Lord, protect the freedom we still experience in our nation today. Please heal our land and give us wisdom of how to move forward.

You’re accustomed to keeping your driver’s license with you, but states are increasingly rolling out digitized versions that “go way beyond what a driver’s license is about.”¹ Arizona, for instance, released a mobile driver’s license (mDL) app in March 2021, and Eric Jorgensen, director of the motor vehicle division of Arizona’s Department of Transportation, told Government Technology:²

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“I actually hate the term ‘mDL’ because it doesn’t recognize the power of what we’re doing here … The whole concept is that we’re providing a way to remotely authenticate a person, to provide a trusted digital identity that doesn’t exist today.

Once we provide that, we’re opening doors to enhanced government services. Also, the government can play a key role in facilitating commerce, providing a better citizen experience and providing for the security of that citizen …” . . .

GET Group North America is working fervently to create “secure ID credentials,”³ which includes the release of an international standard for mobile driver’s licenses and mobile IDs (mID). The standards were approved for publication August 18, 2021, clearing the way for “global ID and driver’s license issuers to confidently deploy mDL solutions, and for verifiers around the world to implement or adopt mDL readers.”⁴

GET’s Mobile ID also intends to go far beyond a typical driver’s license to act as a digital identity that will tie in to retail, health care, law enforcement and travel sectors.  . . .

mDLs and mIDs are also intended to provide a streamlined identification verification system that can be used globally, doing away with different IDs for individual states. . . .

Ultimately, the IDs will also act as vaccine passports, making it easy to display whether you’ve gotten a COVID-19 injection — and any other future injections that come about — in order to go about your daily life. . . .

Only a handful of states currently offer mDLs and uptake is facing hurdles because, while the mobile driver’s licenses are available, the technology to read them isn’t being widely used — yet. The plan is that police departments, businesses, state agencies and more will accept, or require, mDLs in order to verify identity. In Colorado, at least 100,000 residents have downloaded the state’s myColorado app,⁷ which offers a digital ID and vaccine record.⁸

In Delaware, more than 10,000 people downloaded the state’s digital ID app in a six-week period.⁹  . . .

“One person working at the center of the mobile ID movement believes state CIOs should form closer partnerships with DMVs. Matthew Thompson is senior vice president for civil identity, North America, at IDEMIA, a company that partners with 34 state DMVs on physical driver’s license solutions.

The company has partnered with three states on mDLs so far. He says that governors and state CIOs should look at their DMV not just as an agency that provides driver and vehicle services, but as one that can operate as an identity management bureau for the entire state and provide verification services to enable e-government.

‘State CIOs need to better understand the [role] that trusted identity plays in driving their entire digital transformation,’ Thompson said. ‘They have a built-in identity bureau in their state that has a system of record that provides a route of trust that other agencies can benefit from immediately.’” . . .

In certain states, including Arizona and Georgia — and soon Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, Iowa, Utah and Connecticut — residents can use their iPhone and Apple Watches as a form of digital ID. Once your state ID is added to your device’s wallet, along with a photo of the card and your face, it will ask you to complete facial and head movements to set up your digital ID. . . .

In the state of New York, where those aged 12 and older are required to show proof of a COVID-19 shot to visit restaurants, gyms, meeting spaces and entertainment venues like aquariums, movie theaters and professional sports arenas, may use New York State’s Excelsior Pass to prove they’ve been injected. Now, New York is also working with IBM to possibly expand the Excelsior Pass to include driver’s licenses.¹³

There are also a number of other vaccine passport apps that can be added to digital wallets, including VaxYes from GoGetVax, which works with Apple Wallet and Google Pay.¹⁴ This raises red flags that digital ID verification is only the beginning of the surveillance that’s planned. Vox reported:¹⁵

“The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project also obtained a contract revealing that the state of New York has bigger plans for its Excelsior Pass than it initially disclosed, which could reveal the risks of similar digital ID programs.

‘It’s hard to trust the claim from officials that these apps are only going to do X or Y,’ Albert Fox Cahn, an attorney at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, warned in June, pointing to the potential expansion of the Excelsior Pass. ‘We see this clear pattern of them being installed for one purpose and then expanded for another.’”

Fox also raised concerns over New York’s Covid Safe app, which allows users to add a photo ID, vaccination card and COVID-19 tests results.^{16 . . .}

Some have speculated that the introduction of digital IDs and vaccine passports in the U.S. is laying the infrastructure for a social credit system. China’s social credit system, a massive undertaking of government surveillance that aims to combine 600 million surveillance cameras — about one for every two citizens — with facial recognition technology, has an end-goal of being able to identify anyone, anywhere, within three seconds.¹⁸

At present, the system is still disjointed and focused on corporate social credit more so than individual social credit, but it’s “evolving rapidly.”^{19 . . .}

Driven by fear, acceptance of “privacy-encroaching technology” that promises an illusion of safety is high. In the U.K., researchers from the University of Bristol conducted two large surveys about such technologies, with overwhelming positivity reported.²¹ This is the first measured public acceptance of location tracking through your cellphone that would allow health agencies to monitor your contact with others to target social distancing and quarantine measures.

About 70% of the respondents said they would accept such an app that they could choose to download and, surprisingly, 65% also said they would accept such an app even if it was mandated by the government and used to locate those violating lockdown orders and issue fines and arrests.²²

A second survey evaluated acceptance of vaccine passports, with 60% stating they were in favor and only 20% stating they were strongly opposed. The study’s lead author, professor Stephan Lewandowsky, described those opposed as “surprisingly low,” adding, “It’s fascinating how people seem increasingly receptive to their personal data being used to inform themselves and others about what they can and can’t do.”²³

The technology being used to roll out digital IDs is very similar to that being used to create vaccine passports. . . .

What do you think about the new driver’s license? Discuss in the comments. . .

(Excerpt from Truth Based Media. Photo by Canva.)