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April 29, 2023 - To call this idea "bone headed" would be an understatement. Senator's Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) have introduced a bill they call "the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023." The bill moved out of committee at the end of March is will be considered by the entire Senate in the near future. If it becomes law, Americans will be forced to get a government issued digital ID number, and the government will have the ability to monitor virtually everything any American does. Such an ID is the beginning of a social credit system and it reeks of totalitarianism.
Somehow or another, the senators behind this bill have managed to come up with an argument that such an ID could be used to prevent identity theft. Ironically, it is more likely to increase the number of ID theft victims than it is to help them.
Any use of a digital ID would require the government to create a central database for those ID's. That database is going to be a target for hackers. And any argument that the government could protect such a database is laughable. All you have to do is look at the government's history of protecting data. It's abysmal.
They managed to allow the Chinese government to break into the Office of Personnel Management database a few years ago, and they lost the data on every single government employee and contractor at that time. Prior to that, they had an employee walk out of the Pentagon with a database of military personnel and retirees. In each case, millions of names were exposed.
Within just the past few weeks it has come to light that an Air National Guardsman was posting classified documents on a gaming portal. His crime when on for more than a year and he was only caught because someone blew the whistle on him. Not because federal law enforcement agencies were on the ball.
Once a digital ID is in place, the government can simply turn it off for people with points of view that they disagree with. If that happens to you, you won't be able to open a new bank account. Moreover, if you have an existing bank account, you may not be able to access the funds in it. And that's just one example of how it might be used. It eliminates any remaining privacy protections that Americans have left from the government.
The concept of forcing people to get a digital ID is both foolhardy and Orwellian. But the push for it isn't likely to go away unless Americans begin to publicly oppose the idea. The time to speak up is now. Call your Senators and tell them not to support Senate Bill 884.
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Politics & Politicians 
