the delusion of the benefits digital precision - from foundational identity to financial inclusion - ignores the root causes

I'm sitting in ID4Africa and hearing the rapid advances in deploying national digital identity across an amazing number of countries, and a lot of attempts to paint a rosy picture of the ethical, policy, legal, and societal considerations of the design of such systems.

but this seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or indeed, two carts before two horses.

people aren't excluded because they don't have identity - they are prevented from establishing a solid basis for id, because they are in a marginalised group.

people aren't financially marginalised because an organisation cannot do an affordably KYC on them. They're not eligable for loans because they don't earn enough, or because they take legitimate exception to the notion of debt. and they don't want to store value in money, but might prefer collective ownership of resources (like common land or barns, or rights of way, clean rivers and air). Counter example - Universal Basic Income solves a lot of financial exclusion but doesn't require digital id.

the drive does seem to be somewhat driven by the OCD nature of governments once they get their hands on computers - instead of rejoicing in diversity, everything tends to reductionism (once again)

Do you need to have an id to have the right to be educated and informed (so that you can plant rice in the right place at the right time, for example)?

the reductionism is also I think coupled with the completely incorrect notion that if you assign some unique bit pattern to distinguish an entity from another entity, that you have more knowledge (and therefore maybe power) over that entity As the prisoner (No. 6) said | am not a number, I am a free man".

Also heard someone claim that the acceleration towards global digital id was driven by the inclusivity achieved by its use during the Covid-19 pandemic - a claim made with a refreshing lack of the slightest bit of evidence.

Indeed, most of the national id systems are touted on the basis of also allowing fraud detection but note, in the UK at least, underclaiming of benefits massively outdistances fraud, and I'm guessing that's due to failure to be inclusive, whereas the fraudsters are likely sophisticated anyhow. So the goals are misaligned with the rhetoric.

Panglossian