If someone had said to you forty, even ten years ago, that we would soon be living in a world where your face is stored on a central government computer and cameras and microphones built into your devices would be spying on everything you did and said, you’d have scoffed at such a ludicrous conspiracy theory. If the crazy in question had gone on to assert that people would voluntarily tell the government everywhere they went, you’d have ripped off their foil hat and run away, laughing.
And yet, here we are.
A raft of legal opinions has cleared the way for greater use of facial recognition technology to prove who you are online, as the government moves towards setting up a common identity verification service.
As science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, put it: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. When corporations are giving you a “free” service, you are the product. When governments are promising to make life easier for you, they are the ones who stand to benefit.
Major agencies are trying to find a “fundamentally different” approach they say will make your online identity easier to prove, more secure – and much, much more useful.
The activation of new technology is expected within the next year.
Was anyone — aside from lickspittle government bureaucrats — asked about this? Was it ever put forward as an election policy?
Of course not.
But, all without you ever being consulted, New Zealand is about to take the first major step toward a full-blown Chinese-style Social Credit System.
Internal Affairs now says its tool, Identity Check (formerly called One Time Identity), could become the common service used to verify online the identity of anyone opting in to access potentially hundreds if not thousands of services, from banking to benefits, from health checks to student records.
And what happens if the government — courtesy of its “extremism” Czar, unhinged leftist dingbat Joanna Kidman — has you flagged as a bad ‘un?
Just ask Lee Williams. Just ask the Moms and Dads of Canada who donated to protesting truckers.
Just ask Chinese citizens trying to withdraw their money from corrupt banks run by cronies of the CCP: they can’t even buy a train ticket to get to the bank. Their movements are tracked by the CCP, using its Covid tracing app.
It couldn’t happen here?
The Cabinet committee paper talks about the possible “re-use” of information within digital identity systems by agencies.
In other words, the facial data that you supplied for accessing your MoH records will be shared with NZSIS, your bank, and probably sold on to Facebook or TikTok, from where it will end up on the CCP’s own database. If that sounds like conspiracy-theory nonsense, bear in mind that Chinese government-linked companies have been stealing Australians’ health data.
This is the future that’s just around the corner for New Zealanders.
That’s assuming, of course, that the Ardern government can work out the difference between its arse and its elbow for once.
However, there are snarl-ups: A detailed business case is seven months overdue, there is no sign of an implementation plan from Internal Affairs, and the privacy impact assessment is still being worked on […]
Digital Economy Minister David Clark did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
He has previously said the trust framework is vital: “We know proactive uptake of technologies will only happen when people trust the information they part with online is being safely handled.”
Do you really trust the government? After the last three years, why would you?
The Cabinet committee paper also stresses that Maori must be consulted about digital identity changes. RNZ has approached iwi data experts for comment.
RNZ
Why Maori, especially? Do they have some sort of racial magic that makes their faces more precious than everyone else’s? Will the facial recognition cameras steal their souls?