Supposedly, it’s to protect us. Really, it’s to more thoroughly monitor and control us (“China mulls digital ID cards, sparking fears of tighter monitoring,” Radio Free Asia, August 1, 2024). In China:
The Cyberspace Administration published draft rules for a digital authentication system on its website, proposing to give each internet user in China a unique code that encapsulates a person’s key personal details, along with a way to use digital versions of physical ID to authenticate transactions online.
Analysts and political commentators said the rules, if implemented, would give the government “another tool” to track people’s online activity, while free speech activists called for a reversal of the real-name registration system for internet users….
The scheme will initially be voluntary, although some organizations will “encourage” users to sign up for it, the document said….
Free speech activist Xishen Tannu…said official claims that digital ID cards would protect user data were spurious, because police and government officials would have access to any information provided to service providers.
She said the scheme was an extension of the existing “real name” registration system for online platforms that has all but removed people’s ability to comment or take online action anonymously.
If and when the Chinese Cyberspace Administration’s “voluntary” plan is enacted, the accompanying encouragement will not be of the no-big-deal, it’s-okay-if-you’d-rather-not type. In any case, participation won’t be voluntary, even nominally, for very long.
It’s both
RFA quotes a “professor emeritus of telecommunications and law at Pennsylvania State University,” Richard Taylor, who says he expects digital ID to be used for “maintaining social harmony consistent with national laws and Chinese Communist Party policies. I don’t see it giving authorities more power, just a new tool.”
Um, Professor, if the new tool for maintaining what you call social harmony makes it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to more intensively and extensively monitor and control people, it will have more power over those people. The tool for gaining more power and the power gained are related.
Meanwhile, Reclaim the Net advises, “Biden-Harris Task Force Urges Online Age Verification Digital ID Tool Development,” which I think means that the task force is urging the development of a digital ID tool to verify age—among all the other things it would do.
At this point, the U.S. push for digital ID “is happening via various initiatives and legislation, still, without being formally mandated.” One advantage that American citizens critical of American digital ID have over Chinese citizens critical of digital ID is that the former are more at liberty to try and stop it.
