Gates Foundation: “Digital IDs are an effective tool against poverty”

It looks like we can add another to the growing mountain of problems that digital IDs are going to solve for all of us.

We already know that digital IDs will help counter populism, and illegal immigration, and crime, and benefit fraud, and terrorism, and pandemics.

But they’ll help tackle poverty now as well. That’s according to a report published a few days ago by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

Digital IDs are an effective tool against poverty. A global solution is making them available to millions.

I do love “making them available” in that sentence. As if the world is full of people desperately crying out for digital ID that the powers that be have been unable to supply, when the truth is literally the exact opposite of that.

The aim of the report is promoting something they call Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), an “adaptable, modular architecture […] that any country could customize to meet its specific needs.”

For the last few years, MOSIP has been trialed in nine different countries across Africa and Asia, with over 90 million people signing up, the report calls it a powerful example of how low- and middle-income countries can harness open-source technology to improve lives and accelerate development.

The developers of MOSIP are so worried about poor people in the third world not having any proper identification that they – and their backers at the Gates Foundation and the Omidyar Network – are giving it away to any country that wants it for free.

Isn’t that nice of them?

But wait, there’s more good news! The developers of MOSIP believe very strongly that interoperability is…

a fundamental principle of good Digital Public Infrastructure

It’s a “fundemental principle”, you understand, NOT a method of control.

To sum up, the free software being funded by Bill Gates to supply digital IDs to the third world will all be based on the same proprietary code and be potentially interoperable.

…all to tackle poverty and “increase economic participation”.

Or terrorism.

Or to secure the border.

Or to protect the environment.

Or to combat money laundering.

Or help the unemployed.

Or to prevent pandemics.

Or to protect us from Artificial Intelligence.

It depends on where you live. Regional marketing, like Disney removes black actors from their Chinese posters.