The EU Council just formulated new regulations (eIDAS 2.0) requiring persistent digital identifiers for every person and banning advanced encryption to protect those identifiers. The regulation also allows member states to further require that these identifiers be UNIQUE to each person.

These persistent, unique identifiers will be used in the EU Digital Wallet, which the EU_Commission has mandated every member state provide by next year (2024).

The eIDAS 2.0 regulations would require EU governments and companies doing business in the EU to create massive honeypots of data about every person touching their services. Moreover, the regulations *require* web browsers to trust state-issued Certificate Authorities even if they are known to be unsafe.

The fascist and communist governments of 20th-century Europe could only have dreamed about these levels of surveillance and control.

Civil society must push back by developing fully self-sovereign digital identity (#SSI) and using it wherever possible. We can’t go back to a pre-digital world, but we can shape our digital futures by building alternatives to the systems of control being forced on us. #OptOut

(Parliament and Council have reached a provisional agreement. The Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy will hold a final vote on December 7.

And yes, the Wallet will almost certainly hold CBDCs. https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13302/38

Yes, they seem confident this will pass.

(And you are right. When totalitarianism comes, it will be because people want to deny foreigners/illegals/criminals access to services and benefits that they believe should only accrue to “honest” citizens.

Unfortunately this is also how it has been playing out in the U.S. It may just take a little longer to get to a full “centralized ID wallet” here.)