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|  | It's surely just a coincidence that New York has passed its online digital ID law, just as the state has joined the ranks of states adopting mobile ID technology, enabling residents to convert their traditional driver's licenses or non-driver IDs into digital formats.
As of this week, New Yorkers can download the New Longyear Mobile ID app from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This digital version allows users to verify their identity at airports and other locations requiring ID. To set up their mobile ID, users must initially scan both sides of their existing physical ID card using their smartphone.
The launch was unveiled at a media event at LaGuardia Airport, where Robert Duffy, the federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, and other officials were present. During the briefing, it was stated that the introduction of mobile IDs is a significant step towards modernizing identity security and airport screening processes. Officials highlighted the optional nature of the digital IDs, noting they offer greater convenience without being mandatory.
Related: California Approves Online Digital ID Rules for Social Media Use
Currently, there is no mandatory requirement for businesses or law enforcement to accept mobile IDs, and acceptance is entirely voluntary. Businesses, including bars, may begin accepting mobile IDs immediately, provided they install a state-sanctioned verifier application.
According to a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul's office, the New York Mobile ID app is operational in nearly 30 airports nationwide, including all terminals at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports. New York is now among a growing list of states such as Arizona, Colorado, and Utah that have embraced mobile driver's licenses.
The shift to mobile IDs aligns with the broader trend of smartphones becoming digital wallets, capable of storing not just credit cards and IDs, but even car keys. However, this shift raises significant privacy issues. Digital IDs can be tracked more easily than physical cards, potentially exposing detailed information about individuals' movements and activities. There are concerns about how securely this data is stored, especially when managed by third-party vendors.
One major issue is the potential for increased surveillance. Digital IDs can be tracked more easily than physical cards, leading to the possibility of detailed tracking of individuals' movements and activities. This capability poses a threat to personal privacy, as it could enable both governmental and non-governmental entities to collect and analyze vast amounts of personal data without explicit consent.
Furthermore, the security of the data stored in digital IDs is a pressing concern. With third-party vendors often involved in managing these digital identities, the risk of data breaches or misuse increases. |  | Various elections are not the only thing Big Tech is "protecting" this summer: athletes competing in major sporting events are another.
Meta has announced that the "protection measures" that are to affect its apps (Facebook, Instagram, and, Threads) will also extend to the fans.
Regardless of the way Meta phrases it, the objective is clearly to censor what the giant decides is abusive behavior, bullying, and hate speech.
The events that draw Meta's particular attention are the European football championship (EURO 2024), and the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
To prove how serious it is about implementing censorship in general, the company revealed an investment exceeding $20 billion that went into the "safety and security" segment (often resulting in unrestrained stifling of speech and deplatforming.)
Coincidentally or not, this investment began in 2016, and since then, what Meta calls its safety and security team went up to 40,000 members, with 15,000 used as "content reviewers."
Before explaining how it's going to "keep athletes and fans safe," Meta also summed up the result of this spending and activities: 95% of whatever was deemed to be "hate speech" and similar has been censored before it even got reported, whereas some component of AI was used to automate issuing warnings to users that their comments "might be offensive."
Now, Meta says that users will be allowed to turn off DM requests on Instagram, isolating themselves in this way from anyone they don't follow. This is supposed to "protect" athletes presumably from unhappy fans, and there's also "Hidden Words."
"When turned on, this feature automatically sends DM requests — including Story replies — containing offensive words, phrases and emojis to a hidden folder so you don't have to see them," the blog post explained, adding, "It also hides comments with these terms under your posts."
This is just one of the features on Facebook and Instagram that effectively allows people to use these platforms for influence and/or monetary gain, but without interacting with anyone they don't follow, including indirectly via comments (that will be censored, aka, "moderated").
Meta is not only out to "protect athletes," but "educate" other users, this time on how to display "supportive behavior." It doesn't bode well that notoriously error-prone algorithms (AI) seem to have been given a key role in detecting "abusive" or "offensive" comments and then warning people they "may be breaking our rules."
But this "training of users" works, according to Meta, that shared testing of what they refer to as interventions showed that "people edited or deleted their comment 50% of the time after seeing these warnings." | |  | To accelerate its central bank digital currency (CBDC) development, Israel is pushing forward with the digital shekel initiative. The Bank of Israel (BoI) is set to collaborate with a range of service providers to create a sophisticated digital payment system based on this new currency.
Central Bank Digital Currencies have sparked significant controversy, particularly concerning privacy and civil liberties. One of the primary concerns is the potential for increased surveillance. Unlike cash transactions, which offer a high degree of anonymity, CBDC transactions could be meticulously tracked and monitored by central banks. This capability to log and trace every transaction made with CBDCs could severely undermine financial privacy, allowing governments to gather extensive data on individuals' spending habits and personal financial activities.
Related: Fed Governor Admits CBDCs Pose "Significant" Privacy Risks
Moreover, the enhanced government control over the money supply that CBDCs could provide raises further issues. With CBDCs, authorities might more easily freeze or seize assets without due process, potentially misusing this power to target political opponents or suppress dissent. The concept of programmable money, where the government could dictate how, where, and when money can be spent, also poses a risk. While this could be utilized for beneficial purposes such as directing stimulus funds, it also opens the door to excessive control over individual financial behavior.
Israel's central bank outlined its plans in an announcement, revealing the launch of the "Digital Shekel Challenge." This initiative, inspired by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub's "Project Rosalind," aims to explore advanced API prototypes. The BIS project, conducted in partnership with the Bank of England, serves as a model for this Israeli endeavor.
Within the framework of the challenge, the BoI will offer a sandbox environment equipped with an API layer. Participants will compete to develop real-time CBDC payment solutions designed for widespread public use.
Related: Biden Signals Plan To Destroy Financial Anonymity With CBDCs
Shauli Rejwan, managing partner at Masterkey Venture Capital in Tel Aviv, shed light on the program's structure in an interview. He described the challenge as a three-phase process: initial applications and presentations, subsequent access to the new network for selected projects, and a final presentation to a panel of judges, many of whom are prominent figures in the crypto community.
"This initiative is a significant step for the Israeli ecosystem, potentially bridging the gap between the web3 industry and government, even though DeFi, ZK, and permissionless solutions are not yet being considered," said Rejwan.
Invitations for participation have been extended to entities from the private sector, public institutions, and academic circles. The central bank emphasized a preference for innovative and original uses within the payments domain, whether these are enhancements to existing systems or entirely new applications.
The initiative also allows participants to tailor their solutions to specific niches and unique scenarios, despite the universal applicability of CBDCs.
Critics also worry about the implications of CBDCs on financial inclusion and freedom. While proponents argue that CBDCs could help provide banking access to the unbanked, the same technology could be exploited to exclude or discriminate against certain groups. This could lead to situations where access to financial services is restricted based on compliance with government policies, thus eroding personal freedoms and potentially integrating into social credit systems where financial privileges are tied to behavior. |  | SimpleX - an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that its founder touts as the first and possibly the only one that operates without any identifiers - has rolled out a new version.
The messaging and application platform, which those developing it say doesn't even use random numbers or cryptographic keys to identify user profiles (in addition to not requiring phone numbers and usernames) has several new features in version 5.8 that was released earlier this month.
Related: No Phone Numbers. No Usernames. A Possible Game-Changer For Private Messaging.
The focus of the upgrade has been to enhance the product by tackling one segment of user privacy protection that had not been properly addressed, despite the effort to eschew various kinds of identifiers.
That segment has to do with message routing and IP addresses. In different scenarios, recipients were able to see and track IP addresses of senders - a major drawback and criticism received by this privacy and security-focused app.
Using a VPN or Tor was a transport overlay network workaround, but SimpleX developers opted out of now embedding Tor in the app, despite the many similarities they share through incorporating various methods of IP address protection.
The reasons for this decision are primarily some of the habitually weak points of Tor, such as latency, the resources it uses, and error rates. On top of that, there are jurisdictions around the world that ban or restrict the use of this particular overlay network.
Importantly, perhaps, as the post notes, Tor "doesn't solve the problem of meta-data correlation by user's transport session" - and working around this problem requires even more resources.
For that reason, SimpleX, while announcing plans to continue to support Tor and other overlay networks, opted for a new private message routing protocol that "provides IP address and transport session protection out of the box."
According to SimpleX, while building on the Tor design, this new method means that the forwarding relay is always chosen by the sender and the second by the recipient.
"In this way, neither side of the conversation can observe IP address or transport session of another," the post explained.
Another advantage of the new protocol is the forwarding relay preventing man-in-the-middle attacks, via cryptographic signing that allows the client to "verify that the messages are sent to the intended destination, and not intercepted."
Other new features include customizable Android and desktop themes and more group options that allow sending images, files, and media, "and also SimpleX links only to group administrators and owners." | | Thanks for reading,
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