Big Brother is Watching

Digital IDs, total surveillance and the authoritarian state...

(Source: Substack Images)

“Every citizen, like every animal, is under continuous surveillance by the Thought Police, and under the constant threat of being vaporized for deviation from the Party line.”

~ George Orwell, 1984 (1948)

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

No matter where you go, there you are, standing at the End of the World.

Casting a weary gaze across the legacy newscape – pitiless, shameless and awash in tales of war and of waste – your editor checks his sense of humor, does a quick family head count... and keeps his passports handy.

While on the subject of ubiquitous government surveillance, Big Brother is not just at your door... he’s on the couch streaming Netflix, having already helped himself to some snacks and, naturally, the wifi password. (Bank accounts, social credit score, carbon footprint, etc., to follow shortly.)

Here’s the latest, from bootlicking establishment bullhorn, Reuters:

Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

LONDON - The British government said on Friday it would require every employee to hold a digital identity document, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s latest attempt to tackle illegal migration and reduce the threat from the populist Reform UK party.

Did His Majesty’s loyal subjects catch that?

The primary “threat” to the middle and working class of the United Kingdom, to British culture and the general interests of the common people, comes not from tens of thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into the country annually...

Nor does it stem from the fact that the majority of these people (~60%) come from just five countries – Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Eritrea, and Sudan – countries that don’t exactly overlap, culturally...

Nor does it come from the fact that Starmer’s own government, according to official border “control” documents, returns less than 4% of those who land in the country illegally...

The real threat, to the UK and (no doubt) “to democracy itself,” comes from... an opposition party that dares mention these inconvenient truths!

Mandatory Choice

Said Keir “Two Tier” Starmer:

“In the UK ... we have got a right-wing proposition that we have not had in this country before ... so the battle of our times is between patriotic national renewal ... versus something which is turning into a toxic divide.”

And here he is again, “spelling it out” for the epsilons at home:

Starmer says the digital IDs will be “free of charge,” which is how you know you can’t afford it.

According to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, all British citizens will be required to have a digital ID... although it will be “entirely their choice” whether they want to use them.

Got that, lowly subject? Just like Covid vaccine cards, the government’s digital dog tags are “mandatory,” such that you won’t be able to earn a living without one, but it’s totally your choice whether or not you want to use them.

Asked whether the government would need to bother going through parliament – you know, all that pesky “check-and-balance” stuff – Nandy responded like the obedient, unquestioning automaton she is: “This is being done.”

Of course, the public is right to be concerned over unprecedented immigration levels, both legal and illegal. It’s a big part of the reason the Reform Party is pegged to be Labour’s main opposition heading into the next election (and why they will no doubt be branded fascist, racist, bigoted, Islamaphobic, etc., etc., etc., from now until then…)

When your editor moved to the UK, legally, back in the 1990s (to pursue a career as a rock ‘n’ roll star with the band Oasis... whom we’d never met), net immigration averaged “just” 100,000 per year.

Today, that figure is over a million... and rising. (The five years pre-Covid averaged 600,000. After a brief dip during that first lockdown year, the number soon rebounded... to 900,000 in 2021... 1.2M in 2022... 1.3M in 2023...)

But will the UK government’s digital monitoring, snooping and leering really do anything to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, 88% of whom arrive on the tiny island by small boats, which are apparently beyond the capability of the once formidable British Navy to handle? Or is there something more sinister afoot?

Starmer’s Pull Factor

After all, Germany already has a national digital ID. So too does France... and Italy... and Spain. Did sweeping government surveillance and digitally integrated biometric IDs help neutralize one of the “key pull factors” enticing illegals onto their fare shores?

To respond in order: No. No. No. Aaaaand... No.

With a quarter of a million illegal immigrants within its welcome mats borders as of 2024, Germany leads the continent in that dubious dishonor. It was followed, you will be shocked to discover, by France... Italy... the UK... and then Spain.

Adjusted for population, tiny Slovenia, nestled in the armpit of the Adriatic, right up there between Italy and Croatia, suffers the highest illegal immigration population per capita anywhere on the continent.

Good thing the Slovenian government began issuing biometric national identity cards in 2022 then, eh? Right before documented illegal crossings doubled, from 30,000 to over 60,000, the very next year.

But then, if illegal immigration really is such a problem, as Starmer himself (now) freely admits, why not start by deporting the millions of illegal immigrants already in these countries?

After all, it’s not as though the government doesn’t know where they are; one need only check the hotel addresses and free iPhone bills on the state welfare invoices... or simply follow the blaze of protests sweeping across the nation as frustrated locals, fed up with having their wives and daughters harassed in their own towns and public spaces, take to the once-safe streets to demand their country back.

Mission Creeps

There was a time when the Brits, upper lips firmly stiffened, had the common decency to reject the government’s cataloging, processing and harassing of innocent individuals. Crazy, but true.

Before 1914, British citizens were able to travel freely around the European continent. When they did need a passport, to visit the Russian or Ottoman Empires, for example, they were little more than handwritten documents, often a single page, with a vague description of the bearer’s physical characteristics, height, hair, eye color, etc.

Then came the outbreak of WWI, and the kind of “temporary wartime measures” that tend to last a lifetime... and beyond. In 1915, citing threats of foreign espionage, the UK government made that most Faustian of pacts, trading “liberty for the promise of security,” and issued a standardized passport booklet, which contained not only the bearer’s signature, but also a photograph.

The requirements were seen as scandalous by the right-thinking British public, who were naturally outraged that they should be subjected to such an invasive, dehumanizing process. Members of Parliament and their toadies in the press assured their constituents that such impositions were merely “temporary measures,” and that they would be repealed in due course.

Only, as is so often the case with the government’s “temporary measures,” due course never came. After WWI was over, the League of Nations convened a number of international passport conferences, with the resulting trend toward international standardization and the “one world system” we have today.

And yet, still that feckless mantra of the Soft Cranium Brigade, “If you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t have anything to worry about” rings out around the world, from China to Singapore to Pakistan... Saudi Arabia to Qatar to Bahrain... Nigeria to Kenya to South Africa... where brainwashed citizens line up behind their dear leaders, confident they would never abuse their power, seemingly incurious as to why their delusional motto is never turned toward the government itself, notoriously secretive and forever assuring its citizens they’re on a “need to know” basis.

“Privacy for we,” shady world leaders and WEF puppets cry in creepy unison, “total transparency for thee.”

Hmm… what could go wrong?

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the mainstream media’s mono-messaging.

If you are not already a member, but would like to join our growing community of radical libertarians, skeptical independents and fundamentalist own-business-minders, please consider becoming a Notes member, here… for less than 20 cents per day!

We’re currently #39 in World Politics. The higher we rank, the better our visibility across the Substack network. By supporting our work, you help us reach more readers, delivering the message of free markets, free minds and free people. Thanks in advance! ~ JB