None. Before we go any further, just
quickly give me your bio and keep it exciting.
Don't make it boring. All right, I'll try.
Now. I, I've been awake for a long
time and I started my career as a software engineer, ended up
working for big tech in New York City, and then it all went down,
right? COVID-19 84, I quit my cushy
job. I started working with activist
movements, and I helped build the largest decentralized mutual
aid network ever, just called Freedom Cells.
And during that time, people were activated.
So I saw all the good stuff that they were doing, getting real
money, eating natural, that kind of thing.
But they were just being naive when it came to their technology
that's walking around with them all the time.
So I had to educate them, and that's been my mission for the
past five years, educating people on privacy, open source
tech that they can use to opt out of surveillance.
I've got a blog on Sub Stack and I'm the founder and CEO of a
privacy solutions company. Knowing what you know now,
Hakeem, would you go back to 2019?
I, I think that it was very important for, you know, for it
to happen the way it did because it got a lot of people
activated. And, and just for the record, I
was awake to vaccines like way before that time.
But when it happened, I was like, all right, this is
happening now. Like they might kick in my door
and, and get me now. So I think that a lot of people
were feeling that and they were making moves, which ended up
being a good thing. You know, they had a plan, they
were executing, which is great. And then, you know, it took a
few years and it kind of died down and now we're back to where
we once were. So I wouldn't go back to the way
things were, 'cause now, you know, we, we all know where this
is going. The Agenda 2030.
It's not just like some nebulous out there kind of go like, you
know, the friend who always says they're going to go back to
college or get their career in AI.
No, it's like happening and they're going to push until they
reach that goal. So I think people need to
realize that. And you know what my work has
always been about as solutions. We, we kind of all know the
problems at this point. What are we going to do about it
and how can we push our lives forward to completely opt out
from what they're putting out? I have found over the last few
years that people are addicted to doom scrolling.
They are consumers of fear. You know they'll send stuff
around on Telegram and WhatsApp and just moan, never actually do
anything. Yeah, man.
And I think you know it best because you talk about how you
talk about a lot of controversial stuff and yeah,
people always have a problem with everything.
They just kind of want to share how much they disagree with you,
and that's totally cool. But we can just sit around here
and disagree all day or we can find a commonality and do
something about it. And so, yeah, I've been reading
your sub stack and I, I think you get it.
There's a nuance and everything. We don't have to agree on
everything, but let's find what we do agree on.
So tell me about solutions. What are you solving?
Yeah. So one of the major things that
that I've discovered when it, when it comes to something like
digital ID, it's it's great that we can philosophically oppose it
and be like, hey, I'm never going to comply to that.
But if you're using a phone or a laptop that you don't have any
control over, I've, I've been calling them pre hacked devices
because because they are, you know, you know, these big tech
companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, they could push software
to your device. They can install apps without
you knowing, without your consent, and you can't even
remove them. Like they have the power to do
these things. So it's great that we oppose
digital ID, but it's also going to require our personal
infrastructure to resist in a meaningful way.
Otherwise, here's what's going to happen.
And here's what we saw during the pandemic as well is that no
one was downloading contact tracing apps that just no one
was downloading and no one wanted to do it.
Very small number of people. And then in some states, like in
Massachusetts, Google and the Department of Public Health
there, they just decided to forcibly install the apps on
people's phones and turn on Bluetooth and turn on the health
reporting. So that just happened overnight,
right? So I mean, that's kind of my
mission with solutions is to make sure people have technology
that they can rely on. And, and this goes back to when
this first happened, where was the 1st place we looked for
people with common sense, people who are thinking like this.
We looked online, that's where we found each other.
We realized there's this massive movement on the planet.
For me too, as a software engineer, that's what I
realized. Hey, this is the really cool
stuff when we bring people together under a unified cause.
So these like these tools, so our company above phone, we have
phones and laptops, but it's not like I advocate like you should
be a techie and spend all your time on a laptop or phone.
Now, these are just tools that we use to build the the world,
the world that we want in in real life.
And the technology can help us organize things and stuff like
that, but it's not, it's not the master.
We are the masters. This is a good point.
I mean I for example just on a day-to-day basis I've attempted
playing with Linux or Linux. I don't know how you pronounce
it Linux or Linux. I don't know what the correct
way to say to how do you? Say it works.
There's a big debate. Oh, OK.
So all right, well, whatever. I attempted it for about two
years and I gave up because it's just too complicated.
I spent too much of my time fiddling and trying to get
things to work. I installed Mint, Ubuntu,
Fedora, and at the end of the day I just want something that
works and I think this is what the average person wants.
Also, it's just something that's easy to use.
Yeah, you're not wrong about that.
So I've been using blanks for close to a decade and and it
does require a little bit of tinkering, or at least it used
to. And so I mean when I first
started talking about this, this was the feedback I got from
people. Hey, I want to install this on
my own, but I have so many questions and I personally
couldn't keep up with it. So I mean, we started a company
to try and make these things easier.
We wrote our own Linux operating system based off of something
called Arch Linux. And the goal I gave my team was,
hey, let's make something where you don't need to mess with
anything. You don't need to open the
terminal, you don't need to tinker.
And we, we think we've, we've accomplished that.
And so you do need to make these things easier.
But also there's Linux just lags a little bit because it's a
bunch of volunteers trying to support thousands of different
types of devices. They don't have, you know, the
manpower these big tech companies do.
But what we found is eventually things do get to a point where
they're usable and nice and easy.
So I mean, I encourage people to to still try.
What were the main hand ups you were finding?
It was just things weren't working or.
Well, it was a number of years ago, so maybe things are better
now. But yeah, I mean, it was just
compatibility and and drivers and all that, you know, all that
usual kind of stuff. And then I really didn't want to
support Microsoft, so then I just resorted to to Apple.
Yeah, Apple does a really good job letting you believe that
they're private. And you know, they're like, the
FBI asked for this and we're like, no way, FBI.
No, look at that, guys. It's unfortunately that's the
privacy marketing era we live in.
And so, but what they won't tell you about is how their phones
are sending out the addresses to the different devices in your
house when they're connected on Wi-Fi.
They won't tell you about how they're collecting a database of
over 2 billion Wi-Fi access points in the world.
So they, you know, this is how our today's location systems
work. You know, they use Wi-Fi access
points. So it was really crazy.
There's a study out of Maryland and they were tracking through
Apple system, which they left open for this, how Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi
routers were moving across the world.
So they saw Gaza being decimated in in real time with the Wi-Fi
routers like disappearing off the map.
They saw people fleeing from Ukraine for forced conscription
with Wi-Fi routers. So it's like, it's really crazy.
You don't think about the data that has to, you know, be there
in the back end for these systems to work.
And yeah, I mean, Apple, I would not consider anything you do on
Apple device to be private, partially because it's
completely opaque, right? It's not transparent.
Nothing is open source. Everything is locked down.
You couldn't install an open source app that wasn't approved
by Apple if you even wanted to. So they don't care about
people's freedom and they don't care about privacy either.
A friend of mine has got one of those Google phones, a Pixel or
whatever it's called, and then he he installed some other
operating system on it. He was probably installing
something like Graphene OS or divest OS, potentially graphene,
right? And and that's what I recommend.
That's what our company sells above phone.
We sell phone to the Graphene OS on them.
Of course, if people want it, they could stall on their own,
but you know, you'll find that there's takes time to get into
it and to learn. But the reason we we recommend
it is because it is most the most secure and private phone
you can buy out there. Sure, give me one second.
My phone is. What you've been talking about a
lot now is digital ID. This is integral actually.
I mean, it's completely connected to the issue of
privacy. Yeah, it, it is connected to
privacy and then it goes a little bit past privacy to
actually being about control, right, Where people have
accepted that our phones are listening to us.
But So what, you know, the worst they can do is show us ads.
Well, digital ID is the other half of that.
It's the control grid and as you saw in my report, you know, I
tried to cover being very extensive with the research and
looking at six continents everywhere in the world.
This is happening everywhere and over 90% of countries.
So it's, you know, the parallels what COVID-19 84 was like.
I accept there's nowhere to run to like in the past.
A lot of people from Europe moved to Mexico in the past to
escape the vaccine mandates here.
I don't know if we have that same option.
Every country or government is planning to do something like
this, and with it comes putting your basic social services
behind a digital ID wall. You really don't have a right to
exist unless you let the government create a biometric ID
on your behalf, which happens when you take your legal
identity and you combine it with your biometrics and you give it
in a formal setting. So that's when it happens.
That's when you're on their system.
I've got your report in front of me and I recommend.
I don't know if it's public, but if it is public I recommend
people read it. So you say here.
Our research shows digital ID wallets or equivalents will be
available to 90% of countries within two years, with full
rollout expected in five. Within a decade, digital IDs
will be largely sorry. Old school IDs will be largely
obsolete, forcing reliance on regional controllable digital
credentials for everything from travel to trade.
That is pretty scary. Yeah, absolutely.
And, and the report is public, it's free, it's available for
everyone, can go to abovephone.com/digital.
And, and yeah, you know, I want people to put, I want to be
wrong about this. I want people to find different
places in the world I might have missed and say, hey, this
country is not doing digital ID. But from what I've found,
there's one country next to the Amazon rainforest, Suriname,
which is supposed to be a lawless country anyways, right?
It's just kind of out in the middle of nowhere.
There's 15 countries in Africa not doing digital ID.
So hey there. That's something.
But it's my country is your country is as well.
Yes. The president, you know, has
said that that's going to be a main priority for them this
year. Yeah, exactly.
Right. So this is this is happening
everywhere. And and so there there's a
progression to get there though that I'll.
I think that's really important is that it relies on our
consent. You have to be willing to go
into the office or the setting or wherever and provide your
legal identity with your biometric identity.
Before that, before enough people are on it, they can't
actually start shutting things down because it would hurt the
economy and you know, they need enough people to adopt.
So the next two years are really important because we'll start to
see these pushes for adoptions. The countries that are working
on digital IDs apps will have those out and available for
people. So you'll get to see that in the
next two years. And we really need to resist.
We need to have our own economic systems before that point.
So I like to give people a timeline so they just can
prepare and plan ahead. Yeah.
I mean, something very interesting that you've pointed
out in your report is the voluntary facade that you call
it, but you say that that is just a trick, it's a bait and
switch. It's definitely a beta switch
and you know the example in the report is Indias Adhar system
which India is the largest. It has the largest number of
people on digital ID like was it like 1.6 billion people in India
and 96% of them are using this system.
So the India Supreme Court ruled that you could not be punished
for not being on this digital ID system.
But that didn't stop the banks from demanding your Adhar ID.
That didn't stop the seller companies from threatening to
shut off the phone service if they didn't give them their
Adhar ID. That didn't stop landlords for
using the Adhar ID as a way to screen applicants, right.
So it's really interesting, like India maybe, maybe it's because
of their caste system or something, but they went the
full mile to the point where even regular people were
imposing it on each other as something that had to happen.
And I think that the world as we know it is over when we reached
that point. Because as digital ID grows in
all to all these different places, now that data is being
analyzed, it makes it possible for us to have programmable
money, which India also has, you know, the largest use of
programmable payments, which is the second aspect of digital
public infrastructure. And all of these things that
that you kind of see in the UN messaging, in the World Economic
Forum, they become possible. If you're using too much heat at
your house, they can just turn it off, right?
But they need that legal identity tied to everything
you're doing. So that's where we're going with
this. My word for this is mandating it
by proxy. And it's kind of, you know,
they're just two faces of the same, same thing because it's
not like these, these government institutions, they have a lot of
influence over these private institutions as well,
regulations. And so these private
institutions, especially the bigger ones, will have to follow
eventually. It's going to start with the
banks first because wouldn't you know it, the banks are the
people who want us to all be on digital ID.
So I point out different places around the world.
It's the World Bank funding Africa to make sure people, you
know, the undocumented populace in Africa are getting their IDs.
So of course, the banks in our real world will be the first to
impose it and then it may follow with things like insurance
companies and travel. Travel is a big freedom that
Jerm, you and I both know how important it is to be able to
travel just so we can experience different cultures.
And now that's also something that's going to be threatened.
That's also, I think one of the first projects South Africa is
working on, unfortunately. So yeah, you'll, you'll see.
You'll see it kind of drip in in this order.
I don't think I've asked, and I don't know of anybody who's
asked this, but who created Digital identity?
And then you have a photograph of Kim Cameron.
Yeah, Kim Cameron. He's he's, he's the OG of
digital identity. His was the identity architect
at Microsoft. He had a company that Microsoft
bought. But basically what he did was he
created an interoperable identification system to
corporate enterprise IT environment.
So it's like, all right, you're logging on to your company, you
have access to these printers and these networks and these
hard drives over here. So he built that, and along the
way, he wrote this paper called The Laws of Identity in 2004.
This would be the messaging and philosophy for what we now know
as digital ID. So think about that.
It's almost been 20 years, right?
This is 20 years in the making. And what he said is, hey, the
people deserve a better way to identify themselves.
He was worried about the things people having way too many
passwords and getting attacked by cyber criminals.
So he said hey, one ID and let's have it be interoperable with
everything. And also it should be people's
right to decide how much information they want to share
with either party. Well, it sounds very noble.
And he was also on the board of ID 2020.
So I, I, I don't know how noble it actually was, but he had some
things that sounded good in his original paper.
But yeah, Fast forward 20 years and these are the, it's the same
type of messaging. If you read his original paper
and what you see government saying today, they say, hey,
it's going to be, you're right. You get to pick how much
information do you want to share?
And it's never done without your consent.
It's the same thing. But the problem is, is when you
have incompetent people working on these systems, which I say
they're largely incompetent, I can show you examples, is that
on the back end there? This information can be shared,
It can be aggregated. There can even be a secret layer
behind digital ID itself. So I don't think he knew where
it was going. But unfortunately, he died after
the Last Post on his blog where he was criticizing response, the
COVID response, like the lockdowns and stuff.
That was the last blog post he made on identityblog.org and
then he passed away, so we don't know ID.
Yeah, you mentioned ID 2020, like just about nobody knows
what that is. I think it's been around what,
since 2016 or 2017 thereabouts? And it's a Microsoft or a Bill
Gates initiative, isn't it? Yeah, it's one of the, you know,
it was the one of the original founding groups to come
together, big tech government NGOs and start to work on these
identity standards that we now know today.
So there are two major tech specs in digital ID.
There's the WWW verified credentials specification, and
there is also the ISO specification or standard.
And for most people, this won't be too important, but just think
about it as the rules. These digital ID systems need to
be interoperable with each other.
So ID 2020 was instrumental in creating those first systems.
And now that they've tested it internationally, like you've got
to think about the impact is this is not just you sign up in
your own country. Now you have to worry about
South Africa, now you have to worry about China.
No, these systems are built to be interoperable.
That's the whole point. So they'll follow you wherever
you are. That's that's where we're going
with this. So what is Digital ID?
Yeah. So I try to, you know, I try to
make a definition for it because it's hard to hard to create it.
But I've looked at Russia and China to see how they do their
systems and I've looked at the EU.
And so there's two characteristics I see over and
over is the verified credential part of it, which is just
saying, hey, this digital identity document that you've
shared with me, can I prove that this was signed by the
government of Russia or signed by Google or Apple or whoever
signed it, Can I trust the source of it?
So that's the verified part. And that it's also used in a
digital setting. So that might be through the web
browser, but it could also be an app on the phone, could also be
in person using near field communication or Bluetooth,
right? There's different ways to send
it. So that's the digital part.
The other part that's important is the interoperability.
And for some countries like Australia, they don't want their
for at least for right now, their digital ICD system won't
work outside of the country. But inside the country it is
already being used for most government services talking
about your driver's licenses or your, you know, how you pay at
the tax office. And this is going to quickly
expand to social media. It's going to be available to
other businesses to validate the identity of other people using a
verification service. So it becomes interoperable and
that's the other piece. It could be interoperable
domestically or internationally. So those are the two factors in
digital ID. The question that I've been
asked a couple times over the last couple years is, oh, but
it's just your ID in digital form.
Yeah, it is more than that. And so you can attach any sort
of information you want onto a digital ID.
You could have diplomas attached to your digital ID.
And I predict within the next five years, you're going to get
to start seeing digital diplomas as well.
And if anyone's had to ever prove where they studied, you
know, it's a bit of a process now.
You're just going to have this document given to you by the
university. That's just one example.
You can tie any sort of information to your digital
identity, where you live, What Car you have.
Voting, voting. Yeah, exactly whether you're
eligible to vote, whether you have kids or they're adopted,
you know, you can kind of integrate them with which with
one another. And so eventually it will become
a thing that can have a historical log of everything you
did in your life. Although I will say that you so
with with those types of things that might be attached to
because it's, it's kind of like a credential.
So it'll be minimal. You probably will have different
credentials for things. And then also every time you use
it, let's say at the grocery store, there will be kind of an
interaction mechanism with your digital ID and what you
purchased that day. And there will probably be like
a subsystem, maybe a payment system or a credit source system
like you were saying. That's like, hey, here's your
legal identity. Let's let's let's reference it
with this historical record. It may not live exactly on the
digital ID, but that's what this system enables is a is, yeah.
I mean, being able to track you across everything that you do
because it's all tied with your legal identity.
OK, but let me play devil's advocate.
Why is it a bad thing? Yeah.
And, and, you know, that's a good question to ask because at
the at the surface, you know, if you listen to what the
politicians are saying, less paperwork, less lines at these
offices, it makes it easier to pay taxes, right?
These are things everyone loves. Sarcastic of course, but when
you look at it didn't start to scare me until I looked at
Russia and also China. And I do.
I just preface this with saying I don't think Russia, China bad
and America good. I don't believe that.
I think it's it's happening everywhere and it depends.
What flavor of tyranny do you want?
You'll get it. Maybe in some countries you'll
be able to eat and have a better life than others.
It's totally possible. But when I looked at Russia and
China, I was kind of surprised more with Russia.
Their digital ID system is already integrated into the CCTV
cameras. So right now they've got this
war in Ukraine. They have a lottery for the
draft to go to the war. Worst lottery ever.
So you can get randomly selected.
This happens through the digital ID.
You get a notification from the government.
You have 20 days to report in to your field office.
What happens after 20 days? They pull you off the street.
How do they know you're on the street?
Because of the CCTV cameras in the Moscow metro, soon to be on
the buses. They can recognize your face and
tie it with your legal identity and send someone to come get
you. So a lot of people over the past
few years have been complaining about how Ukraine does this.
They do it the old fashioned way where they just kidnap brand new
people off the street. Russia's doing it the dystopian
way with China. Chinas digital ID system is
actually like technically it's new according to this definition
I have. But they have these huge big
tech companies which are their own form of digital ID.
And So what we saw during the during the lockdowns is that
these health passes that they had, which used some of the same
technologies, digital ID could be turned off to restrict
travel. We saw that with some of the
bank protests. There's also this aspect of the
social credit system in China, which I don't, I'm not an expert
on it, but what I researched was the public dishonorable Citizens
website, which is crazy. It's public.
You can go see who's on it, at least the records that are being
added to it. And if you end up on this list,
no one will want to work with you.
You can't buy plane tickets. You actually have to end up
going in person. So it it, it becomes a way, if
this is the data exchange piece of digital public infrastructure
where all the information is shared.
If you fuck up in one aspect of life, you can get sued, you can
have a divorce, you can forget to pay taxes, something happens.
It impacts all the other areas of your life.
Also, if someone doesn't like you, someone who's powerful
enough to influence the system, which is not that hard to do, it
could, you know, it could cut you off from the rest of the
world. So as you might know, I was in
China recently and I certainly have many reasons to, to, to
criticize it and, and many reasons not to criticize it.
I, I, I try and see the nuance, you know, the complexity.
And I'm certainly not pro China and I'm certainly not anti
China. I mean, I, why would I be?
I'm South African but I did notice no cash anyway like I I
couldn't purchase anything without Alipay or WeChat and
everything by the looks of it is moving into WeChat and Alipay
now. That is a form of digital ID,
isn't it? Yeah.
And I'm very excited to hear to read your report on this.
But yeah, from what I've seen, there is no point in having cash
if you have cash in China. They'll be like, what are you
doing? Just use one of these two apps
and you could say that in their own way.
Alipay and WeChat or form a digital ID.
Why is that? Because you sign in with
biometrics. It's used for different things
on the app, like authorizations. It's interoperable because
there's this little app economy where third party developers can
integrate it with taxis, you know, anything they want.
So yeah, you could say it's a digital ID system and if it's
own and what people should realize as well, like these two
apps together, it's staggering number of people use.
It's like, it's like everyone, right?
So imagine 1.8 billion people using these two same systems.
Now what happened recently was the Chinese government decided
to say, all right, here's let's let's make it official.
They came up with the cyberspace ID, and so now the cyberspace ID
is another metric. You enroll with your biometrics
and you can use it to sign in to Alipay or WeChat or 80 other
apps, right? So it's this final layer.
They didn't really need it in the first place.
They could have just gone through one of those two
companies, but they decided, hey, this final layer, which if
that's cut off, it'll impact everything.
And of course, they've had for years since 2015, Like you have
to use your legal identity when signing up to things online.
So it hasn't been that far away from them.
On my phone, for example, to access my banking app, it uses
biometrics. I don't see that as a bad thing
because if somebody steals my phone then they can't access my
my bank account. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, you
could, you could argue that it's more secure because it's your
biometrics. But let's move.
You got to remember, like with cybersecurity, it's a cat and
mouse game. Both sides are moving forward at
the same time. What happens if your biometrics
get stolen? And how hard is it to really do
that in the 1st place? How what happens if you lose
your digital ID? At that point, people can
impersonate you and there are safeguards written into the
specifications. But governments don't have to
adhere to the specification, right?
It's the guideline. It's not like a blueprint or
anything. So they can build whatever they
want. And what we've seen is that
these digital ID systems do get hacked.
It happened in Adhar, India's Adhar.
It happened with Estonia's system.
And so if your biometrics get stolen, there's not really a way
you can you can escape that, right?
Someone has your biometrics. And in Singapore, it was one
such case where their Sing Pass app was hacked and they had
about 3000 different identities that were shared on the dark
web. And so attackers could log in
kind of the same way. They were able to use the
biometrics and use it for things like opening bank accounts or
starting companies or frauds or something, stuff like that.
And and that's the real, that's the real danger here on a
personal level is biometrics are something that you can't get
back very easily. So could you then make a counter
argument and suggest that well, it's a bit better if the
biometrics are decentralized? Yeah, and, and you, you could,
and there's a lot that can be said here.
Kim Cameron actually talked about this.
He was hinting towards this in his paper of something called a
Sovereign Self Identity and when he presented it to the UN
committee they hated the name. They hated the name Sovereign,
but the idea was you are issuing.
Your own? I wonder why?
Sorry. Go on.
Yeah, right. This this self sovereign
identity where you issue it yourself and then you you get
to, you know, you get to basically dictate it and show it
to others and be in control of that information.
That's not what we have with these digital ID systems, but
you could make the case that there's nothing farther more
than biometrics and that that it could be more secure.
My problem is not with that aspect.
It's the aspect with that mostly governments are responsible for
its implementation. And that I don't trust the
powers behind them to not abuse their powers, as we've seen,
we've seen over and over and over and over.
And so I don't trust the systems that are out there to make our
lives much, much harder. And it's also a system like once
you start to use everything with biometrics, you can't go back.
You know, if the rates change or the sales tax change is on your
purchases, there's no way to be like, Nope, I'm not doing this.
I'm opting out. Sorry, you're already, you're
already in the system for, for people who don't want to be in
the system, you'll never be in the system, which is a good
thing. But for people who have like
invested their wealth, time, attention, money, resources,
it's going to be a big shock. It's going to be a really big
shock to them. So look, I think potentially
there's a way for biometrics to be used safely, but what's
happening right now is not the way and it's really dangerous.
I mean, Catherine Orson Fitz often argues that technology is
a tool and we should discern. Yeah, and that's, I agree with
that. Like, you know, like with
everything, there's there's nuance.
And so, yeah, I think when when people began to see the QR codes
instead of the menus at the restaurant, they freaked out.
They're like, get this evil QR code away from me.
It's like, no, it's, it's, it's a QR code.
It's all it. Just opens a website.
It just opens a website. Yeah.
And I think you had a post about that, too.
But people were like, actually scared, you know, So it was
interesting. But these these are just tools
and you just have to be aware of of how they're built and who has
access to them and whether they have the capability to do this
data exchange piece. I keep bringing it up because
it's a really important part of digital public infrastructure,
right? This is a idea from the United
Nations Development Program, and it wants to combine three
pieces, of which digital ID is the first.
So you need your legal biometric identity, then you could have
your unified payment system, which means payments tied to
your digital identity. The last piece is data exchange.
And and that's the thing here, I don't trust the government with
all of its access to data, to not make my life harder if I
start to put everything on their data exchange.
But do you trust private companies more?
No, because they've been Co opted by the government too.
And, and I mean, you know, you see that there's actually, you
know, you could argue that they're, they're even worse than
the government in many ways. Maybe look at Facebook.
Look at Facebook for example, and how they try to manipulate
the elections in I think 2016. Remember that whole thing?
Yes, yes, yeah. And, and how they think they're
above the law. They're yeah, it's, it's crazy
amount of the power these companies have because there's
billions of people using their products.
And so it's like, I call this like the network blast where you
have billions of people using your products and you can change
how they use it all at one time, right.
Rolling out a software update. So Google and Apple work
together on contact tracing for the first time.
These two fierce competitors put their differences aside for the
betterment of humanity, right? No.
So, so they rolled this out to to, you know, billions of
people. Similarly with digital payments,
we didn't used to have digital payments got rolled out around
the same time from these two companies.
So we really have to be careful. They have their own agenda and
really they, they, they serve the interests of the government.
They they kind of need each other as public private
partnership. I love that you've dropped in
the UNA few times because right now what is driving me up the
wall is the G20 is about to happen here in South Africa as
you might know, and part of the agenda is discussing a
multipolar carbon economy which directly links to digital ID and
social credit scoring. But why I'm getting so annoyed
by the whole thing is that my fellow S Africans are so
intensely focused on race and race issues that they're
completely forgetting because, because Trump, Trump announced
that he's going to boycott the, the, the summit.
And then I think Argentina's president did the same, which is
great. I think it should be boycotted,
but they're focusing on racial conflict rather than the G20
itself and and what it's attempting to do.
Yeah, and and so it's a clown world, right?
And, and the problem is this Hegelian dialect, like I think
people's people let their emotions be used against them
way too easily, way too easily. And not saying that these aren't
impactful issues, but, you know, these problems are allowed to
happen. You know, and I've, I've
travelled the world a little bit this past year.
Immigration is a thing that's happening everywhere.
I was talking with some people from Iceland the other week
there, they said that a fifth of their population is now
immigrants from other countries, happening in the UK, happening
in the Europe. It's being weaponized.
And so that people like Trump and Malay can come along and
say, this is such a problem, we're now going to need
biometrics at the border. So the problem reaction solution
that that we all know about is happening.
And it's important to keep sight of the the real issues on all
this, right? Which I think digital ID is
definitely one of them. I think the immigration issue
is, is really important as well, But it's not something that you
can like pitch the government do something about this.
And then they're like, OK, we're going to deport a a few people.
No, it's like if these people are here and if you can't get
rid with millions of people, what's the next best thing to
educate, to educate and integrate them on the ways of
life there so there can be harmony.
That's what I personally believe.
Being an immigrant to the United States, it's like I've kind of
seen and in the United States, it's like kind of it's kind of
backwards because you go into every kitchen, like you go into
a restaurant in their kitchen. Guess who's working there?
Undocumented illegals. So you can't have it both ways
you want. And then you got is it, is it
Keir Starmer who who said that if the UK implements digital ID,
it will help with the immigration issue?
Yeah, I don't know what he's smoking.
He's going to too many of those Boris Johnson parties.
He. Yeah.
So it's like, how's the thing on your phone going to stop boats
of people from coming into your country?
It makes no, no sense at all. And yeah.
And so like Keir Starmer is a great example of someone who
just went too far. He went way too hard.
And and people are rightfully protesting.
Maybe it was actually a measured move because we know that they
kind of like to measure the pushback against these things.
So they're like, all right, hey, Keir, say the most ridiculous
thing, which is actually truthful because I do think
that's on timeline with 2030. Going back to the UN sustainable
development goal target 69, everyone will have a legal
identity by 20-30. They want to reach that goal.
So Keir Stormer saying that is if it's right on the timeline
and it should freak everyone out.
But I, I think I've spoken a bit enough about this problem to say
that right now the most important thing that you could
be doing is going out and Pete person and saying, hey, this
digital ID system is coming. They might have me scan, scan an
ID or want to get an ID to interact with you even.
And if it's a farmer, if it's someone in your local community,
you just have to make a promise to each other with a handshake,
not a key exchange, that whatever happens, we're not
going to let this digital ID system come up between US.
And if you do that for 200 of your local community members,
you get all your needs met. You actually have data that's
more valuable than any digital ID system.
I love this example that you use in your report of how digital ID
can work just on a real in a real world example.
So you I'm going to read it. Fred wants to go to his local
pub using a digital ID. Fred signs up for digital ID.
His national ID system creates A credential that contains his
name, birth date, gender, and a photo.
The issuing system then signs the credential with the private
key. The credential is sent directly
to Fred's digital identity wallet on his mobile device,
where it is saved. Fred goes to the pub he's asked
for his digital ID. He scans his phone which
receives a request from the bar requesting the relevant
credential which is his age, which is then shared.
The Bars Digital ID Terminal verifies their credentials
signature with the public key of the National ID system.
Yeah, it'll happen instantly. Yeah, it's these, these systems
are meant to be fast. You know, they're already,
they've been testing this out at the airports and in many places.
You know, Estonia, Denmark, they've already got this system
implemented in in those shops. So they've been working on it.
It will be fast. It'll will be convenient.
You're going to feel like the idiot again at the airport line
who doesn't go through the facial recognition line.
You know, I'm I'm always on the line that has to wait.
And that OPS out of it through photo.
But they will use inconveniences to get to you.
But yeah, so, so, so the the interesting thing about that
example, and here's the things that people don't think about.
Once you share your digital ID with the bar, what's them to
what's to stop them from just using your identity?
There's no safeguards right now. This is all like new, new
frontier technology and you have to trust that the people who
build these systems will care about your security and privacy
and they don't. And as someone who runs a
security and privacy company, I'd know how hard it is.
It's like it takes a lot of effort.
It's most of your effort trying to make things as private as
possible. So I, I really don't think
they'll do that. They'll go for ease of use to
make it more adoptable by people, which makes sense.
But on the back end, you can have your identity stolen very,
very easily. And and yeah, so, so I think
that, you know, in the next few years, we'll begin to see more
of this happening in the banks. You'll get to see this happening
on more and more websites here in the US.
There have been several stays states like Utah and Texas,
which have passed age verification laws.
Those that's happening. We know that Australia already
has these laws. Digital IDs are just a natural
next step to access some parts of the Internet.
But all this talk of credentials and private key and public key
sounds eerily close to Bitcoin. What do you make of
cryptocurrency? Yeah, it's a cosmic joke, isn't
it? That cryptography can both be
potentially our saviour and our our worst demon Bitcoin, The the
origins of Bitcoin. I'm, I'm OK with not knowing
because there are things like, you know, the, yeah, the, the
like the Shah 256 and which is the, which is the crypto suite
for Bitcoin and that being created by, I forget what it is,
like NIST, National Institute for Standards and Technology,
which is, you know, closely related to the CIA or, sorry,
the NSA. So you could say, all right,
hey, there's some weird government tags there.
You could say that that is suspicious.
And we don't know who provided Bitcoin.
At the same time, I think that when these programs get rolled
out to people, they don't know what is possibly going to
happen. And what they discovered was
wow, people want people want a freeway to exchange and contract
outside of the banks. And so it did start a movement.
Now, unfortunately you from I have come across the work of
Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin. They've done a really good job
talking about how Bitcoin has been Co opted.
It's been, it's been neutered really to prevent it from being
the people's money. And now people are just like
hold and they're just holding their Bitcoin in the hopes that
one day it'll be worth something.
That's not how that they're going to, that's not how they're
going to get rich. And I'll just warn people with
this. What's the point of Bitcoin if
you there's, if there's no one you can name in your real life
that would accept Bitcoin? It's useless.
It's useless in that sense. The only way it'll be useful is
if you scanned your face, your biometrics, go through an
exchange and pay taxes on it. That's the only way it'll be
useful. It is pretty useless, I can't do
anything with it. Yeah, there, there are some
people I see that point and I think that I think that it
requires a lot of effort to, to make it useful.
It literally requires, and I've done this in different places
and there's people doing this in different countries where
there's like initiatives to try and get their local vendors to
use Bitcoin. It's a bit of setup, right?
3030 minutes to an hour talking with people, getting them to
accept it. I think it has the potential as
an alternative monetary system. But is it there right now?
No, I think it's unfocused. At the same time, there's
there's, there's private crypto currencies that I believe in a
bit more like Monero. And there are peer-to-peer
markets which you can do all sorts of interesting stuff, not
just, I'm not talking about the darknet markets, but you can
exchange dollars, you can pay each other in different payment
apps and that can be facilitated through crypto.
So it really has its use online. And I really hope the next few
years is digital ID system gets rolled out, we start to use more
of it in person. Now I don't think this should be
the only way to do things, but it is really, really useful for
remote payments. I don't have to drive to
someone, give them a several coin or whatever.
It has its use in the grand scheme of things.
Are we just being old farts? Being Luddites?
Are we just those people who are moaning about the inevitable
future? Luddites.
Yeah, there have been Luddites in every generation, and I think
we're an important aspect of society.
But this, this digital ID, it's different than anything we've
ever seen in the past because it's the final, it's the final
component of this digital control grid.
It's a system that denies our very right to exist unless we
let a third party name it. Big tech company or government,
create an identity for us. And we only exist if they do
that for us. And that's the danger because
people need to remember their own authority.
They have authority over their own lives.
They can even impact their other people's lives.
They can impact their communities.
So I think that all of these things are important.
Like knowing your identity as a Luddite means that you know what
values you stand for, and the next few years will make that
really obvious, what you stand for.
You can either stand for complaining about the world and
scrolling, doom scrolling, or you can get off your ass and do
stuff in the real world, which is what I advocate for and I
know it's what you advocate for too.
So I think yes, be be a Luddite, but also don't shoot yourself in
the foot if there are tools that can help you along the way.
What are some some things that you recommend?
Right now I think that everyone should be using AD Google phone
and a Linux laptop. And so my company above phone we
have the yougled phones and Linux laptops.
You don't. We're not the only game in town.
I highly encourage people to install it on their own if they
know how. I've got resources and guides on
take back our tech.org also on my substack tbot.substack.com
and the reason is is because these devices aren't pre hacked.
No one can install something on it without your knowledge,
unlike a Windows computer, which you have to scan your face to
get into it. You don't have to, but it's one
of the ways you use your fingerprints.
There's AI on every aspect of the computer that's analysing
everything you do, and you don't have any choice.
You have no personal choice or freedom to opt out of updates.
You are along for the ride and Bill Gates is running the train.
So same thing with your phone. Everything I mentioned when it
comes to your phone is is the same issues.
Apps can be updated without your knowledge.
Things can change. Often times I tell iPhone users,
hey, go look at your setting. Look, here's this setting that
has began scanning all the photos on your phone already
with AI and they're being added to a massive landmark database
that Apple has, right? So you don't have control of
your phone really. So we've been encouraging people
to use dehooled phones for about 5 years and we think we have
pretty much all the important things figured out.
So navigation, there's tools on our phones that let you navigate
without even being connected to the Internet.
You can download a map of the world and you know in real time
and you have that map and then you can put your phone on
airplane mode and get turned by turn navigations because turns
out GPS is a passive system. If your phone is listening to
radio waves, it's not actually needing to send anything out.
Similarly with YouTube, there are ways you can watch YouTube
privately and download the videos directly to your phone,
right? This is transforming our
relationship with technology. So if you want to learn more
about that, I have a webinar that I did.
You could go to learn.abovephone.com where I
just go over everything, the phone, the laptop do.
And I think this is a really important way to opt out of
digital ID because again, if you use a pre hacked device, it
could just be imposed on you one day.
The cameras are definitely running and have gone over your
face, and it might even become required to use a device at a
certain point. You can download maps of your
area and then you're saying you can turn your phone into
airplane mode and still use Google Maps?
Yes, there's the name of the app is called Open St.
Maps and it's and it's not Google Maps but it is a non
profit effort and it's an app that you can use on AD Google
phone. You can also use it on a normal
Google phone for, for the time being anyways, in two years,
Google's is imposing new rules and we can talk about that.
But yeah, so I mean, I've, I've taken a tour of the Eastern
United States using this open source map alone, open St.
Maps, Android. And you can, what I really like
about it, like what I've been doing with it is instead of
using Google Maps, I don't use Google.
I try to avoid it at all costs. And I, and I'm building a record
of things in my hometown that I want to go do, like the organic
markets, the cafes that I go to. And I'm saving it and all I have
it on like a local map database. The really cool part about it is
I can share this file with other people and they can import it,
right? So it's like we have to take
back our power when it comes to this technology.
A map is a really useful tool. Like I, I don't need a map if
I'm in somewhere I, I know well, but it's a very useful tool.
Like imagine having a little bit of a community, you kind of know
all the places in town to hang out that don't impose digital
ID, that don't get processed food, that type of thing.
And when someone is trusted enough in your community, you
can actually provide this map file to them.
Here you go. Here's everything on our
network. So that's kind of the techno
optimist vision I have in for the future.
Would you would you recommend people put the devices onto
airplane mode when they leave the house?
If you're going to a protest, most definitely.
If you're going to any form of like, what do I even say?
If you're going to go be active for A cause somewhere that might
attract any sort of attention, just leave your phone at home.
Don't even take it with you. So there's Google's Sensor
Vault, which you may have heard about.
That's the Geo fencing database. This is a new type of law
enforcement tool that lets them pick a date and a time.
So they have a law enforcement, they want to know where someone
was at the scene of the murder. So they go on the map, they draw
a box around the area, they pick a date and the time, and they
can actually pull up all the Google phones in that area.
So they've had the power to do this.
They used it during the infamous January 6 protests to catch
people. They've used similar things to
around like these. These are the most popular types
of law enforcement warrants in the United States right now.
I think it's like a few thousand a year.
But they've blown up in popularity because it's less
groundwork that they have to do. And they also land innocent
people in jail. God forbid you let someone
borrow your phone or you log into your account on someone
else's phone that happens to be a murderer.
And I talk about this on the webinar.
There have been innocent people who were in jail and lost a lot
of things because they were more likely to trust the data than
they were that person's alibi. So all these crazy things can
happen when people use big tech phones and they don't realize
it. There are a lot of things that
happen on the back end and I haven't even talked about the
data centres or anything like that yet.
Yeah, you said a moment ago that Google have got new rules coming
in the next two years. Yeah, so with the rise of open
source software, Linux laptops and de Googled phones, Google is
actually threatened. They're threatened by this.
And so earlier this year it goes in March or May, they published
A blog post saying, Hey, guys, we we studied the different
place where you can download apps.
To provide some context, if you use an Android phone, you can
install an app from anywhere. They're called APK Files, and
it's an app you can install on your phone.
You can get it directly from the developer's website.
So if you use maybe a web browser or search engine, you
might realize you can download it directly from their website.
It's not like that for iPhones. They can only download things
through the App Store, right? So, so Google had this freedom
and it allowed for this community to develop of people
building free and open source apps where the code was
transparent. So you could see that there was
no tracking in it. And this is too popular now
because Youtubers are talking about it, people are talking
about it, people are using it. And now this community has grown
so big, Google says, all right, we got to lock this down.
And what they're doing is by 2027, they will make side
loading, installing apps on the side impossible for anyone who
uses a Google phone. That goes for Google, Samsung,
Chinese brands like Xiaomi, OnePlus, anything that is
licensed Google operating system.
They won't be able to install the rest of the apps that are
already sitting out there. So it creates this digital wall
between US and it sucks for them.
It sucks for people who use big tech phones because it's not for
the people who use the Google phones.
It's for the people who use big tech phones.
When I. Was in China, I saw, I saw what
Huawei, they've now developed their own operating system and
their own apps and they've they've developed an entire
ecosystem. What do you know about that?
Yes, it's the battle for battle for app stores.
This is so this is crazy, but Google can bully multi billion
dollar companies around. It's actually really cool to
learn about this, but basically what you see is Google has these
malicious or exploitive licensing agreements.
Hey, you want to use the Google operating system on your phone
and get all the benefits that it comes with.
Okay, that's great, but you must only use the Google Play Store.
You can't market your own Play Store and you can't pre install
these certain apps on the phones like Epic Games, Fortnite.
That was a whole controversy. So Huawei has probably been
dealing with these issues under Google and they've decided, all
right, we don't want to deal with this.
We don't want to continue to offer Google Play.
We want to build our own ecosystem.
So now they are launching this alternative and I'm not sure how
it's going to go. They'll have to work something
out with Google to at least be able to to run the this called
Google Play integrity, which is a check to make sure it's a
licensed Google device. So they'll need that because a
lot of apps around the world will require this.
But if they don't get it, which they might not because China
has, you know, so much going for it and so much like people who
are dedicated to it, If it just works with Chinese apps, I'm
sure that's all right, too. So, yeah, big tech companies are
starting to realize that they shouldn't be bullied by Google.
There's also some antitrust rulings in the EU that have
pushed Google further back. What would your nugget of wisdom
be? Yeah.
So you have about two to three years before this starts
becoming real and it starts to impact your life on a day-to-day
level. If you're in the EU, it'll
happen sooner. If you're in the United States
or Mexico, it might take a little bit of longer, take a
little bit longer, but it's happening.
Wherever you're at in the world, it's happening.
And you cannot let it get to a point where most people are
using this digital ID system because then there's no point
for them to continue adopting and they will put the walls up.
So imagine one day you get a notification from your bank
saying you don't have a digital ID.
You can't access your funds. Or you go to the grocery store
and those little doors and stuff that they have, those little
terminals that they have before you enter the store.
Now there's a place to scan your digital ID.
What are you going to do? If you don't do anything about
what I just said, you're absolutely fucked.
You're going to have to figure something out.
You're going to have to comply with a digital ID and everything
that comes after it, which means you'll be a slave in its own
way. Or you can take these next few
years to build that local community that's so important.
Have alternatives for this. When they tell you OK, you know
you can't access your bank account once, it's OK because
you have a barter network or you have an alternative currency.
You're invested in gold and silver, you're growing your own
food, you're more resilient when you go to the grocery store,
same type of thing. It's very important for us to
build these local networks now and for the communication side
to make sure you have devices that can't be hacked without
your knowledge. So the timeline is there.
This is another COVID in its own way, and it's setting the stage
for complete world domination. So reclaim your authority.
Is this the hill to die on? I think so, you know, the Agenda
2030 is, is one thing that that gets brought up over and over
again. And I think this is the, it's
the sucky part is this is like just the first piece of Agenda
2030. And once the digital ID is
there, the rest of things can come after it.
So I think this is the hill to die on this decade.
Who knows, maybe there'll be like a Skynet thing to fight.
Maybe you have to fight. Fight the robots and aliens next
year. Save your energy for that
digital ID this year. It's really easy, guys.
Just use a different device. We can fight the robots in
20-30. It'll be much better.
It'll be harder. All right, one last time.
How can my audience follow you? Yeah, so check us out on
Substack. That's TB, ot.substack.com.
If you want to learn about the tech solutions I brought up, go
check out our webinar at learn.abovephone.com.
We also have it's the end of the
year, so we're having a sale on privacy phones and laptops.
If you want to learn about that, go to abovephone.com/germ.
It's just Germ's name and. I didn't know about that.
Oh, I should. I should have mentioned it to
you. But, you know, we, we, Yeah, we
want. To go, I'm going to go have a
look. What's on there?
It's just your face, really, big, Germ recommends about now.
Just kidding. I do, I do.
I recommend. All right, Akima Noir, Thank you
for joining me in the Drenchers, my friend.
Thank you brother. It's Honor beyond.
Thanks everyone for listening.