aa

aaa

Like 1.3 billion of her fellow Indians, Devi had been pushed to enroll in a biometric digital ID system called Aadhaar in order to access public services, including her monthly allotment of 25kg of rice. When her fingerprint failed to register with the shoddy system, Devi was denied her food ration. Throughout the course of the following three months in 2017, she was repeatedly refused food until she succumbed to hunger, alone in her home.

<a href="https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/governance/widow-denied-ration-starves-to-death-in-jharkhand-s-garhwa-59402">https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/governance/widow-denied-ration-starves-to-death-in-jharkhand-s-garhwa-59402</a>

...

With over one billion Indians in its database, Aadhaar is the largest biometric digital ID program ever constructed. Besides serving as a portal to government services, it tracks users' movements between cities, their employment status, and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India.

Having branded Aadhaar's creator, fellow billionaire Nandan Nilekani, as a "hero," initiatives backed by tech oligarch Bill Gates have long sought to bring the "Aadhaar approach to other countries."

...

But it is the all-encompassing social credit aspect of Aadhaar that has made Gates so fond of the system.

Addressing India's top policy makers in 2016, the world's second wealthiest man declared, "Over time, all of these transactions create a footprint and so when you go in for credit, the ability to access the history that you've paid your utility bills on time, that you've saved up money for your children's education, all of those things in your digital trail, accessed in an appropriate way allow the credit market to [score the risk properly]."

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFZ1bOU6Cb0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFZ1bOU6Cb0</a>

...

In 2016, the Gates Foundation ponied up funding for a World Bank project called the Identity for Development (ID4D) Initiative for the declared purpose of bringing the "Aadhaar approach to other countries."

<a href="https://www.news18.com/news/tech/bill-gates-praises-aadhaar-technology-funds-world-bank-to-bring-it-to-other-countries-1737211.html">https://www.news18.com/news/tech/bill-gates-praises-aadhaar-technology-funds-world-bank-to-bring-it-to-other-countries-1737211.html</a>

To date, the World Bank has invested $1.2 billion into the ID4D initiative, with the official aim of creating "identification systems using 21st Century solutions."

<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/harnessing-the-power-of-digital-id/">https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/harnessing-the-power-of-digital-id/</a>

Among the four financial partners that established the initiative were two familiar Big Tech-backed operations: The Gates Foundation and The Omidyar Network, along with Australian Aid and UK Aid. According to the World Bank, the Gates Foundation's "catalytic contributions" in particular transformed the project from an idea to a functional World Bank initiative.

<a href="https://id4d.worldbank.org/who-is-involved">https://id4d.worldbank.org/who-is-involved</a>

Aadhaar's Nilekani currently sits on the ID4D Initiative advisory council.

<a href="https://id4d.worldbank.org/who-is-involved">https://id4d.worldbank.org/who-is-involved</a>

According to the World Bank, ID4D "promote[s] the use of digital ID systems for free movement and service delivery, by creating linkages across systems that allow users to authenticate themselves for key services such as receiving social transfer payments, completing financial transactions, and crossing borders."

<a href="https://id4d.worldbank.org/sites/id4d.worldbank.org/files/2019-05/ID4D_Overview_Brochure_English_20190508.pdf">https://id4d.worldbank.org/sites/id4d.worldbank.org/files/2019-05/ID4D_Overview_Brochure_English_20190508.pdf</a>

...

The WEF has also made clear that the "end goal" of its agenda is expanding the model it established in India until every person in the world holds a unique digital ID.

<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/digital-id-is-the-catalyst-of-our-digital-future/">https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/digital-id-is-the-catalyst-of-our-digital-future/</a>

In an article titled "Digital ID is the Catalyst of Our Digital Future," Mohit Joshi, a WEF 'young leader,' argued that "governments should use [Aadhaar] to streamline the delivery of services and payments, and massively increase financial inclusion."

<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/mohit-joshi">https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/mohit-joshi</a>

In a separate paper, however, the WEF conceded that the new digital system will not necessarily provide users with the liberation they have been promised: "Fourth Industrial Revolution digital identity will determine what products, services, and information we can access - or, conversely, what is closed off to us," the WEF stated.

<a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_INSIGHT_REPORT_Digital%20Identity.pdf">http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_INSIGHT_REPORT_Digital%20Identity.pdf</a>

...

Back in 2016, Bill Gates' Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), Microsoft, Accenture and the Rockefeller Foundation established a new consortium to provide digital ID certificates to infants when they receive their routine immunizations. They called it ID2020, incidentally naming it for the year that a global pandemic would be declared.

ID2020 says it is "dedicated to spearheading a global digital biometric identity standard," and claims Digital IDs will lead to "financial independence."

Partners in the ID2020 initiative include the credit card giant Mastercard and Simprints, a biometric technology firm supported by the US Agency for International Development, a traditional front organization for US intelligence.

<a href="https://www.simprints.com/">https://www.simprints.com/</a>

<a href="https://thegrayzone.com/tag/usaid/">https://thegrayzone.com/tag/usaid/</a>

Mastercard's 'community pass' project aims to capture the biometrics of 30 million individuals in remote parts of Africa over the next three years and issue them a Mastercard Community Pass biometric smart card, which will in turn provide Africans with a digital biometric identity and a digital bank account.

<a href="https://www.biometricupdate.com/202109/mastercard-partnership-to-capture-biometrics-of-30-million-africans">https://www.biometricupdate.com/202109/mastercard-partnership-to-capture-biometrics-of-30-million-africans</a>

ID2020 is currently operating in Bangladesh, where it administers biometric enrollment and digital ID to infants when they receive routine immunizations. GAVI CEO Seth Berkely has said he plans to expand the program across the underdeveloped world, working with mega-corporations such as Facebook and Mastercard to tie vaccination status to a biometric identification system.

<a href="https://www.biometricupdate.com/202104/id2020-and-bangladesh-government-issue-rfp-for-biometrics-linked-healthcare-digital-id">https://www.biometricupdate.com/202104/id2020-and-bangladesh-government-issue-rfp-for-biometrics-linked-healthcare-digital-id</a>

"Eighty-nine percent of children and adolescents without identification live in countries supported by Gavi," Berkley stated. "We are enthusiastic about the potential impact of this program not just in Bangladesh, but as something we can replicate across Gavi-eligible countries."

<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/id2020-alliance-launches-digital-id-program-with-government-of-bangladesh-and-gavi-announces-new-partners-at-annual-summit-300921926.html">https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/id2020-alliance-launches-digital-id-program-with-government-of-bangladesh-and-gavi-announces-new-partners-at-annual-summit-300921926.html</a>

With the WHO's declaration of a global pandemic in March 2020, an unprecedented opportunity arrived for the forces advancing digital IDs. As Andrew Bud, the CEO of biometric tech company and Department of Homeland Security contractor iProov, enthused, "The evolution of vaccine certificates will actually drive the whole field of digital id in the future. So, therefore, this is not just about Covid, this is about something even bigger."

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/02/21/inside-the-race-to-create-a-covid-passport-and-change-travel-as-we-know-it">https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/02/21/inside-the-race-to-create-a-covid-passport-and-change-travel-as-we-know-it</a>

By the following year, ID2020 and the USAID-partnered biometric ID firm, Simprints, had leveraged funding from Gates Foundation to publish an article entitled, "COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery: An Opportunity to Set Up Systems for the Future." The authors argued that COVID-19 vaccines in the Global South could be used as a "potential lever" to deliver digital biometric IDs.

<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8173566/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8173566/</a>

They went on to admit that such digital biometric systems would stay in place long after the COVID-19 pandemic was over, and would be exploited for an array of purposes after the rollout: "Biometrics have the advantage of being agnostic to use case," the co-authors wrote, "meaning they can connect different systems during or even after rollout."

Elizabeth Renieris of the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab resigned from a technical advisory role on ID2020, citing "risks to civil liberties" after the initiative teamed up with tech giants to design COVID immunity passports backed up by experimental blockchain technology.

<a href="https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/the-dangers-of-blockchain-enabled-immunity-passports-for-covid-19-5ff84cacb290">https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/the-dangers-of-blockchain-enabled-immunity-passports-for-covid-19-5ff84cacb290</a>

Renieris went on to denounce the burgeoning ID system as a civil liberties nightmare: "The prospect of severely curtailing the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals through ill-thought-out plans for 'immunity passports' or similar certificates, particularly ones that would leverage premature standards and a highly experimental and potentially rights-infringing technology like blockchain, is beyond dystopian."

aa

Report Page