The Weekly Weird #18

Australia votes in "voluntary" digital ID, Democratic Party sues...democracy, a very special video message, England's shitty water, TV comedy is so last season, and some Zappa

Roll up, roll up, for another romp through the roiling Rorschach of world events trending towards totalitarianism!

Episode 110 is out this Sunday, with Andy Agathangelou, founder of the Transparency Task Force, a social enterprise in the UK campaigning for a fairer and more accountable financial system.

Well, this week’s been…interesting. Let’s get started!

Australia Votes In “Voluntary” Digital ID

Australian Finance Minister and Senator Katy Gallagher announced the passage of Australia’s Digital ID Bill on X today, using not one but two “party hat” emojis to celebrate the new law.

The first response, from a Chinese civil liberties activist account, was blunt.

So, on the one hand, “easier, simpler, and more secure,” and on the other hand, “11 years behind China.” Is it the former? The latter? Or could it be both?

Sky News Australia’s Caleb Bond shares one perspective on the bill, including the apparent ability of law enforcement to access citizens’ data without a warrant:

A Current Affair also covered the bill in February, asking if concentrating so much data in one place is really as safe as the government says it is. Their production team should be arrested for gross abuse of a green-screen. You’ll see what I mean.

Fun fact: There have been 3000 notifiable data breaches in Australia since 2020. That’s almost 1000 breaches a year, or more than two every day. That’s the cybersecurity environment in which higher data concentration is considered a good idea?

Australia’s former Privacy Commissioner delivers a killer sales pitch in the video (emphasis mine):

It’s going to significantly reduce the amount of times the information about you is stored with different organisation, the amount of times it’s all moved around, and each of the storages and move-arounds is a vulnerability that can be attacked by the bad guys. By making this simpler, smaller system, it will significantly reduce where these guys can put in their badness.

Well, we don’t want the bad guys putting in their badness, do we? That wouldn’t do. Let’s take that expert seriously, he speaks words good.

The presenter goes on to explain that “the scheme will be voluntary, at least until it’s not.”

Back to our friend the former Privacy Commissioner for more pithy insight:

What they’re doing is putting into the law the strongest protections possible against compulsory use, such that it will stand unless or until a future Parliament makes the change, and that’s democracy in action.

Brilliant.

Green Party Senator David Shoebridge was quoted as saying something very intriguing one day before the vote.

Genuine voluntariness and genuine consent is central to the work we’ve been doing to make this work better.

[…]

The initial drafting of the bill does not get it right. It’s more a loophole than a protection.

As per Financial Review:

Coalition spokesman Paul Fletcher said the two key issues were early access for business and ensuring the scheme is truly voluntary.

“Ensuring it is voluntary is a really fundamental issue for the Coalition,” he said.

“The legislation purports to give a guarantee of that, but we think it needs to be much stronger.”

So digital ID is voluntary, except it isn’t, but it will be after the law is passed, because the government promises to tighten the law after passing the law rather than fixing it before the vote, even though they can also make it mandatory after the vote, which they won’t because they said they wouldn’t, a promise we can take at face value because they made it voluntary like they said they would, by not making it voluntary but saying it was. Got it?

Let’s look at “early access for business.”

The Australian government will provide ID verification itself, through myGovID, but the private sector wants in and managed to extract a commitment to allowing them to provide accredited ID verification services to the public within two years.

From Financial Review:

Government backed ID apps, such as myGovID, are slated to be the first to digitally verify identity, so citizens can access federal and state services.

[…]

Businesses won assurances on Monday that they will be able to participate in the new digital ID scheme within two years.

[…]

Prior to assurances given on Monday, business had warned of delays in uptake of the new identification system. Identity providers Australian Payments Plus and Equifax, NAB, the Commonwealth Bank, the Australian Bankers Association and the Australian Retail Credit Association had all lobbied for earlier access and a definite timetable for private players to be brought into the scheme.

Among the ways the bill is being sold to the public is to crack down on identity theft:

The digital identification scheme is the centrepiece of a strategy to quash rampant identity theft, online fraud, scams and data breaches.

As an aside, the linked-to story in the above quote contains this little nugget:

A previous federal review found on average an Australian who had their identity breached spent about 23 hours responding with up to 37 different government and private organisations to resolve and restore their identity credentials.

Identity theft is rife, and awful, and the Australian government has a cunning plan.

Under the scheme people will no longer have to hand over paper-based documents and instead will be able to use their smart wallets to link credentials such as age, licences, Medicare and work permits to their chosen identity app.

Ah. To avoid hackers being able to access personal details, the government is creating an app (and a market for private apps to follow) that will be linked to all your key documents. That app will definitely not be hackable and will never be breached because…why, exactly?

The bill is touted as baking in localisation so that data is only stored in Australia, but the verification system will operate via the internet, which is everywhere, so…what?

Forget the worries for a moment. Just think of the wonders that digital ID will provide for citizens!

Check out this helpful graphic from the Australian Government’s Department of Finance:

Yeah, Amir definitely still has his mobile with him after his house was destroyed by a flood, because, unlike documents, phones are waterproof and never get lost.

It all sounds so great and convenient and totally voluntary! Is there a downside to the government digitising your identity?

From Simon Lee in The Conversation:

The technologies at the heart of digital ID are powerful and carry risks.

In particular, facial verification technology matches an individual’s face data against a recorded reference image. It may also incorporate “liveness detection”, which checks that the face to be verified belongs to a genuine individual requesting a service in real time (as opposed to a photograph, for example).

[New South Wales]’s digital identity initiative uses both these technologies.

One contested element of the bill is a prohibition on gathering racial or ethnic identifiers. In Australia, certain benefits are contingent on ethnic identity, and being unable to prove that identity digitally would make any digital ID useless to some Aboriginal and Torres Islander people.

As per Biometric Update:

Finance Minster Katy Gallagher rejected proposals to amend a prohibition on including racial identifiers with the incoming Australian national digital ID

[…]

A blanket ban on allowing the choice of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander to use a digital identity to verify that specific attribute is “restrictive,” AP+ chief executive Lynne Kraus told the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.

Another interesting element is the mention of charging for the digital ID.

The Department of Finance says that “the policy position in the Digital ID Bill is that individuals should not be charged to create or use a Digital ID in the Australian Government Digital ID System,” but goes on to add that “fees charged for Digital ID services in the private sector” will be exempted from that provision. So in two years, when the private sector is allowed to get involved, and “a future Parliament makes the change” to a mandatory digital ID, Australians could end up paying private companies for the verification services they’re required by law to use.

All this and more passed 33-26 in the Australian Senate, without debate.

According to the Epoch Times, several senators reported being aghast that “zero debate” was permitted.

Two days before the vote, Senator Alex Antic delivered a petition to the government, signed by 123,000 citizens, objecting to the bill, and to digital ID.

The response? Parliament voted on it without a final discussion, and without adding meaningful and clear language strictly guaranteeing the deal-breaker element of “voluntariness”.

To quote Australia’s former Privacy Commissioner, “that’s democracy in action.”

Speaking of which…

Democratic Party Sues…Democracy

The Washington Post ran with the headline Democrats are taking third-party threats seriously this time in an article that confuses contesting an election with dragging potential opponents through the courts.

Within the first few paragraphs, the messaging is established and embedded clearly, in a way that, once seen, cannot be unseen. Go check the link, read the first five paragraphs, and see if anything jumps out at you:

Democrats are clear

Democrats are prepared

Democrats have started to organize

Hey WaPo: Pravda, much?

Anyway, the gist of the article is lauding how the Democratic Party is prepared to fight the 2024 election, and then listing a bunch of lawsuits and sneak tactics.

What’s the Democratic Party plan for avoiding a washout thanks to Americans doing something undemocratic like not voting for their candidate? They’re filing complaints with the Federal Election Commission. There are complaints filed with secretaries of state, all against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s super PAC. There is opposition research being conducted. There’s “a super PAC called Clear Choice, aimed [at] stopping any third-party or independent candidates from gaining traction before the November election.”

In a section of the article titled The case against a third party, the paper with the strapline “Democracy dies in darkness” gets the vapours over people who aren’t from one of the two main parties daring to presume to the presidency and thereby taking votes from those to whom they rightfully belong.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans worry that third parties will take potential Biden voters.

Isn’t taking votes from the other candidates the precise goal of an electoral campaign? Are they basically saying that not allowing their guy to win in a walk is undemocratic? If Biden voters are so easily wooed by the Kennedy scion, or the Libertarian candidate, or the university professor, or Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick, isn’t that (a) democracy and (b) on Biden himself? Shouldn’t the guy who wants to win the presidency actually have to go out and win it by convincing the public that he’s the man for the job?

“History suggests disaffected voters gravitate back toward the main two party candidates, but we’ve never had two party candidates that are this unpopular where their negatives are higher than the positives for both of them,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “It would not be surprising to see a larger proportion of voters pick somebody other than the two major candidates.”

Dear Lord, can you imagine if the United States ended up with a new President because voters abandoned the two fossils vying for the title of “Least Worst”? Or if the existence of a broad field of candidates distributed votes in a way that didn’t just end up 51-49 to the one-out-of-two guys who spent the most money?

At this point, why not drop the pretence of wanting an election entirely? Just grease them both with pig fat, have them duke it out in an inflatable kiddie pool filled with jello, and give the last geriatric standing a round of applause and an early nap. Sell it on pay-per-view to a global audience and you could probably pay off most of the national debt. Who wouldn’t drop a sawbuck to watch that?

I am available for Treasury Secretary in a future administration, by the way. I have ideas.

A Very Special Video Message

After Skool, a YouTube channel making think-piece videos with RSA-style hand-drawn images, released a collaboration this week with the British writer

Gurwinder

.

Gurwinder delivers a great essay called Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things, set to a charming series of illustrations. It’s worth a watch, and a share, and mulling over. Enjoy.

England’s Shitty Water

BBC News reports that raw sewage run-off into England’s rivers and seas doubled in 2023.

Water UK, the industry body for sewerage companies, said it was 'unacceptable' but the record levels were due to heavy rain.

Blaming it on the weather is peak British. Remind me why sewage is being spilled into waterways again?

The UK has combined sewage systems which mean rain and sewage share the same pipes, so if there is too much rain sewage treatment works can be overwhelmed. Sewage is spilled into waterways to prevent the system backing up.

It works out that on average last year there were 1,271 spills a day across England, compared to 825 in 2022.

Contained within the spills is human waste, wet wipes and sanitary products, which can pose a serious risk to the local wildlife, swimmers and others who use UK waterways.

The river dumping is so hefty that London scored a ten-bagger on E.coli.

In March this year when the River Thames was in flood, testing at Fulham Reach by the charity River Action revealed that there was up to 10 times the amount of E.coli bacteria that is allowed for bathing water status.

All the dumping is meant to be overseen by two bodies, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, but who watches the watchers? Well, this is Blighty after all…

Ofwat and the Environment Agency are both conducting separate investigations into England's nine sewerage companies - with the outcome of those expected this year.

But these two agencies are themselves under investigation by the independent Office for Environmental Protection who are concerned they have interpreted the law incorrectly on sewage discharging - allowing spills whenever it rains rather than only when there is "exceptional" rainfall.

While Brits are literally swimming in shit, in Europe, the staff at the European Central Bank burnished their working class credentials by kicking up such a fuss over the downgrade of their canteen’s olive oil that the caterers caved in and brought back their extra virgin.

No wonder Britain is losing its famous sense of humour…

TV Comedy Is So Last Season

The UK comedy blog Chortle reports that “TV commissioners are turning away from comedy – with a dizzying 41 per cent drop in the number of new shows ordered last year.”

The BBC, “responsible for half of all scripted shows ordered in 2023…reigned back on comedy substantially, with a 27 per cent drop in orders.”

More broadly, the UK saw an “18 per cent decline in the market for scripted TV commissions across all genres.”

While cutting back on comedy, “the BBC’s orders for children and family shows rose 23 per cent, while commissions for crime dramas and other  thrillers were up 16 per cent.”

Why are TV commissioning statistics in a dystopian round-up? Well, there’s a reason it’s called “programming,” and comedy getting the chop doesn’t bode well in our current era, in which humourlessness is all too often seen as a virtue.

Just sayin’.

That’s it for this week.

Outro music, inspired by the relentless torrent of hate speech and digital ID legislation issuing forth from the national assemblies of various countries, is Frank Zappa’s The Torture Never Stops.

Stay sane, friends.