DIGITAL IDs AND A CAUTIONARY TALE OF NON-PARTICIPATION

There was a story that slipped under the radar, with all the attention being (deliberately?) misdirected to the military, economic, and diplomatic-geopolitical fiasco that the war with Iran has turned out to be. That story was this one, shared by J.M.T. with our gratitude:

Digital ID: Trump Quietly Signs Executive Orders To 'Strengthen Customer Identification Requirements' For Banks, To Allow The Federal Reserve To Create Tokenized "Master Account"

The motivation behind the measure is clear enough: add more and more hoops for people to jump through trying to  manage their digital world to make everything secure, and everything will be... er... secure and we can all sleep well in the few minutes of time we have left after jumping through all their hoops in their "secure" systems:

President Donald Trump this week signed a pair of executive orders that received seldom attention, but are nonetheless key to this administration’s ambition to “modernize” the American financial system. These EOs aim to add further biometric protocols to the banking system to prove one’s identity, while also creating an easier pathway for the Federal Reserve to partner with fintechs to directly clear and settle payments on the Fed’s system, also known as a “master skinny account.”

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More recently, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed several times this year that Trump was preparing an executive order that would force Americans to hand over their passports or provide additional biometric data to hold a bank account, claiming this was to cut down on illegal fraud and prove who is a naturalized citizen, The WinePress detailed earlier this month.

Bessent and others familiar with the early drafts revealed that REAL ID is not enough to prove legal citizenship in the eyes of this administration.

Except what happens when the Artificial Intelligence that runs that system refuses to recognize you as you, even with your biometric data? What then? Well, then we'll have to chip everyone. Put a tattoo on their wrist or something (hmmmm.... this is beginning to sound uncomfortably familiar). But even then, the uncooperative artificial intelligence may not recognize you as you... and your account is effectively dead. The ultimate magic trick of legal sleight of hand has now been accomplished: the person in law, the corporate person, has now finally been completely separated from the biological one. Venice has realized its Chaldean dream in America. Quite an accomplishment in 250 years. Reasons for the plutotechnocratic few to celebrate. The system they designed is working flawlessly.

Except... it won't work. In fact, it doesn't work, which brings me to my anecdote, and I hope everyone is paying attention, because as many people know, I recently had computer problems, and as a result of those problems, lost my access to my Facebook account. Nothing I did would restore that access, and I assiduously tried to satisfy the demands of that platform's A.I. and its demands that I jump through this and that hoop to restore my access.  I literally spent hours trying to do so. (And, of course, there was no human to talk to... way to go Mr. Zuckerberg!)

One of those hoops included a biometric component, which was me recording a video of myself and my face to prove to the A.I. that I was, indeed, me. Now normally I would not do such a thing, because I trust corporations almost as much as I trust the goobernment, but I figured it couldn't hurt, because with all the interviews I've done over the years, my face is already fairly public and known so it couldn't hurt. Having recorded the requested video on its platform, the A.I. promptly determined I was not me, and more or less informed me I was permanently locked out of my account.

So be it. I wrote letters to my family, put them in old fashioned envelopes, with an old fashioned stamp, and mailed them the news of what I was doing.

And it felt good. For the cost of a stamp, which was probably less than the energy and electricity spent trying to update everyone on Meta's and Mr. Zuckerberg's horrid platform, I was not being spied on, my "data" was not being sold, I was in control of who saw my news (family and a few friends), and I was not being asked to jump through hoops in a process that was pointless and unresolvable.

To be honest, it felt, and feels, good, this bit of non-participation in the digital paradise that Musk, Fink, Thiel, Trump et alia are trying to construct.  It felt, and feels, good, because I am not a collection of biometric data to be harvested, and collected, only to be denied that I am who I am. What can and did happen on Meta's Facebook can happen at the Treasury.

It's time to walk away. It's time to say no to the plutotechnocrats, to the Zuckerbergs, the Finks. The data collectors.

Use cash whenever possible. Write letters and post them, and don't post on platforms.

Send the clearest possible message to the billionaire busybodies in the "two" parties.

In short, don't be data. Be a person.

See you on the flip side...

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