It's out with one dystopian tactic and on to the next for the British government’s ongoing assault on free speech.
London’s Metropolitan Police force told The Daily Mail on Monday that it is pulling back on investigating "non-crime hate incidents," and instead will “focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations.” But after the U.K. government’s full-throated attack on free speech these last couple of years, it is going to take a lot more than words to restore trust. A good start would be dismantling other dystopian policies that seem to be a censorship crackdown waiting to happen, like its ever-expanding digital identification program.
The U.K. is using the excuse of mass migration to demand that all working citizens obtain a digital identification. But that supposedly narrow application of the digital ID has already widened, as the U.K. government rolled out a digital ID for military veterans on Oct. 17.
The government announced the rollout in a press release. “Nearly 2 million veterans can now get and benefit from a digital version of the Veteran Card, which will make it easier and quicker to access key services and discounts via their smartphones,” it bragged. “By downloading the optional card on their smartphones, former Service Personnel can show their veteran status to access everything from housing and mental health support to reduced entry at museums and money off their shopping – all at the touch of a button.”
MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris decried “the West’s digital ID creep” and cited its Orwellian connotations. In fact, ominously, the new U.K. announcement described the veterans’ digital ID as part of “government plans to deliver national renewal by transforming public services so they work around people’s lives and not the other way round.”
It is not a far leap to imagine how a digital ID could be used to stifle free speech. The China Podcast reported that in China, a precursor digital ID was weaponized to allow the government to punish anyone who posted online content or attended protests criticizing authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the UK push for digital IDs comes after the enforcement of disturbing censorship policies.
For example, comedian Graham Linehan announced on Oct. 20 that the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service dropped his case after his highly-publicized arrest at a London airport for social media posts critical of transgenderism. Linehan vowed on X to “hold the police accountable for what is only the latest attempt to silence and suppress gender critical voices on behalf of dangerous and disturbed men.”
Indeed, the government’s Prevent program classifies concerns over mass migration as terrorist ideology, and British mother Lucy Connolly was only recently released after serving prison time for anti-mass migration X posts that she later deleted.
Despite backlash from citizens about the digital ID rollout, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer rejected critiques of the ID by simply shifting the blame of the mass migration problem onto the citizens dissatisfied with the crisis, rather than the politicians who encouraged it while pushing digital ID.
It’s also possible Britain's digital ID nightmare is not so far away, as Joe Biden already laid the framework for a digital currency here in America.
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