Identity Theft: The World is drowning in spam
“How ‘All the President’s Men’ went from buddy flick to masterpiece.”In fact, if you only have time to read one story all weekend, make it this one. (And here’s an interview that media reporter Elahe Izadi did with Hornaday on the “Post Reports” podcast.)
Two million more people at home on Census night – COVID-19 data insight
“A Digital Road to Hell”: NYU School of Law Sounds Alarm on World Bank’s Digital Identity Programs
The World Bank and its partners “argue that investing in digital ID systems is paving the road to an equitable digital future.” But instead “they may well be paving a digital road to hell.”
The World Bank and its partners claim that “investing in digital ID systems is paving the road to an equitable digital future.” But instead “they may well be paving a digital road to hell.”
Governments around the world are quickly but quietly designing, assembling and piloting digital identity systems, often with biometric components. They include the European Union, which itself comprises 27 member countries, the UK, Australia, Canada and dozens of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The spread of these systems across the Global South is being spurred by a new development consensus that asserts that digital identification can foster inclusive and sustainable development and is a prerequisite for the realization of human rights.
As the World Bank noted in 2017, over 1.1 billion people in the world are unable to prove their identity and therefore lack access to vital services including healthcare, social protection, education and finance. Most live in Africa and Asia and more than a third of them are children. In an ostensible bid to address this problem, the World Bank launched the Identification for Development (ID4D) program in 2014 with “catalytic contributions” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the governments of the UK, France, Norway and the Omidyar Network.
A Dangerous New Road
The program provides loans to help countries in the Global South “realize the transformational potential of digital identity,” and has been rolled out in dozens of countries, mainly in Africa but also in Asia and Latin America. The program is wrapped up in cosy buzz words such as “digital development” and “financial inclusion”, but it has led to the promotion of a dangerous new approach to digital identity systems. That’s the damning conclusion of a new 100-page study by the NYU School of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ), titled Paving the Digital Road to Hell: A Primer on the Role of the World Bank and Global Networks in Promoting Digital ID …
Scanned: Why Vaccine Passports and Digital Identity Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom, once vaccine passport and digital identity systems are established, mission creep is all but guaranteed:
One of the companies involved in the development of the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine passport, the US IT firm Entrust, said that the vaccine passport could also be “redeployed” as a nation ID card. This is despite the fact that a previous digital ID card scheme was scrapped in 2011 following a public outcry against the intrusion and potential for human rights violations it would entail.
In a blog written shortly before Entrust was awarded a £250,000 contract in May 2021 to provide the cloud software for the UK’s vaccine certification, the company’s product marketing manager Jenn Markey noted that:
Vaccine credentials can become part of the infrastructure of the new normal… Why not redeploy this effort into a national citizen ID program that can be used for multiple purposes, including the secure delivery of government services, secure cross-border travel and documentation of vaccination?
Since the publication of Scanned, in mid-March, the UK government has unveiled a plan for a national digital identity scheme, which will include some of the features proposed by Entrust.
The perpetrator, posing as Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, held talks via ZOOM with the mayors of Berlin and Madrid.
That’s according to Vitaliy Klitschko’s statement issued on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.
According to the mayor of Kyiv, "the enemy just can’t stop and keeps waging war on all fronts – including to spread disinformation and compromise Ukrainian politicians, in order to pit them with European partners so that they stop helping Ukraine."
As Klitschko noted, yesterday, on his behalf, the mayors of several European capitals were allegedly sent requests for a video conference via ZOOM, from a fake email address. "As our friends react quickly and support us, the mayors of Berlin and Madrid agreed to talk. So with the help of DeepFake technology, the culprit spoke to them, posing as Klitschko," the Kyiv mayor said.
According to Klitschko, law enforcement must investigate such actions and, If necessary, engage foreign experts.
"By the way," the mayor of Kyiv stressed, "hybrid war, Russian disinformation is one of the topics of the panel discussion in which my brother and I are to participate within the NATO summit in Madrid next week."
As Ukrinform reported earlier, the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection warns of a possible cyberattack aimed at Ukrainian telecom operators and providers.
The phishing letters come from an email address in the gov.ua domain (possibly compromised) and hold password-protected attachments, entitled "Protocol for family members of missing serviceman LegalAid.rar." The RAR-archive contains the document entitled "Algorithm_LegalAid.xlsm," the opening of which will lead to the download and launch of the DarkCrystal RAT malware.
