Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. has criticized USAID for funding the Diia digital ID app in Ukraine.
Kennedy made the comments in response to a tweet by Max Blumenthal, an editor at Grayzone. Blumenthal said that the app “forces [sic] Ukrainian into a digital ID panopticon.”
Kennedy noted that the USAID was created by his uncle, former president John F Kennedy to help poor countries but was now being used to fund controversial projects.
“Samantha Power, who was instrumental in Obama’s abuse of FISA to spy on political opponents, is now head of Biden’s USAID and road-testing a mass surveillance and spying app so Ukrainians can anonymously report each other to the government,” Kennedy wrote on Twitter.
“My uncle JFK started USAID to help poor countries develop and now we use it to stuff them with totalitarian spyware. This encapsulates what has gone so horribly wrong,” Kennedy added.
In a recent Twitter thread, Kennedy said he would pardon journalists and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.
“Instead of championing free speech, the U.S. actively persecuted journalists and whistleblowers,” Kennedy wrote.
“I’ll pardon brave-truth tellers like Julian Assange and investigate the corruption and crimes they exposed. This isn’t the Soviet Union. The America I love doesn’t imprison dissidents. #Kennedy2024,” he added.
