It’s one of the “commandments” of global organizations like the UN, and the World Bank, to name but two, and also those less official ones like the WEF and the Gates Foundation: the digital ID.
And in the US, lawmakers have for years been struggling with the concept, heavily criticized by rights advocates for its ability to take mass surveillance to the next level.
On the one hand, the lawmakers have (or are supposed to have) their existing laws and constitutional protections in mind, but on the other, new legislation is cropping up both from Democrats and Republicans that signals a more or less slow creep towards the ultimate digital ID goal.
At the state level, the push is mostly focused on mobile driver’s licenses.
But the proponents of the schemes – who insist that the unprecedented centralization of personal information will provide for more trust and security – want things to start moving faster at the federal level, too.
One of the main cheerleaders here is Congressman Bill Foster, a Democrat. In September, he reintroduced a bill that, if adopted, would produce something called, the Improving Digital Identity Act.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
That, in turn, would set up an Improving Digital Identity Task Force, which would operate as part of the president’s Executive Office, whose main task would be getting rid of physical credentials in favor of digital ones.
Meanwhile, the act wants the government to look into all the ways it could provide solutions for Americans to prove their identity on the internet.
This isn’t the only legislative effort Foster has been involved in lately, particularly on the “reintroduction old proposals” front; in June, he and Congressman Clay Higgins, a Republican, worked together to make sure the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) submits a report to Congress informing its members “on its use of digital identities and their potential impact on homeland security.”
That one has made its way through a relevant committee but is yet to clear the House.
Like many of his digital ID-championing peers, Foster likes to talk about the promised positive side of things: less fraud and identity theft, and safer transactions.
He even managed to work the “deepfakes menace” into the message, claiming that this is another thing a future, deeply controversial digital ID system would be able to take care of.
