Published: April 2023
How to follow the digital identity debate.
Already in March 2020, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a major sponsor of the WHO, CEPI and the ID2020 Alliance, announced both a global covid mass vaccination campaign for “seven billion people” and the introduction of “digital vaccination certificates” as “the only way to end the pandemic”.
If the SARS-2 virus had been a systemic respiratory virus like SARS-1, this strategy might have worked. But SARS-2 is a non-systemic respiratory virus that easily jumps from throat to throat. Because of this, vaccines couldn’t stop transmission and vaccination certificates had to fail.
Nevertheless, governments around the world invested billions to set up a global digital vaccine passport infrastructure in record time. It is possible that they intended to keep this infrastructure in place and to later convert it seamlessly into a digital biometric ID and payment infrastructure.
This didn’t work out, but it is important to remember that in 2021 and early 2022, millions of “unvaccinated” people really were excluded from travel, work, education, and leisure activities. It was arguably the darkest time in the Western world since the end of the Second World War.
While millions of people protested against this insanity, the strongest political resistance came neither from “no-lockdown” Sweden, nor from “multipolar” Russia, nor from “direct democratic” Switzerland – all of which implemented “vaccine passports” –, but from some US states like Florida.
Then again, the United States still requires “proof of vaccination” from international travelers.
Indeed, despite the obvious failure of “vaccine passports”, the technological and legal framework has remained in place and several governments have announced their intention to build upon this supposed “success story” in various ongoing and upcoming digital identity projects.
“This is the impressive side of this pandemic”, one EU Commission official recently stated.
While digital identity and payment systems are unlikely to offer important advantages to citizens, they will greatly enhance population surveillance and population control, and may later be turned into a Chinese-style “social credit system” or switched to RFID-based microchip technology.
For an ongoing, independent analysis of these topics, see e.g. the following websites:
- Health Policy Watch: WHO initiatives
- The Sociable: Digital ID and payment systems
- Naked Capitalism: Digital ID and payment systems
- Biometric Update: A biometric industry news portal
- German: Dr. Norbert Haering: Digital ID and payment systems
Digital Identity: The 2018 vision of the World Economic Forum
