It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.
Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.
You do not exist. Therefore we’re not going to tax you? I can think of workable ways around those restrictions in return for 45% of everything.
Of course, you’d need a non id number id number so that people knew not to charge you VAT…..
But Shirley only 5% of the Indian population can achieve any of those things anyway ?
As some bloke on Youtube said, most people signed up for digital ID years ago – they just haven’t realised it yet. Online banking, fingerprint scan log in, all part of the plan.
All that’s missing is the government having all that data…….
They could just buy it off of Apple or Google or Msoft.
Be a lot cheaper than the DID project.
85% plus of us have biometric passports which effectively have digital id cards in them. The actual digital ids will build on this to link everything together.
My first thought when Kier announced this was that they would never get this done in the current parliament and it would not survive when Reform gets in.
Then I thought that maybe there was secret project that has done a lot of the ground work and that they are announcing it as they are ready to introduce this in a year or two.
As Andy says, 85% of us already have digital ID in our passports, and “make tax digital” starts being compulsary this autumn, and I was assisting my neighbour to scan her passport to verify her HMRC login details last week. . Wedge, end, thin, of.
I don’t have a problem with my bank having that data. I don’t have a problem with HMRC, NHS, passport office and uncle Tom Cobley holding the data they do because there is no key field that links them all.
The problem is the government is now going to insist they all add a field that holds my unique ID and the first time I know I’ve been fined for jaywalking is when the money disappears from my account.
Will the legal profession make most money by being involved before you are fined or once you notice the money has gone?
After. The government has you’re money so has no incentive to act quickly.
My pet theory at the moment is that digital ID is being pushed because the IT companies have started to realise that the new expensive AI data centres (complete with the required 1 GW power stations) might not pay for themselves with AI services and hence they are setting up a plan B which will be using the data centres to run Digital IDs for a number of governments. The real money spinner will be using the data centre AI capacity to work out when citizens of said countries have broken a minor law and hence a fine can be imposed.
Walk down the street in the wrong way? Fine!
J walk? Fine.
Grab your child a little too roughly in public? Fine!
You just wait, they’ll put sensors on the cracks in the pavement next.
As my blade runner friend puts it, it isn’t punishment, it’s pay to play.
Interesting and quite long piece on Zerohedge the other day: “UK Digital ID: The BritCard Bait And Switch”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-digital-id-britcard-bait-and-switch
tl;dr – Gov announces a Mickey Mouse, pretend digital ID and deliberately raises the specter of government overreach in our lives. It knows we will react viscerally and anticipates the backlash. In so doing, it focuses the public debate on the introduction of a single, government issued e-ID which it doesn’t need and has put no effort into developing. Waiting for us is the real digital ID system … We just need to improve the “back-end” of the government’s system so that all our cards and licenses can “talk to the other” in harmony. And that is the essence of genuine digital ID.
And of course all compliant with the UN ID2020 and other cunning schemes promoted by our betters at the WEF, etc.
I was reading the other day (perhaps here) someone talking about using AI to analyse various siloed, incompatible databases and synthesising a bridge between them. The government taking this approach sounds highly plausible to me, not least in that it circumvents regulations preventing it from directly linking a lot of this stuff for privacy reasons. An “indirect” AI summary plus hallucinations will do nicely instead and gives those shiny new data centres something to do.
Thought #2: It’s not so much that the good folks of India can’t do all these things without “The digital biometric ID”, it’s that anytime they do any of these things it gets logged on the Gov database, cross linked with all the other information and available for The Benevolent Government to inspect at any time.
it was discovered that the details of 1.1 billion Indians on the Aadhaar database were being sold online for as little as 500 rupees (£5)
5 Rupees and that’s my final offer
Having to present ID for certain activities is fine. Gamecock had to provide ID yesterday when buying beer at Walmart. The transaction was not registered in a government database.
He used a credit card to pay. The purchase specifics will appear on his cc bill. The transaction is registered, but in a private database.
The Guardian conflates the requirement for having ID and that it be a digitized, recordable government ID. As if the challenge is to the idea of requiring ID, rather than enabling government to record activities . . . spying on the public.
People don’t realize the great value of the 4th Amendment in keeping us from having to explain what we are doing to government as we go about our lives.
One of the weird things about Septicland is obviously middle-aged and older men having to prove their age with a form of ID before being allowed to buy beer. Mind you, the other day, to my amazement I discovered that you have to be over 18 to buy alcohol-free beer.
Explain that.
When Tesco does a voucher – £15 off if you spend £80, that sort of thing – the £80 excludes alcohol. But does it include alcohol-free beer? (I ask because I’m quite prepared to stock up with zero% beer to earn the £15.)
No idea. Having been a member I’ve given up with the sanctimonious Co-op because they’re all nanny-state with the way their vouchers are used, too. When they work, that is. Waitrose, M&S (best for yellow-label protein), Lidl and Aldi for me. Tesco for petrol, though. I put the posh stuff in my car because it runs far better with superior fuel economy. It barely gets used once a fortnight anyway.
Posh fuel is for lawnmowers. I own my lawn mowers but lease my car.
I’ve had to have the staff do the age-check thing when buying 0% ‘booze’ on a self-checkout before. Wouldn’t surprise me to find they’d excluded the whole category for the voucher.
Local store sends out $10 off/alcohol excluded coupons. Never been refused, though I do buy a few food items to go with my cases of beer. I suspect their algorithm just checks for some food, not all food.
There have been occasional cases in the media in the UK. I once bought a 6-pack of Sam Adams at a gas station store in Las Vegas along with some other food. He didn’t ask for ID but the beer had to go in a brown paper bag!
Nope. Having laws that you may not buy beer under age is fine. Folks being expected to use reasonable judgement in complying with laws is fine. But a government permit, or mark – traditionally on the arm or forehead, but more recently in digital form – is not. Unless being property is your thing.
Reasonable judgement has failed retailers. So they tell employees, “Card everybody.” Gray haired, elderly Gamecock gets carded. Employees are forbidden from using judgement. Which is understandable. Selling alcohol to underage people can bring huge penalties, even loss of license to sell.
Having to present ID is not fine. For buying alcohol, if the law says that you can only buy it if you’re over a certain age, it is reasonable to require people who look like they might be underage to present proof of age. That is not ID. A proof of age could be a card which has the bearer’s photo, and certifies nothing more than that they are above the necessary age. It does not need to show their name, address, or any other fact which is not useful for verifying that the person stainding in front of you presenting the card is the person to whom the card was issued. That may mean specifying eye colour, tattoos, etc but not their name as there is no way for you to tell someone’s name by looking at them.
You are why libertarianism fails.