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Independent journalist Michael Schellenberger has been digging into the digital ID issue. He just released a lengthy piece on Substack called Public. He joins us with his thoughts.
Michael says: The argument that digital IDs help thwart illegal immigration, ID fraud, streamline health care services sounds fantastic. But what’s the problem?
Michael responds: Hey, great to be with you. Yeah. Another conspiracy theory that has started coming true. We saw this announcement in September. The World Economic Forum had been pushing digital IDs, the United Nations, the European Union, Britain. Of course, the really terrifying example is China, which uses digital IDs and a social credit score to control speech and to control what people think and say online. It could come in a lot of different ways.
They’ll start voluntary, then they’ll make it mandatory. They’ll have rewards, and then they’ll have punishments. It’s quite terrifying. And when you listen to what the advocates for digital IDs say, it’s terrifying. And, you know, Laura, one thing I learned from this last round of investigations is that this is a huge cybersecurity threat. The idea that, I mean, imagine if you get hacked in one of the many websites that you log into. Imagine everything suddenly being hacked because it’s all centralized in a single place. That cybersecurity threat alone ought to be enough to kill the digital ID. But, again, this is potentially digital totalitarianism.