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. 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.