(The Sociable) — Speaking Tuesday at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) “Future of Britain Conference 2024: Governing in the Age of AI,” Blair continued his years-long push for digital ID adoption.
Tony Blair on “Digital ID is an essential part of a modern digital infrastructure […] Although, we have a little work of persuasion to do here!” https://t.co/XXGXivHnXv pic.twitter.com/SQ2JwqqexM
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) July 9, 2024
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“An analysis on digital ID, which is an essential part of a modern digital infrastructure, could yield benefits not only for ease of interaction with government but for the public finances,” Blair said.
“Though, we have a little work of persuasion to do here, it has to be said,” he added.
Speaking at a session on “Why Building a Digital Backbone Is Essential for Britain,” former India Minister of State for Electronics, Information Technology, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that digital ID was the “bedrock” of a “digital government architecture.”
India’s former tech minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar: “Digital identity is the bedrock and the core to a digital government architecture” Tony Blair Institute Future of Britain Conference 2024 https://t.co/cGh7ocvBug pic.twitter.com/YUo4MGxLrN
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) July 9, 2024
When it came to the notion of individual civil liberties and digital identity, Chandrasekhar said that it was “an interesting debate to have” and that digital ID didn’t imply a violation of personal privacy:
People who say digital ID automatically implies a violation of personal information privacy have not read the last two chapters of the book they’ve been reading.
“People who say digital ID automatically implies a violation of personal information privacy have not read the last 2 chapters of the book they’ve been reading.” Civil liberty is ‘an interesting debate to have’ Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Tony Blair Institute https://t.co/cGh7ocvBug pic.twitter.com/XR9faDj1UU
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) July 9, 2024
Today’s conference coincided with the release of several reports from the TBI, including one dedicated entirely to digital ID.
‘A citizen’s digital ID would contain a single unique identifier, which would help link the user with public services. Each service would retain its own unique identifier such as an NHS number or Unique Taxpayer Reference.’ — Tony Blair Institute, The Economic Case for a UK Digital ID, 2024
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The report “The Economic Case for a UK Digital ID” claims that digital ID can be used for everything from integrating “personal health records and personal data” to streamlining taxation and welfare payments, as well as for managing refugees and asylum seekers.
The total cost of a digital ID rollout in the U.K., according to the report, would cost at most £1.4 billion ($1.8 billion), and a digital ID scheme could be developed and deployed “over the course of a single parliamentary term (five years).”
Citizens would retain control over how linked they want their data from different databases to be via a user portal/app, while controlling how their digital identity attributes are used through a digital wallet (decentralized model).
Blair has been pushing the digital ID agenda for many years for a variety of different reasons, from vaccine passports to tracking refugee statuses.
A TBI spokesperson told Politico EU that the organization was not advocating for mandatory digital ID cards, saying, “Everyone loves to talk about ID cards or government ID. That’s not actually our proposal,” adding that TBI’s vision is for people to be given “the ability to connect (their) data across the public sector.”
Oh look! It’s Tony Blair talking about digital identity again; this time at the World Governments Summit with Albania PM Edi Rama, who’s using Oracle and Microsoft for digital infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/owJaECjcuC
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) February 13, 2024
“It’s going to be very hard for people to do a lot of normal life unless they can prove their vaccination status.”
Former UK PM and WEF Young Global Leader, Tony Blair, speaking at the start of the mRNA injection roll-out, on January 6th 2021.
“People have got to understand… pic.twitter.com/HfiMnAVrWH
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) March 25, 2024
War criminal, bilderberg member and Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair calls for a global Chinese style vaccine passport system at #Davos2023 pic.twitter.com/bpQ9hccZ8v
— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) January 19, 2023
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Speaking at the WEF-backed, Russian-based Cyber Polygon 2020 cybersecurity training exercise, Blair stated with confidence that governments were “absolutely, inevitably” moving in the direction of digital identity adoption.
In his Cyber Polygon 2020 talk, Blair didn’t make the case for why having a digital identity was actually necessary to prevent a cyber pandemic but rather that digital identities would be an inevitable part of the digital ecosystem and would be crucial for managing health records, transaction data, and immigration status.
Tony Blair at Cyber Polygon 2020: Digital ID absolutely crucial for health records during COVID, Digital ID for payments/transactions, Digital ID for immigration, etc. https://t.co/qrsRmcPSRz pic.twitter.com/ho3ALT4TXG
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) July 9, 2024
Digital identity is one of three major components of what is known as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which also includes massive data exchanges and a fast digital payments system that can include the use of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
India is considered to be one of the world leaders in DPI, which everyone in the space refers to as the “India stack.”
Last year, India Aadhaar digital ID architect Nandan Nilekani said that everybody should have a digital ID, a smartphone, and a bank account because these were the “tools of the new world” upon which everything else was built.
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In November 2023, the U.N. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered to launch the 50-in-5 campaign to accelerate DPI rollouts in 50 countries within five years.
Earlier this year, the European Union parliament said that its digital identity wallet would be voluntary, which is what India said about its own digital ID scheme before government agencies began mandating it for certain services.
At the WEF annual meeting in Davos this year, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands said that a digital ID was good for knowing “who actually got a vaccination or not.”
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands at WEF in Davos: [Digital ID] is very necessary for financial services, but not only – it is also good for school enrollment; it is also good for health — who actually got a vaccination or not” #DigitalID #WEF24 https://t.co/DJiO8nISih pic.twitter.com/RgYA2ahXS0
— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) January 18, 2024
Reprinted with permission from The Sociable