
 
As many have already pointed out, we already have things like National Insurance numbers, passports and other items, to identify who has the legal right to work or to access services.
 
But the looming likelihood of the abolition of physical money and the switch to purely digital currency is maneuvering us towards entirely digital identities – via which we can be entirely controlled and manipulated if deemed necessary.
 
A system whereby troublesome or non-compliant citizens can be rendered persona non grata by an inhuman system lacking in empathy. A system whereby such people can be locked out of key needs as punishment, denied access to finances, reduced to digital lepers, etc.
 
It’s what they’ve created in China: where citizens are surveilled every hour of the day – every movement, every transaction, every medical detail, every bit of online activity (including opinions shared online), etc.
 
And the key to all of that control and surveillance? To reward or punish citizens depending on their perceived level of compliance with the state or perceived level of loyalty to the system.
 
For the unfortunate ones who aren’t quite the model citizens, the system is in place to shut them out of key rights and services: whether it’s accessing their money, accessing health services, even being able to use public transport.
 
You’ve heard of it: they call it the Social Credit system. And it’s all made possible by the mandatory digital ID whereby a citizen’s entire existence in society is dependent on a singular digital data point.
 
 
China social credit system

 

Without it, you essentially don’t exist in the new model of society. And with it, your existence can be entirely controlled. That’s the offer on the table. 

What you might not have known is that the authoritarians who inevitably lurk in the shadows and backrooms behind every government are envious of what China has developed.
 
I noted several months ago that Blair and co were pushing for this mandatory digital ID system to be linked with the new facial recognition technology that’s also slowly being rolled out.
 
Which again illustrates how all these pieces of the system are designed to interlink: and again illustrates how the spectre of the Chinese-style social credit system looms large.
 
Just in recent months, the UK government has attempted to fast track a bill – the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error & Recovery) Bill – through parliament. As Didi Rankovic noted for Reclaim the Net in February, critics say the draft legislation contains ‘dystopian social credit-style surveillance provisions’ and the legislation could serve to ‘set up a system of “mass spying” of bank accounts, carried out by the government‘.
 
Again, the next step after the forced ID system will likely be the forced obsoletion of material money a few years later: the shift to strictly digital currency simply makes a control and coercion mechanism that much easier.
 
By the way, this coercive ability already has a name: it’s referred to as ‘economic abuse’ and is defined as ‘forms and involves an abuser restricting a person’s ability to acquire, use and maintain money or other economic resources.’
 
See, again there are authoritarians in the state (permanently) that envy the Chinese control system over its citizens. They want to maintain the illusion of free, liberal societies so that we can feel good about ourselves and our image – but, in reality, they envy authoritarian states like in China or Russia or Saudi Arabia, etc.
 
We’re in an era where increasing authoritarianism and diminishing freedoms are being more and more normalised – not just by governments, but even by populations that no longer disapprove of authoritarianism and no longer consider civil liberties and personal freedoms to be all that important.
 

Crucially, this is also coupled with a tech-industrial complex led by billionaires who’re entirely in bed with governments, militaries and power structures in forwarding this control agenda and implementing its systems.

 
That’s what people like Elon Musk were doing in the White House and why they were interfering in elections. That’s what people like Peter Thiel are doing with things like Palantir. It’s why people like Zuckerberg and Altman and Ellison are so tied up in the current US government. It’s why someone like Bill Gates was pushing for a global digital ID system (albeit he wanted it attached to vaccines).
 

In all likelihood, the digital ID push is designed to coincide with or join up with the Palantir programme  (which Thiel developed in conjunction with the CIA) and being adopted by the Trump administration in the US.

The Rutherford Institute published an article in June about the blatant purposes of the Palantir programme, writing ‘President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship…’

It continued, ‘What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience… in this surveillance state, the people have become inventory. Lives reduced to data points. Choices reduced to algorithms. Freedom reduced to a permission slip. You are no longer the customer. You are the product.’

So, naturally, the UK isn’t pushing this mandatory ID system in isolation.

In fact, it was only recently confirmed that the UK has been working with Palantir ‘to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information…‘
 

It isn’t just the Tony Blair Institute pushing for the digital ID. Larry Ellison is also pushing for it in the background. Ellison (pictured below with Trump in the White House to announce Project Stargate) is the world’s second richest man, also a close friend of Netanyahu, the No.1 donor to the Israeli Defence Forces, and the founder of Oracle, which he developed with the CIA.

  Larry Ellison with Dnald Trum in the White House  

Oracle handles the national security data for the British Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, as well as the NHS. They are obsessed with data harvesting and mass surveillance.

Ellison also was uncoincidentally a massive donor to the Tony Blair Institute.

A year ago, Ellison foretold the mass surveillance state, saying that “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on…”

At least he was being honest about the future.
 

It’s all pushing in the same direction: the direction of digital-based control and maximised manipulation capabilities over entire populations: both at the micro level of individuals and the macro level of societies.

 
They can claim it is inevitable: the unavoidable direction that both technology and society is headed in. But that’s the false justification that’s always used. It’s the same non-argument they make for the spiralling proliferation of AI: that it’s the unavoidable evolution of the tech-industrial revolution.
 
It isn’t true though: it was a choice that was made, not an inevitability. If, for example, strict regulatory measures had been implemented against AI – which the tech maestros are aggressively fighting against even now (Peter Thiel is even claiming that regulating AI will somehow summon the Anti Christ) – then this accelerated proliferation wouldn’t have been ‘inevitable’ at all.
 
Likewise, forcing an entire population into a digital ID system isn’t inevitable: it’s a choice that’s been made – to strip more freedom and rights from citizens and place more power in the hands of the state and various flawed institutions with dubious track records.
 
Starmer and co can sell this mandatory digital ID however they like: dress it up in whatever clothes they want, put lipstick on it and some Mickey Mouse ears.
 
In the end, it will be about control and manipulation. We carry on down this path and we end up in a situation where the notions of free citizens and free society are largely illusions: or just memories of a world that once was.
 
Accepting mandatory digital ID is an opt-in to that future. The moment it becomes mandatory, and enforced by law, is essentially a point of no return.
 
Once a system like that is implemented (at great cost), it won’t be un-implemented.
 

This may sound overly alarmist: but this digital ID is simply a new piece – and a vital one – of a larger system being built around us. A digital-based system of potential oppression: and one that can be happily inherited by all future governments, including extremely bad ones.

Neither mass protests on the street nor objecting via petition (with some two million signatures) appears to have moved the government so far. Perhaps in the end it will require mass non-compliance.
 
But if that ultimately means exile from the system, it could be a high price to pay for many.
 
 
 
 

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S. Awan

Independent journalist. Pariah. Believer in human rights, human dignity and liberty. Musician. Substandard Jedi. All-round failure. And future ghost.

2 Comments

  1. Forgive me here but I have to question one of the sources on this page. Morson Group. Who are they and why should I put any faith in one of their articles? I just looked them up and Google’s AI provided this: “Morson Group is a global specialist in technical recruitment, engineering, and consultancy, providing skilled people and tailored solutions (like managed services, RPO, design, training, technology) to key sectors like Aerospace, Rail, Energy, Automotive, and Defence.”

    Why do I question this? Because the link is to an article all about China’s ‘social credit’ system which I constantly hear about and yet never find any reliably hard facts on. Now, this is probably because it’s hard to get reliable information on China however, it does increasingly seem to me that always pointing toward China is just a distraction from what’s happening here today. I mean have they actually constructed a surveilence system that is anymore Orwellian than our own? I don’t find any really hard evidence that they have as yet – most likely it is coming of course.

    I raise this point because overall I see the threat to us in the West as already overwhelming and coming at us from all political angles. The installation of the panopticon is actually so blatant now that in my opinion concerns about China are completely beside the point and a total distraction. I’m not a doomsayer, but it is getting hard to see how we stop it.

    Only a decade ago, it still sounded like the raving of a “conspiracy theorist” to talk about total surveillance and digital switch-off, but now it’s what the so-called “libertarians” like Thiel are more or less directly calling for! More surprsingly, we got to this stage largely through appeals to convenience rather than legislation. It turns out that most people will give up almost everything in terms of privacy for a little extra convenience.

    On a personal note, I still don’t own a smart phone. I’m holding out to the bitter end. Which gets very, very tricky indeed especially when travelling (as I just did). If they introduce digital ID then it will most probably be through iphones – that will be an interesting standoff. The rest of the country will have little excuse not to add a simple app that tracks you on a fully offical basis and enters details into a national database.

    And that’s actually how the rollout constantly works. So to anyone who seriously wants to help defeat this digital tyranny then I propse the following: a modest proposal! Start by ditching your smartphone right now. Let’s make it a movement. That’s my sincere advice. If that seems laughable as a proposal then sadly I believe we are doomed already – and I also think we should stop comparing ourselves to China (let the Chinese deal with their own troubles) – right now, it’s just a red herring.

    Reply

    • Thanks James. I accept the observation concerning China and the credit system, etc. Maybe it’s been exaggerated. But it’s still possible we’re headed towards that model anyway, even that China was running a 1.0 version on behalf of various governments. I think we’re all headed in the same direction anyway.
      That you don’t have a smartphone is bloody impressive in this day and age: I have one. But I was the last person to get a mobile back in the early to mid 2000’s. I resisted that like the plague. The smartphone got me though. I have to ask: how is it, without the device?
      Anyway, Merry Christmas James. Thanks for the comment.

      Reply

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