by Bonnie Flaws

The Government’s Digital ID infrastructure is well advanced, including cross-border plans with Australia for an ‘ANZAC ID’ and a globally interoperable digital passport. Minister for Digitising Government Judith Collins wants us to “get on with it” and for New Zealand to be a world leader in Digital ID, but she is not addressing the threat to civil liberties or balancing the digitisation of everything with the right to privacy.

A monster population database, real-time GPS tracking on your motor vehicle, the biometrics scanning made lawful by our Privacy Act, the social media ban for under 16s, which means you’ll need to provide ID to go online, the new era of service delivery using a government-controlled Digital ID, and globally interoperable digital passports.

It goes on. A never-ending assault on our digital rights and data privacy.

Are you ready to be tracked, traced, monitored, measured and I’d wager, rationed in every which way, from your water use to your energy use? From your mileage to your meat consumption? From your personal spending to your carbon emissions? We have a privacy-less future ahead unless we force a reckoning on the surveillance creep that is already wrapped around us and prevent it from going further.

At the opening of the annual government’s Digital IDentity hui on August 12, the Minister for Digitising Government (also the Minister for Everything) Judith Collins, proudly laid out the work the Department of Internal Affairs and other agencies have been doing to progress Digital ID in New Zealand.

“I don’t need to convince you that a modern system using biometrics, verifiable credentials, and digital wallets is not only more user-friendly, but also more secure and private. Our government is committed to delivering this and ensuring all New Zealanders have the tools to fully participate in a modern Digital Identity environment. I’d be surprised if anyone here is feeling sentimental about the plastic cards still hiding in your wallets. Over the past twelve months, the government has made significant steps towards turning Digital Identity into a reality,” she said.

If she took a moment to read the wider room, the one outside the bureaucratic bubble, she might realise there has been significant discussion about the threat Digital ID poses going on for years in the independent media. In the UK, they have organisations like Big Brother Watch and Together Association, working to raise awareness of the threat such technology poses to civil liberties and privacy. The latter is calling for a Digital Bill of Rights.

Yet work to force all government interactions through a centralised identity database continues apace, and tick box consultation with the Privacy Commissioner more or less green-lights everything with a few pathetic caveats.

Back in June, I made an Official Information Act request to several government agencies to find out how well-advanced plans for Digital ID are, and in the interim, the Government has announced a fair bit. The response I received from the Department of Internal Affairs, which is leading this work, was still very useful: a high-level summary of its work on Digital ID. The information they provided, however, was anxiety-inducing.

Here’s an overview.

Intergovernmental collaboration and the ‘ANZAC ID’

The DIA is working with counterparts in the Australian (Department of Finance) and UK (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology) governments regularly, as well as with other unnamed governments, both bilaterally and multilaterally, to establish legislation and regulation for Digital ID services.

What is being developed is being designed specifically to align with these other jurisdictions, meaning the framework is ‘interoperable’ – it will work globally, or at least within a network of jurisdictions.

More specifically, the OIA reveals that the New Zealand Transport Authority and the DIA are working with state governments in Australia on the development of Digital ID services, including mobile driver licenses.

More detail was given on August 11, when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spoke to RNZ just after the annual Australasian heads of state meeting, this year held in Queenstown. In the interview, Luxon said that Australia and New Zealand would be “looking at” harmonising Digital IDs and Driver Licenses.

Getting rid of ‘dumb stuff’

“Yeah, I'd like to try and do everything we can to make everything as frictionless as we can. Within Australia, within the different states, they have big differences within New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, as to how their regulations are often very different at a state level … So in that context, they have got a major productivity challenge … we have a major economic productivity challenge … and it just makes sense to say ‘What are the dumb stuff going on that just could make both our economies benefit and do well.”

Journalist Corin Dann then asked, “So could we have an ANZAC ID or an ANZAC driver's license?”

Luxon responded: “Well you’d still have a New Zealand or a New South Wales one but you’d want to see what you could do to make that as seamless as possible, that actually is recognised in both places and is able to be used in both places … what more can we do on digitisation to get rid of paperwork, to get rid of just dumb stuff that is getting in the way and making more friction and difficult to move between both countries.”

Convenient, yes, but we must also consider how such technology may be used in other ways.

And, it rather begs the question: given what DIA said in the OIA, are they doing the same with the UK (and the other unnamed governments they’re working with), which is currently pushing mandatory Digital IDs?

Big Brother Watch, an organisation that campaigns against Government overreach, said that the BritCard would make Brits reliant on a digital pass to go about their daily lives.

“This system would fundamentally change the nature of our relationship with the state and turn the UK into a ‘papers, please' society. We all want to prove who we are safely, privately, and conveniently. But a mandatory Digital ID is not a magic solution for all situations. It is inconsistent with the values that underpin a free society and poses serious risks to privacy, security and equality …  A centralised Digital ID scheme would also be a honeypot for hackers and foreign adversaries, creating huge digital security risks for our data.”

Worryingly, in the UK, this policy now has cross-party support, with the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary and Tory MP Chris Philp getting behind Labour’s push. “I think any government of this country has to be prepared to do whatever it takes to protect our borders from illegal migration,” he told the BCC earlier this month. “I think [Digital ID] is certainly something we should be considering very carefully.”

Every interaction tracked

Once a mandatory Digital ID is adopted by the UK, it opens the door for New Zealand and other Commonwealth and Five Eyes countries to follow suit. Now, with the infrastructure all but in place, it becomes all the more likely. Remember former PM Jacinda Ardern’s flip-flop on mandatory Covid jabs?

The social license is something governments have to work for, but it is likely secondary in their considerations. That’s why governments use various selling points to their publics, depending on which issues they believe will gain traction. In the UK and the US, it's illegal immigration, in New Zealand and Australia, it's children’s safety online. Both real problems are begging for solutions, but ultimately, they are Trojan horses for a deeper agenda.

That’s when they do tell us what they want to do. The other trend is to keep schtum about their intentions until plans are well advanced, as with the Stats NZ statistical register, or in the UK, Operation Kelp, a secret plan drawn up by civil servants for a nationwide Digital ID, which would include personal unique identifiers (exactly what Stats NZ is doing).

The idea is to have these IDs for all our interactions with government agencies, and they openly talk about this. In the UK, Philp said there was a “strong case” to use them for claiming benefits and using the National Health Service and other taxpayer-funded services.

What happens then, when a beneficiary is denied their benefit because they haven’t had the latest Covid shot, or their child isn’t up to date on immunisation? Or what if they said something bad about the government on social media? The Digital ID would enable sanctions to be imposed on the person based on Government priorities.

Philp acknowledged that compulsory universal ID cards raised serious questions around civil liberties and personal freedom, and the risk of excessive state intrusion. “I think that is a legitimate and valid debate to have, and I think any responsible party should think about it very carefully.”

In New Zealand, the DIA is working with agencies that use RealMe Verified Identity or RealMe Login. This includes the Ministry for Social Development (hello beneficiaries) and the New Zealand Transport Agency, which is developing digital driver licenses.

There is also work underway with several agencies to facilitate the wider acceptance of Digital ID credentials and ensure that agencies can issue digital credentials in the future.

Currently, the Digital Identity Trust Framework operates on an opt-in basis, and consent is required for all use or sharing of personal information. It also prevents the creation of a centralised ID database that pools information. Providers must only hold or share information that is necessary and under explicit user control.

However, and this is important, Stats NZ’s statistical register appears to be a proxy for this. See my article The law changes enabling National ID by stealth, which lays out how changes to the Data and Statistics Act and the Privacy Act allow Stats NZ to link personal data using a persistent unique identifier. Also read the four-part series One Register to Rule Them All for more details on this.

So we should not be surprised if, at some point, an argument is made for the linking of Digital ID to the Statistical Register.

Word to watch: interoperable

UK journalist Lewis Brackpool received confirmation under FOIA that the British Government holds thousands of documents relating to its involvement in global digital governance and Digital ID programmes led by the UN and World Economic Forum. And while it would not release the documents, Brackpool said this confirmed the Government was “actively embedded in the development of global Digital ID systems outside of public scrutiny, and without parliamentary debate”.

Our own DIA is also working with multilateral organisations such as the OECD and APEC on its Digital ID infrastructure. However, it gets worse. The OIA revealed that the DIA is also doing harmonisation work with the Open ID Foundation, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

Under the trust framework, credentials must comply with various models issued by W3C and ISO.

Finally, the DIA is also working with the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s Traveller Identification and Facilitation Programmes on the development of a globally interoperable Digital Travel Credential (digital passport). Could this mean the ability to effectively impose global lockdowns in future?

It does make plain that plans for Digital ID are global and designed to be able to work all together – there will not be different systems in different countries, or at least not at the ‘back-end’. Alignment, harmonisation and interoperability all imply the same thing: the world is being shifted piecemeal onto Digital ID, and it will impact every area of our lives.

Time for a Digital Bill of Rights

The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties is perhaps the closest body we have to a watchdog on digital surveillance. A search of their website shows the council has made submissions on many government bills that pose a threat to liberty, including the Digital Identity Trust Framework Bill (now an Act, which came into force at the end of July).

However, this passage caught my eye, from its April submission on the Land Transport (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill, addressing new methods of congestion charging. While not specifically talking about Digital ID, the sentiment applies:

“For decades, Parliament has chipped away at our privacy and other civil liberties. Increasing amounts of information on us and our movements can be accessed by the police and other government agencies. We can all see the dangers of this data aggregation and loss of privacy, increasing state powers and reducing our liberties. In the USA, a country that has weak privacy laws, the aggregation of data and surveillance is being used to kidnap innocent people and send them to foreign gulags. In Aotearoa, we seem to be asleep at the wheel as our privacy, freedom of movement and freedom of association are eroded. We have already weakened our privacy protections and enabled police access to numerous privately run surveillance systems. Instead of slowing the rate of erosion, we need to stop all erosion and urgently start restoring our liberties.”

Perhaps it’s time for New Zealanders to call for a Digital Bill of Rights. Like the Together Association’s draft, this could include:

• The right to choose digital or offline options
• The right to free expression and information
• The right to privacy and data protection
• The right to financial freedom and privacy
• The right to protection from surveillance
• The right to transparency and digital justice
• The right to a free and open internet

Bonnie Flaws writes on Substack at Byline Babylon.