Digital IDs, CBDCs, and Surveillance: Protecting Individual Liberty in the Digital Age

In 2022, something happened in Canada that should have stopped the world in its tracks. Hundreds of ordinary citizens, teachers, mechanics, stay at home moms, all had their bank accounts frozen for legal donations they made. No trial, no warrant, no just cause. Just a government decree signed in the name of a made up emergency. It was the first time in the modern West that financial access, the driving heartbeat of everyday life, was switched off by a head of state for political reasons. In the book nineteen eighty four, George Orwell wrote, if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. Orwell understood what so many seem to have forgotten. Governments are made of humans and power corrupts humans. Governments are extremely useful in protecting the weak from the powerful. They allow us to act as a collective and stand in opposition to those who would conquer or just take from us. But they also tend towards tyranny. When you remember their utility but forget the tendency to tyranny, you invite the boot upon your face. As Thomas Jefferson said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. And now with the rise of artificial intelligence, we have to be more vigilant than ever. AI is a miracle, and I couldn't be more thrilled to live on the timeline where we get to see the fruit it will bear, but it won't be benevolent by accident. It will require us to make demands of our government and limit how it can be used. You need look no further than COVID to see how the government will hoover up every bit of power and authority that they can. Given half a chance, they will run every aspect of our lives that we let them. Who we can see, where we can go, and even what we can do. Every crisis makes people crave safety. Every cry for safety expands the government's control. Every bit of control they seize forfeits another freedom and marches us one step closer to tyranny. In the face of that, ask yourself, what will be the result of allowing the government to enact digital IDs, CBDCs, and overt and covert influence over the AI models that will run much of society? If we're not vigilant right now, digital IDs, social credit scores, and the like are going to become the most oppressive boot in human history, truly pressed down on our faces forever. So today, in four easy parts, we're going to cover what digital IDs really are, why governments the world over are so hungry to implement them, and how you can fight back and make sure the future is as bright and beautiful In 2005, congress passed an unconstitutional law requiring all American citizens to be issued a national identification card. Those aren't my words. Those are the words of US senator Lamar Alexander while speaking on the senate floor about Real ID. Real ID is …