The promises of Digital ID:
Fewer forms
Less paperwork
Faster access to services
More online interactions
- Increased privacy
SOUNDS GREAT! But…
The Central Question:
Will Digital ID remain a tool of convenience — or become a tool of control?
Beware, especially if they sell the positives without the negatives…
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POSITIVES
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NEGATIVES
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If Digital ID skewed into citizen control, what would it look like?
Compliance scoring without calling it that
Even without explicit “social credit” systems, the state would drift toward:
Behaviour & Risk profiles
Eligibility flags
Automated assessments
Outcomes:
Slower access for “non-standard” users
More checks, fewer explanations
Bureaucratic friction as punishment
No single dramatic law is required — just system tuning.
FLAG: You may think "All I need to do is behave myself and everything will be alright" but what is the definition of good behaviour? While your political beliefs may align with the serving politicians of today, what about tomorrow? The same system would still be there for them. What if you're someone who enjoys meat? You could be labelled as a selfish over-consumer... ditto for travelling, having children, etc. Would you be willing to allow your life to be controlled by someone who might restrict you just because of where you live or what you look like? Digital ID allows for this kind of overreaching power to be exercised and this capacity is being built into New Zealand's digital ID system.
When identity is always attached to everything you do:
Protest participation drops
Reporting becomes cautious
Privacy in public life erodes
People self-censor to avoid punishment, and may be unwilling to stand up if they see injustice.
FLAG: While you might celebrate this as a means of suppressing borderline opinions, what happens when it is your voice that the system wants to suppress? Free and open speech has always been an integral part of a free and progressive society.
Expansion of “administrative punishment”
Digital ID makes it easy to:
Deny access or apply penalties without court processes
This is attractive to governments because:
It’s fast
It’s cheap
It avoids public trials
It also bypasses many civil liberties protections and has lead to harmful outcomes for the individual involved.
FLAG: Under this scenario, the Government can lock you out of the system entirely and nobody else will even know.
When systems are tightly coupled:
Mistakes feel intentional to the individual
Appeals are slow
Life disruption happens before resolution
People learn:
“Don’t challenge the system — it’s not worth it.”
That is how silent control embeds and takes over a population.
FLAG: This is a risk not only for individuals but also public sector workers. If stress levels in members of society become high enough, public sector workers could become murder victims of those who feel like "there's nothing left to lose" - and this is not good at all.
COVID demonstrated something very important:
Emergency logic, once normalised, is rarely fully rolled back.
Digital ID + future emergencies (health, climate, security) =
Temporary measures with permanent infrastructure.
- Data can be repurposed for law enforcement, immigration control, political monitoring, and silencing dissent.
- Participation can start out optional but become unavoidable or mandatory.
- The system can become more centralised.
The New Zealand Government claims...
- NZ currently uses a federated ID model, not a single universal ID
No national biometric mandate
Privacy law still applies (though enforcement is limited)
Māori data sovereignty frameworks exist (though not binding)
However — and this is crucial —
These are temporary policy choices, not structural guarantees.
They can be altered quietly, incrementally, and legally.
Optimism only holds if political incentives favour restraint, and historical behaviour suggests they will not.
Can future government behaviour be predicted from past behaviour?
Enforcement-first behavioural trends:
NZ politicians are comfortable normalising conditional access when they believe the policy goal is justified.
This matters enormously once Digital ID exists. Below are recent examples of intrusive government decision choices:
→ Indicates a willingness to use location-dependent infrastructure for surveillance
→ Coercing compliance with ultimatum testing policy (comply or be fined)
→ Individually targeted identity-linked behaviour compliance
→ Shows ability to mandate conditional access rapidly
NZ Government agencies are hacked all the time
With all of your information tied to a Digital ID, your data would be a sitting duck 🦆
- NZ government agencies have suffered repeated data breaches in recent years (click here to see examples)
Some involved identity-adjacent or personal data
These were not always sophisticated attacks — often procedural failures
This undermines one of the core assurances used to justify Digital ID:
“Trust us, your data will be safe.”
Accommodating the practical benefits of ID linked digital technology: The problem with the ‘DIGITAL ID’ concept is when technology is used to control populations in detail down to each individual’s every move, and the New Zealand Government have unfortunately demonstrated a willingness to do this with policy announcements and past actions.
That aside – in terms of practical application for daily administration, there could definitely be instances where streamlining processes with ID-linked digital technology (not digital ID) could benefit individuals, for example – someone needing to apply for housing or employment services… A digitised token confirming credentials (rather than submitting the same documents again and again) could definitely make life easier. But there need to be caveats. Below are a set of restrictions on Digital ID that could help it to avoid becoming a tool of control, and merely a tool of convenience.
What this really means
You must be able to access essential services (healthcare, banking, travel, education, employment, welfare, voting) without a Digital ID.
Alternatives must be functional, not deliberately inconvenient (e.g. “You can opt out, but you’ll wait 6 weeks and fill out 14 forms”).
Why it matters
Once Digital ID becomes de facto mandatory, it becomes leverage:
Behavioural compliance (“no ID, no service”)
Policy enforcement without legislation
Social exclusion without accountability
Red flag
If opting out increasingly results in:
Delays
Fees
Suspicion
Reduced access
…then it’s no longer voluntary, even if technically labelled so.
This is one of the most important technical protections.
Instead of:
“Here is who I am.”
You prove:
“I am over 18.”
“I live in NZ.”
“I am licensed to drive.”
“I am eligible for this service.”
— without revealing anything else.
Why this matters
Prevents unnecessary data exposure
Stops service providers from building shadow profiles
Reduces the value of data breaches
Good implementation
Cryptographic proofs (zero-knowledge or selective disclosure)
No name, no DOB, no ID number unless absolutely required
Bad implementation
“Log in with Digital ID” that hands over your full identity every time
Data collected for one purpose must not be reused for another.
Example
ID verified to access healthcare
❌ must NOT later be used for:Law enforcement
Immigration checks
Welfare compliance
Predictive risk scoring
Why this matters
Reuse is how systems quietly turn coercive:
Health → policing
Education → social risk scoring
Transport → behavioural surveillance
Red flag
Any wording like:
“for this purpose and any related lawful purpose”
That clause has swallowed entire democracies.
A universal ID number is the skeleton key of control systems.
Why it’s dangerous
Makes cross-database linking trivial
Enables profiling without consent
Turns “separate systems” into one invisible super-system
Safer approach
Different identifiers per domain
Tokens that cannot be correlated across systems
No single number that follows you everywhere
Hard truth
Once a universal identifier exists, policy change — not technical change — is all that’s needed to turn it into mass surveillance.
This is structural, not cosmetic.
What must stay separate
Identity verification
Transaction history
Location data
Health data
Law enforcement data
Private sector usage logs
Why it matters
Power doesn’t come from one dataset — it comes from linkage.
Even benign data becomes dangerous when combined:
Location + payments
Health + employment
Welfare + policing
Red flag
Centralised data lakes “for efficiency” or “AI insights”.
Every Digital ID capability should have an expiry date.
Why
Emergency powers have a habit of becoming permanent
Technology outlasts political promises
Temporary measures quietly normalize
Good governance
Automatic expiration unless actively renewed
Public review before renewal
Independent evaluation of harm
COVID taught us
Emergency infrastructure never dismantles itself. It must be forced to.
Not advisory. Not symbolic. Not minister-appointed.
Real oversight looks like
Power to audit code and contracts
Power to halt systems
Power to impose penalties
Transparent public reporting
What doesn’t count
Internal compliance teams
Ombudsman after harm occurs
“Trust us” assurances
Key test
Can the oversight body say no to government and win?
This isn’t a checkbox — it’s about sovereignty.
Why this matters
Digital ID systems intersect with:
Identity
Whakapapa
Mobility
Social participation
Historically, data about Māori has been:
Extracted
Repurposed
Used for control rather than benefit
Embedded governance means
Māori authority over Māori data
Co-design at system architecture level
Veto power, not consultation theatre
Alignment with tikanga and data sovereignty principles
Red flag
If Māori and community involvement starts after technical architecture is set.
Automation without appeal equals digital punishment.
Why this matters
Systems make errors
Edge cases always exist
False positives happen
Non-negotiable
A real human review process
Clear timelines
No retaliation for appeal
No “computer says no” dead ends
Red flag
Appeals that require Digital ID to contest Digital ID decisions.
A Digital ID becomes a control system not through one dramatic law — but through:
Convenience replacing consent
Defaults replacing choice
Linkages replacing limits
Silence replacing oversight
NZ claims alignment with many of these principles — but history shows that intent is irrelevant without structure.
Vigilance isn’t paranoia here. It’s how democracies avoid sleepwalking into systems they can’t unwind.