Why is everyone trying to convince the public to use digital wallets for everything?
For years the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been trying to force Real-ID’s down Americans throats. But a recent announcement on their Science and Technology (S&T) website revealed just how committed DHS is to tracking every American digitally.
DHS’s latest idea is to offer companies a "Prize Challenge" to convince the public to use their digital wallet for travel and much more.
"S&T uses prize competitions to invite ideas and solutions directly from the public, or crowd, called crowdsourcing. Prizes enable us to engage citizen-solvers in prize competitions for top ideas and concepts, and breakthroughs in science and technology to help DHS."By offering corporations money to develop a better digital biometric wallet, DHS has entered into the business of bribery. Dictionary.com defines bribery "as the act of giving money (or something else of value) to someone to get them to do something you want them to do, especially something they’re not supposed to do."
The Feds should not be offering companies money to design better ways to collect information on the public. Period. Americans do not want our government collecting and storing our biometric information.
Companies can submit their designs for a better digital wallet beginning Tuesday 9/8/2020-Thursday 10/15/2020.
"S&T is calling upon innovators to design a better UI for digital wallets. The total prize purse is $25,000. Winning designs will be easy-to-use, trustworthy and improve the overall user experience and management of digital wallet-based credentials."As the video below explains, a better digital wallet will allow DHS and the TSA to have easy access to everyone’s personal information.
IDEMIA’s digital wallet stores all kinds of personal information
"DHS is looking for a UI design that supports best practices for visual consistency, ensures security and privacy, is interoperable, and can be integrated with existing back-end processes. The UI needs to instill confidence in the user of the digital wallet that their online interactions are secure and that the parties they are interacting with are legitimate. The goal of this Challenge is to foster better UIs for digital wallets to be used by DHS and anyone in the community."The main reason they are offering a prize challenge is to instill confidence in the public that storing your biometric information on a smartphone is secure.
DHS S&T anticipates the total prize pool is $25,000. The Challenge will be conducted in two stages.
Stage 1: Up to three finalists will each receive $5,000. Stage 1 finalists advance to Stage 2.
Stage 2: One grand prize winner will receive an additional $10,000 at the conclusion of the Challenge.
According to DHS’s "judging" section their new and improved digital wallet must be "easy-to-use" and follow the "World Wide Web Consortium’s" (WWWC) guidelines.
The WWWC’s orgins are highly suspect and scream DHS front company.
According to Wikipedia the WWWC was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science with support from the European Commission, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA’s involvement with digital wallets is a huge red-flag.
Companies like IDEMIA, YOTI and iProov are just a few examples of how much personal information, corporations and DHS will store on digital wallets.
A recent news release from YOTI about digital wallets in the United Kingdom proves that they will be used to buy alcohol, rent apartments and much more.
"Secondly, the government has signaled that there is legislation in the works to ensure that digital ID can be used as broadly as possible. We know there are some easy wins for the government, like changing the existing mandatory licensing regime for alcohol sales to allow retailers to rely on robust, privacy-preserving digital age verification. In addition, the industry seeks certainty that amendments, such as usage of digital ID for Right to Rent Checks, will continue after the COVID-19 pandemic ends."With so many red flags about digital wallets, one would do well to ask, do you really want to hand over your biometric identity to the Feds?
Are Americans ready to give up their last remaining vestige of privacy: their biometrics? Only time will tell.
