Are Digital IDs a threat to our privacy and freedom?

Join us in LONDON at the Light Bar, Shoreditch

Monday 28 March, 7:30pm

Keynote speakers:

Maajid Nawaz - Author, Presenter, Political Commentator

Laura Dodsworth - Author, Journalist, Photographer & Filmmaker

Jeffrey Peel - Political & Business Consultant, TECH / The New Era

James Heartfield - Writer and Lecturer

Chaired by Alan Miller - co-founder #together

Introduction to the subject

There are significant benefits to having an accepted and recognised digital identity. From airports to health records systems, digitising our identities claims to make life more 'efficient and streamlined'.

Governments seek to digitise more, in an effort to give greater and easier access to services, while the banking, travel, and insurance industries aim to create more seamless processes for their products.

However, Digital IDs pose greater risks to human rights than any technology that we have ever encountered. Are we rushing headlong into a future where new technologies will converge to put personal privacy and freedoms at risk?

Biometric databases are being set up in such a way that these individual identifiers are centralised, insecure, and opaque. Then there is the capacity for geo-location - the tracking of digital footprint in real time.

Derived Digital Identity - an identity profile gleaned from metadata sifted from social media - is a risk for individuals. Social media use is packaged up and made available for research purposes via APIs. Big data tools and AI can develop models to create ‘digital publics’ – groups determined by interests, geography, race, or religion. As the saying goes , 'data is the new gold'. It is not hard to see how such data could be used to target groups individuals in ways that are highly questionable.

Systems using artificial intelligence and machine learning are used to make decisions based on our identities are often built on data that can reinforce bias and discrimination and are used without transparency or human interaction. Ultimately, social credit systems, such as those that are currently used in China, will be based on digital ID, thereby enabling, or disabling our full and free participation in society.

By developing these technologies with systems, Digital IDs will become necessary to function in a connected digital world and are becoming the tool of authoritarian regimes. Already, they are splintering the internet, collecting, and localising data and imposing surveillance and censorship on users. Digital ID systems, as they are being developed today, are ripe for exploitation and abuse, to the detriment of our freedoms and democracies.

How do we prevent governments from using Digital IDs for nefarious purposes?

Digital IDs should never be mandated. We should always have the option to say no to any demand that we have a digital ID, without prejudice or negative repercussions.

A digital ID system should be decentralised. Anonymity must be preserved, and our data protected. Transparency is essential. Without transparency, there is no accountability, and few pathways for remedy of human rights abuse. Personal information provided for one purpose should not be made available for identification for law enforcement purposes, without being subject to these vital legal standards. One single digital identity used for authentication of multiple contexts creates the potential for pervasive profiling.

What can we do as citizens to ensure that Digital IDs adhere to the criteria we determine to protect ourselves?

We must build in necessary democratic rights protections to mitigate harm. Our civil liberties should be the foundation upon which digital ID technologies, platforms, and systems are being built. Otherwise, in the quest to create a digital identity for the benefit of many, our fundamental rights are at stake. How do we protect our rights from the threat that Digital IDs may pose? Are they even necessary? Do the risks outweigh any 'efficiency' or convenience benefits? If billions are being spent on them, who is making this investment, and who does it really benefit in the end?

The government has said it will not be compulsory to have Digital ID to show landlords and work, but how long would this be for? Governments say many things that turn out to be untrue.

Other questions we will be looking at on the night:

What is the significance of Central Bank Digital Currency to citizens and how does this feed in?

Would a 'no cash' society be such a problem?

How concerned should we be that CBDCs give Central Banks "absolute control" over rules and regulations, and therefore ultimately our spending?

Is the concern around Social Credit Systems too dramatic?

What can be done by ordinary people about any and all of this?

Digital IDs : A Threat to Privacy and Freedom?