On digital ID, the Committee concludes that our current digital infrastructure is not up to scratch, and that rolling digital ID out on it would be "irresponsible".
They are right.
Freedom-oriented people need to stick #together
ALL businesses in the Together Directory have confirmed they support Together's core principles:
https://t.co/sJD1wz99vQ
Please follow @PriceVPartners@SwynfordManor@tallymoney
DIGITAL ID: "Government’s handling of (One Login) has been a disaster" – (@DavidDavisMP)
The security issues with One Login should concern everyone
Yet Govt is still pushing the public into this system - and wants to base it's Digital ID on it
Up to 8m company directors effectively forced - must stop @UKLabour
#together
Most likely there's a hidden agenda behind this policy that explains the focus on a trivial issue. The "no fly database" will start with abusive passengers and then be extended to dissidents and non-compliers - people who refuse jabs or commit thought crimes on social media etc.
So-called age verification for social media is spreading across the world, framed as an effort to create a safer internet for children. In reality, age verification lays the foundation for a fully controlled internet.
The age verification rush must be slowed down, and politicians need to recognize the consequences of different types of legislation and systems.
Age verification is the wrong approach to fix “the social media problem”
The big tech social media companies are bad. Their business model is bad; it is based on mass surveillance and manipulation, and they cooperate with governments in mapping entire populations. But age verification is fundamentally the wrong approach to preventing children from using big tech social media platforms. Introducing age verification is based on coercion; the state forces social media companies to verify their users’ identities. But the big tech social media platforms already know which of their users are children. Their business model depends on knowing this. They know how old users are, and they know exactly what type of person they are. As age verification is based on coercion, politicians could instead force platforms to stop doing the things politicians consider harmful to children, or force them to block children (again, they know who they are) from using their services. But instead, politicians seek to massively invade everyone’s privacy and undermine democratic rights on a global scale. In other words, the latter is the real objective – they do not want to protect children; they want to impose control.
Slippery slope of age verification
It is undeniable that age verification threatens freedom of expression, risks increasing mass surveillance, and is likely to lead to censorship. It will not only shrink the online world and reduce young people’s right to privacy (for example, if VPN services were to be restricted); but also risks becoming a significant step toward a controlled internet for everyone.
Most age verification is identity verification
Most countries are now considering introducing age verification systems, meaning that everyone would have to identify themselves either to the service/website they want to use or to a third party capable of linking them to their activity on that service or website. This is not age verification but identity verification, and the consequence is therefore that freedom of information is restricted (you can no longer visit regulated websites anonymously) and that you can no longer post anonymously on social media. This is a major problem in countries like the UK and Germany where the police conduct raids on people’s homes for posting content on social media that the authorities dislike. Or in the United States, where authorities are trying to pressure tech companies into revealing the identities behind accounts protesting ICE. Social media identity verification removes important tools for activists in countries where criticizing those in power is dangerous.
Restrictions on app store or operating system level
Some countries are looking to impose identity verification at the app store level or even within the operating system itself. This is an exciting experiment, since this is possible to circumvent using open-source operating systems. Some countries are already looking to include open-source systems. Since open-source systems cannot be controlled, politicians would ultimately need to ban devices that are not controlled by the state. The end point: telescreens like those in Orwell’s 1984, devices that both monitor you and broadcast only the information approved by the state.
The Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) alternative and the EU
The EU has presented its own age verification app as “completely anonymous”. The idea is to use Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography to break the link between the age credential issuer (EU governments) and the regulated services/sites. Currently, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. Even if fully developed ZKP technology could be implemented in the future, it would remain an optional extra feature that countries may choose to disable and that the EU could remove at any time.
Read more on our site.
https://t.co/wTVKHMS1zg
NET ZERO: Starmer before election:
"Under a Labour government we would freeze energy bills, we wouldn’t allow them to go up"
@Keir_Starmer your continued Net Zero delusion has only made bills higher and is de-industrialising the UK
@UKLabour
This has been a limitation of all estimates of the "green economy" since the 2000s.
I pointed it out in 2009 that DECC had hired a private market research firm, but it included waste management and the manufacture & retail of "doors and windows", which are counted as "green" because they are subject to green legislation.
DECC and the company refused to let me see the full taxonomy of the database, but I eventually obtained it under FOI in 2013, along with emails about them discussing how to obstruct it and bitching about me.
Then it became a competence of the ONS and other agencies, which produce a number of estimates.
But what's the point of attempting to measure the "green economy" when we know that it's only growing because legislation requires subsidies and grants to be given to the sector -- its growth is parasitic? The entire enterprise is daft.
NET ZERO: "Cut down on meat and dairy! Miliband to impose stringent new climate targets despite Net Zero backlash"
"The Energy Secretary has signed up to a legally binding goal to cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 87% by 2040"
https://t.co/TVCcoxmkWn
"The Climate Change Committee (said that while) people would need to reduce meat and dairy, they (would) still be able to fly at close to today’s levels"
"Close to today's levels" - how generous!
https://t.co/CN4eUZzybt
Climate Change Committee CEO: I haven’t flown since 2018 - except to COP in Azerbaijan
Emma Pinchbeck also “getting” a heat pump (translation: hasn’t got one?)
We wouldn’t care except CCC is unelected, unaccountable body that pushed Net Zero to MPs & lifestyle changes FOR YOU
I'm genuinely glad that Claire Coutinho is pointing out where the green blob £billions have been put to.
Quadrature's £4 million bung to the Labour Party was peanuts though, compared the amount that it and other political-philanthropists push into lobbying and propaganda, behind closed doors.
We need to have a full account of 25 years of fake "civil society" and "charity" funding the green agenda in the UK.
Here are the grantors that the ECF admit to, for example. They don't say how much they got from each (or all), nor who it went to and how much and what for. But *all* of it was explicitly political. It bought the likes of the actual CBI and its spinoff, and it created its client, the ECIU in this case, in order to influence policy, including the Tories.