Mark Devlin

You can tell intuitively that digital IDs aren't being pushed for the benefit of ordinary people just from the fact that zero ordinary people have been asking for them. You'll see people clamoring for their government to do all kinds of things depending on where they're at on the political spectrum, from giving them better healthcare to stopping immigration to legalizing weed to making prayer mandatory in public schools. But one thing you never see is ordinary members of the public demanding that the government create a digital ID system and force everyone to participate in it. Literally never. It's a completely top-down initiative with zero grassroots demand. This is because conventional systems of identification have been working out more or less fine for general members of the public for generations. What digital ID systems provide that those conventional systems do not is a significant increase in the state's ability to surveil and control the population and their online behavior. This doesn't benefit ordinary people, but it does benefit our rulers. The more control they have over us, the easier it will be to keep us propagandized and consenting to the status quo, and the harder it will be for us to rise up against them when it's time to remove them from power. That's the only reason you're seeing governments scramble to shove this bullshit down our throats without anyone ever asking for it or voting for it.