Digital ID, CBDC, and You
A tyrant’s guide to total control
Technology can be a wonderful tool. In the wrong hands, however, as anyone who has had a computer infected with a virus, or worked for a company that has been hacked, or had their identity stolen knows, technology can be dangerous. Over the past several months, many have sounded the alarm over concerns with Artificial Intelligence. There are, however, other innovations receiving slightly less fanfare about which most seem not only unconcerned, but accepting. This is how incrementalism works - seemingly insignificant or anodyne “advances” are introduced that bring consequences unforeseen by the masses. Two of these are digital IDs and CBDCs.
Many forms of Digital ID and accompanying accessories have been proposed. One that caught my eye recently came to my attention because of social media. In September of 2022, a group called Project Liberty invested $27 million dollars into MeWe and MeWe started pushing a move to Web3 claiming you would have more control over your data and better privacy. Along with the move to Web3, users would be required to create a “Universal ID.” Being the skeptic I am, I dug into the background of Project Liberty and their partners, as well as the claims about Web3.
While there was plenty of cause for concern with all I found, the most prominent presentiment was Universal ID. The way Universal ID was positioned, how it is made palatable to the public, is through specious logic: “When you go to a store and buy something, you have one identity. When you go to another store, you don’t use another identity - you are still you. If you go to the bank, a restaurant, a library, anywhere you go, you have one identity. Why shouldn’t your online experience be the same?” Sounds logical, sounds reasonable, so what’s the big deal?
For one, outside the digital world, when you enter an establishment to avail yourself of good or services, unless you know people or are purchasing something that specifically requires showing some form of identification, you are essentially anonymous. At least, that’s how it used to be. With the ubiquity of credit card use and the advent of loyalty cards and apps, much of that anonymity has been sacrificed in the name of convenience and “reward.” It is convenient to carry a little piece of plastic with which you pay for purchases; customers are “rewarded” with coupons, specials, and points for scanning their loyalty card or using an app. Now, when a typical person shops, an abundance of information is captured, correlated, and may (though not necessarily) even be shared between vendors. Your habits as a consumer are being tracked and analyzed, which is how your favorite stores know which coupons to send so you will come spend more money.
Online, if you maintain different accounts on different sites, you can still (to whatever degree you choose) maintain some degree of anonymity, you can choose on each site what information you wish to reveal. Universal ID eliminates that. Two sites that provide revealing information from Project Liberty are Project Liberty’s own site (especially under their Decentralized Social Networking Protocol - https://www.projectliberty.io/technology) and Frequency (frequency.xyz), a sister site. One of the main aspects of Web3 you’ll read about is the “social graph” - basically, a “map” (in data) of your connections on social media sites. They want to make your social graph universally accessible via your Universal ID.
Consider what happens if you acquiesce to this. We have seen already government’s intrusion into social networks with all the censorship people faced during Covid from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Contemplate the government having access to all of your social media connections via your Universal ID. You can’t conceive of government going there? Guess what the European Union just did?
The European Digital Identity will be available to EU citizens, residents, and businesses who want to identify themselves or provide confirmation of certain personal information. It can be used for both online and offline public and private services across the EU.
That’s right, the European Union is ushering in a Digital ID that can be used both offline and online and that does not reside on a card you keep in your wallet - it sits in a digital wallet on your phone or other device. Of course, they are claiming this is for convenience, and can even be used to prove eligibility to work in a particular country. Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it? They are even already finding ways to tie it to banking, like providing documents necessary to apply for a loan. Which brings us to CBDCs.
If you have never seen the acronym CBDC, it stands for Central Bank Digital Currency. Consider a CBDC digital money issued by (at least in America) the Federal Reserve. It is a move away from the paper fiat currency currently printed by the Fed (since it is no longer backed by gold, it is only worth about as much as the paper on which it’s printed anyway), to a cashless society. You might think, since you already shop online, do most (if not all) of your banking online, and pay your bills online, this is no different. Except, it is.
While you may make many transactions online today, they are still backed by physical currency, and, for the most part, you still control your money. You can still withdraw it from the bank and have physical cash in your possession. You can go to a store and pay with paper to avoid leaving a trail. Moving to a cashless system eliminates any control you have over your finances. Yes, you will still be able to get paid (maybe), and still be able to pay bills (maybe), and still be able to make online purchases (maybe). How you receive or send and spend money will largely be under the control of the government.
When universal digital ID is merged with central bank digital currency, all control is handed to the government. Imagine government seeing you post something on social media (don’t forget - your social graph will be “universally accessible”) that goes against an official narrative, or you refuse to submit to an overreaching government diktat. Now you are tagged as a spreader of misinformation or a dissenter or extremist. What happens to your funds? Will your bank account be frozen like the Canadian truckers who protested vaccine mandates? Will you be prevented from buying goods and services?
People wear fitness devices that store data about activity, steps, location, biological measurements in “the cloud.” Most carry cell phones that will contain their digital ID and that we know have been used both via GPS and via cellular signal to track location. Those phones also now send beacons to one another over Bluetooth under the pretense of protecting people from the spread of a virus (The covid intervention no on is talking about) - beacons that can be used to determine with whom you gather and for how long. Not to mention, those phones are constantly listening for your “commands.” Do you believe that’s all that they, or your Alexa or dot or other similar device, hear? Your credit card purchases are logged and can be used to determine where you have been and what you have bought (among other information).
My last article explained the idea of 15-minute cities (Life in a prison without walls). In it, I called them cleverly crafted cattle cars. You are being slowly corralled. Like the meme of animals eating while fence is added one side at a time, we are slowly being converted from citizen to subject. Add in what I have written here, and you have a recipe for ushering in totalitarian control.
This is where we are headed. Every movement measured. Every conversation recorded. Every meeting monitored. Every transaction tracked. Every contact curated. Every word and action regulated. It’s every despots dream and every tyrant’s target. We’re almost there, and we the people have allowed it and continue to enable it. It’s time to just say no and take our authority back from those who are supposed to represent, not control, us.
I can tell you your digital device is listening. We’re standing in our kitchen chatting about appliances for our barn apartment and my husband smart phone is laying on the counter. Minutes, just a couple, and he’s getting ads for appliances on his phone. Others have told me they’ve experienced this on devices like Alexa. I don’t suffer this on my phone, yet. I don’t engage in internet activity on my smart phone. I have had my iPad do this though on occasion if it was near enough to hear discussion. Right now it’s mostly being used to try and sell you stuff. But it could be used and probably is being used by gov to track your every move in life. I actually imagine it’s tracking some already if DHS deems its necessary. There will be a day we need to drop our devices in the toilet and run.
... every Substack article you write.
Total control, the nightmare.
We need people with the courage to say "no". With the awareness to understand what is happening.
MeWe's social web doesn't concern me unless *other* social media sites join and use the same ID. CBDC is another reason why we need a parallel economy. Any time you put all your eggs in one basket you are at risk.