Who is the Better Identity Coalition?

(by Derrick Broze | The Last American Vagabond) – In December 2022, the Better Identity Coalition released a set of policy recommendations for all 50 U.S. state government officials focused on “ways governments can improve the privacy and security of digital identity solutions”. The report, Better Identity in America: A Blueprint for State Policymakers, outlines the BIC’s vision of how government officials should respond to the push for digital identity by groups like the BIC and its partners.

The report calls on state officials to “overcome fear, uncertainty and doubt” regarding “ID innovations” which “get the most residents in digital ID programs”. The BIC cites mobile driver’s license programs as one such innovation which is helping fuel the push towards digital identity. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators defines mobile driver’s licenses as “a driver’s license that is provisioned to a mobile device with the capability to be updated in real time” and believes they are the “future of licensing and proof of identity”.

Interestingly, the report also proposes that state governors and legislatures order state Motor Vehicle Departments to issue these mobile driver’s licenses, as well as offer “identity validation services alongside vital records bureaus that issue birth certificates and other government documents”.

When it comes to controversial identity technology like facial recognition, the report does not support an outright ban, but instead calls for the industry to “follow National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidance on digital identity that are already required for federal agencies”.

The BIC report also calls on government officials to “ensure that programs created to support marginalized populations get the same attention as the driver’s license effort”.

The recommendation may seem a bit out of place unless one understands that the digital ID salesmen are focused on bridging the “digital divide” by bringing marginalized populations into the digital ID trap. The only way the Technocratic State can work is if they are able to register the entire population with the digital systems. In fact, the report states plainly that “every step that gets a state closer to 100 percent participation with digital IDs is important”.

Critics of digital identity need only look to India and the Aadhaar to see how destructive it has been since its implementation.

“Seeking to build an identification system of unprecedented scope, India is scanning the fingerprints, eyes and faces of its 1.3 billion residents and connecting the data to everything from welfare benefits to mobile phones,” The New York Times wrote in 2018. The concerns relating to privacy and individual liberty have only increased in four years since that report. On January 13th of this year, Reuters released a report titled “India lets banks use face recognition, iris scan for some transactions – sources“.

The fact is that the digital identity schemes being promoted by the Better Identity Coalition will lead to less privacy and less liberty. Is it any wonder that Bill Gates supports this system under the guise of helping the poor and disenfranchised? Read Full Article >