The rise of technocratic control has justifiably motivated people into taking action and resist the foundational tools of the technocracy. Many of these tools are well positioned to leverage any form of digital ID against you. What forms can Digital ID take?
- A biometric implant?
- A smartphone app?
- Your face?
- A microchip in your passport?
Any and all of these can be used in such a system. There isn’t a specific need to use exclusively and only those. Mass surveillance (online and outside) can make anonymity entirely difficult to outright impossible. This has incredible implications for all kinds of interactions; instead of you getting to choose who (or what) you identify yourself to, you are automatically identified to the system and quite possibly everyone else around you.
Identification
While your identity may not be shared with everyone around you, the system will know. Then almost anything and everything can be used against you.
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That article you read three years ago?
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Someone you’re associated with?
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Religious or political views?
This information has already been used against people. It is impossible to predict what information will be leveraged and how. Once the system is in force it is highly unlikely there will be any transparency or recourse when it is abused. We have already seen how big tech social media and other organizations are eager to misuse information, how much more likely is it to be abused by an even less accountable entity?
Surveillance
The feedback loop driving further data collection is very strong. The more data you have about people the more power you have over them. Even if you’re as careful as possible; your fellow citizens, businesses and services, or even institutions can all be pressured or bribed into divulging information about you.
Even when services and organizations aren’t proactively concerned with what your activities are, they could be using convenient systems that simply collect information in the background.
Devices
“Smart” devices, implants, computers, can all be used to represent you. All that matters is that the system can uniquely identify you. Even if the devices themselves aren’t proactively being used against you, software and services you use can often pick up the slack.
Data sovereignty
The only data you can call “your data” is data that is stored on systems you control. Data about you is near impossible for you to entirely quantify. Surely, if we made sure that everything was stored on a blockchain it would be better! At least more transparent?
Governance
Due to the very nature of this kind of control, there is no reason for it to be fair, consistent or even logical. By placing everyone’s destiny inside a centralized control grid you introduce catastrophic failure modes. The failure of every utopian fantasy, of every totalitarian regime, is thinking “this time we have all the information we need to decide everything”.
