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CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency

Senator Ted Cruz introduces bill to ban CBDCs to prevent US from becoming ‘surveillance state’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Heritage Action for America warned that ‘anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.’

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that Republican sponsors of the bill believe could turn the nation into a “surveillance state” by handing over control of personal finances to federal government agencies.

While digital currency offers some attractive features, it also would grant the federal government unlimited opportunity to weaponize the technology against citizens, allowing it to both spy on the spending habits of everyday Americans and block access to the money in their personal bank accounts.

U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota described the threat of a U.S. CBDC last fall:

Unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, a CBDC is a digital form of sovereign currency that is designed and issued by a government and transacts on a digital ledger that is controlled by that government. In short, a CBDC is government-controlled programmable money that, if not designed to emulate cash, could give the federal government the ability to surveil Americans’ transactions and choke out politically unpopular activity.

A government-issued CBDC is nothing more than a CCP-style surveillance tool that would be used to undermine the American way of life.

“While Americans across the country are being punished for thinking, speaking, and voting the ‘wrong’ way, the last thing we need is the government surveilling personal finances,” explained a statement from Heritage Action for America concerning the new legislation. “Anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.”

“CBDCs present major privacy concerns for everyday Americans, including granting the government the ability to collect intimate personal details on U.S. citizens, and potentially track and freeze funds for any reason,” the Blockchain Association noted.

Sen. Cruz, chief sponsor of the bill, said, “The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC.”

“Big government has no business spying on Americans to control their personal finances and track their transactions,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a co-sponsor of the bill. “It is a massive overreach.”

In early 2022, the Biden administration urged the Fed to investigate the creation of a CBDC.

“Over 100 countries are exploring or piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs),” said Biden, warning that the U.S. “must play a leading role in international engagement and global governance of digital assets consistent with democratic values and U.S. global competitiveness.”

Pushback against a U.S. CBDC has become an integral part of the messaging of 2024’s presidential hopefuls.

Last month, former President Donald Trump pledged to ban a CBDC if re-elected to the White House.

“As your president, I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency,” Trump told a crowd during a campaign event in New Hampshire.

“Such a currency would give a federal government — our federal government — absolute control over your money,” Trump said. “They could take your money, and you wouldn’t even know it was gone.”

“This would be a dangerous threat to freedom, and I will stop it from coming to America,” he vowed.

Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former Democrat now running as an Independent presidential candidate, has warned that CBCDs are “a calamity for human rights and for civil rights” while similarly promising to halt progress by the Fed from creating a CBDC.

Eleven countries have already fully implemented CBDCs, including China, where digital currency is tied to a person’s “social credit score.”

The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) uses its extensive network of digital cameras —estimated to be over one billion — combined with facial-recognition capabilities to monitor the daily movements and actions of its citizens. That along with other information collecting capabilities used in conjunction with government-controlled digital currency allows the CCP to punish those who transgress desired social norms.

While Democrats in Congress have sought to pass legislation authorizing the Fed to institute a CBDC, Republicans have similarly made sought to preempt such a move.

Last fall, Emmer introduced a bill in the U.S. House with the same name as Cruz’s bill, “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act,” to” halt the efforts of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that dismantles Americans’ right to financial privacy.”

Co-sponsoring the bill with Cruz are Republican Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Scott, Ted Budd of North Carolina, and Mike Braun of Indiana.

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CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency

WEF report: Digital ID has become a standard feature for everyday life in Pakistan

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From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

A WEF report, co-authored by the U.N. and World Bank, states that digital public infrastructure ‘is transforming lives in Pakistan,’ ushering in a need for digital ID such that adults in Pakistan cannot lead normal lives without it.

Digital identity sits at the heart of Pakistan’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) transformation and is now a standard feature in every adult’s life, according to the WEF Agenda.

Published on the World Economic Forum (WEF) Agenda blog and co-written by representatives from the World Bank and the United Nations’ Better Than Cash Alliance, the story “Digital public infrastructure is transforming lives in Pakistan. Here’s how” highlights how adults in Pakistan cannot lead a normal life without having a digital identity, which is a key component of DPI.

 

“At the heart of Pakistan’s digital transformation is the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), established to overhaul the country’s identity systems,” the authors write, adding:

This was a foundational change, positioning Pakistan among a select group of nations equipped to manage comprehensive digital identities for over 240 million citizens.

The NADRA-issued Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) is now a standard feature in every adult Pakistani’s life, facilitating a range of routine tasks such as opening bank accounts, purchasing airline tickets, acquiring driver’s licenses, and qualifying for social protection, thereby ensuring seamless identity authentication for every citizen.

Digital Public Infrastructure is a civic technology stack consisting of three components:

  • Digital Identity,
  • Fast Digital Payment Systems (e.g. programmable Central Bank Digital Currencies [CBDCs]),
  • Data Exchanges Between Public and Private Entities.

Now, “Pakistan is set to launch several ambitious DPI initiatives, including expanding the RAAST payment system, implementing a nationwide digital health records system, and launching a blockchain-based land registry,” according to the WEF Agenda.

In 2020 the State Bank of Pakistan partnered with non-profit Karandaaz, which is a “prime delivery partner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”

In 2021 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granted Karandaaz $4 million “to integrate the Ehsaas Program (biggest Government to Person Program in Pakistan) with RAAST-Pakistan’s Instant Payment System to enable interoperability and choice for the beneficiaries.”

Contributing to the WEF blog post are the World Bank’s technical advisor for Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital ID Tariq Malik, along with the U.N.-based Better Than Cash Alliance’s head of Asia Pacific Prerna Saxena and Pakistan lead Raza Matin.

The U.N.’s Better Than Cash Alliance advocates for “responsible digital payments” and repeatedly states it does not want to abolish physical cash.

However, the Better Than Cash Alliance does want more women to have accounts in their own name, which could also lead to more citizens being tracked, traced, and taxed in the digital system:

We do not want to abolish physical cash, but rather wish to ensure that people have choice in how they make and receive payments. It is important for people to have digital payment options that are responsible and ‘better than cash’ – for example, a woman can have a payment account in her own name, which she manages. To be clear, we do not want to prevent people from using cash, as sometimes it is the best or only payment option.

Speaking at the World Bank Group’s inaugural Global Digital Summit last March, World Bank President Ajay Banga said that digital identity should be embraced worldwide, and that governments should be the owners, so they can guarantee privacy and security for their citizens.

According to Banga, once everyone is hooked-up to a digital ID, then it can be linked to existing infrastructure run by private companies.

“Creating a digital identity platform for citizenry is kind of foundational, and I believe your government should be the owner of your digital ID; private companies should not own that,” said the World Bank president, adding, “it is the social contract of the citizens of their countries to have an identity, a currency, and safety. We should not take that away from them.”

“They should have the digital identity; that digital identity should guarantee the privacy of that citizen; it should help them with their security, but the government should give the identity,” said Banga, adding:

Once you do that, then connecting them to the infrastructure that a private company, either Ericsson or Verizon, or combinations of them – in fact mostly it’s a combination – then the question is, ‘What do you do with it that requires a digital ID?’ so you can start connecting with that citizen.

For Banga and other unelected globalists, digital identity is the key to unlocking access to goods and services through public-private partnerships – the fusion of corporation and state.

Last year, the United Nations partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch the 50-in-5 Digital Public Infrastructure campaign to accelerate digital ID, digital payments systems, and data sharing among 50 countries by 2028.

Last week, former British prime minister-turned globalist technocracy enthusiast Tony Blair said that digital ID was essential to modern infrastructure but would require “a little work of persuasion.”

Speaking on a panel about Digital Public Infrastructure at the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2023 Spring Meetings, Infosys co-founder and ex-chair of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Nandan Nilekani, said that everybody should have a digital ID, a bank account, and a smartphone as they were the “tools of the New World” for digital public infrastructure.

India is the globalists’ shining example of what DPI should look like in practice.

Following the B20 India Summit last year, the leaders of the B20 published their annual communique, with a section dedicated to DPI rollouts.

The B20 India communique called on G20 nations to rollout DPI, with the first policy action being to “Promote the digitization of identities at the individual, enterprise, and farm levels that are both interoperable and recognized across borders.“

As a key performance indicator for digital ID rollouts, the B20 recommended that “G20 nations develop guidelines for unique single digital identification for MSME [micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises] and individuals that can be securely accessed (based on consent) by different government and private stakeholders for identity verification and information access within 3 years.”

Speaking at the WEF Global Technology Governance Summit in April 2021, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said that his government’s goal was to create a digital ID system that would make Ukraine the most convenient State in the world by operating like a digital service provider.

“We have to make a product that is so convenient that a person will be able to disrupt their stereotypes, to breakthrough from their fears, and start using a government-made application,” said Fedorov.

“Our goal is to enable all life situations with this digital ID,” he added.

While Ukraine has sought to enable all life situations with its digital ID, the WEF reports that digital identity “is now a standard feature in every adult Pakistani’s life.”

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Brownstone Institute

The Pandemic Excuse for a Corporatist Coup

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From the Brownstone Institute

By Jeffrey A. Tucker

We’ve just come across a document hosted by the Department of Homeland Security, posted March 2023, but written in 2007, that amounts to a full-blown corporatist imposition on the US, abolishing anything remotely resembling the Bill of Rights and Constitutional law. It is right there in plain sight for anyone curious enough to dig.

There is nothing in it that you haven’t already experienced with lockdowns. What makes it interesting are the participants in the forging of the plan, which is pretty much the whole of corporate America as it stood in 2007. It was a George W. Bush initiative. The conclusions are startling.

“Quarantine is a legally enforceable declaration that a government body may institute over individuals potentially exposed to a disease, but who are not symptomatic. If enacted, Federal quarantine laws will be coordinated between CDC and State and local public health officials, and, if necessary, law enforcement personnel…The government may also enact travel restrictions to limit the movement of people and products between geographic areas in an effort to limit disease transmission and spread. Authorities are currently reviewing possible plans to curtail international travel upon a pandemic’s emergence overseas.

“Limiting public assembly opportunities also helps limit the spread of disease. Concert halls, movie theaters, sports arenas, shopping malls, and other large public gathering places might close indefinitely during a pandemic—whether because of voluntary closures or government-imposed closures. Similarly, officials may close schools and non-essential businesses during pandemic waves in an effort to significantly slow disease transmission rates. These strategies aim to prevent the close interaction of individuals, the primary conduit of spreading the influenza virus. Even taking steps such as limiting person-to-person interactions within a distance of three feet or avoiding instances of casual close contact, such as shaking hands, will help limit disease spread.”

There we have it: the pandemic plans. They once seemed abstract. In 2020, they became very real. Your rights were deleted. No more freedom even to have house guests. In those days, the rule was to enforce only three feet of distance rather than six feet of distance, neither of which had any basis in science. Indeed, the actual scientific literature even at that time recommended against any physical interventions designed to limit the spread of respiratory viruses. They were known not to work. The entire profession of public health accepted that.

Therefore, for many years before lockdowns wrecked economic functioning, there had been two parallel tracks in operation, one intellectual/academic and one imposed by state/corporate managers. They had nothing to do with each other. This situation persisted for the better part of 15 years. Suddenly in 2020, there was a reckoning, and the state/corporate managers won it. Seemingly out of nowhere, liberty as we have long known it was gone.

Back in 2005, I first came across a Bush administration scheme, an early draft of the above, that would have ended freedom as we know it. It was a scheme for combating the bird flu, which officials back then imagined would involve universal quarantines, business and event closures, travel restrictions, and more.

wrote: “Even if the flu does come, and taxpayers have coughed up, the government will surely have a ball imposing travel restrictions, shutting down schools and businesses, quarantining cities, and banning public gatherings…It is a serious matter when the government purports to plan to abolish all liberty and nationalize all economic life and put every business under the control of the military, especially in the name of a bug that seems largely restricted to the bird population. Perhaps we should pay more attention. Perhaps such plans for the total state ought to even ruffle our feathers a bit.”

For years I wrote about this topic, trying to get others interested. It was all there in black and white. At the drop of a hat, under the guise of a pandemic that only state managers can declare, real or drummed up, freedom itself could be abolished. These plans were never legislated, debated, or publicly discussed. They were simply posted as the result of various consultations with experts, who worked out their totalitarian fantasies as if scripting a Hollywood film.

The 2007 blueprint is more explicit than anything I’ve seen. It comes from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, which “includes executive leaders from the private sector and state/local government who advise the White House on how to reduce physical and cyber risks and improve the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure sectors. The NIAC is administered on behalf of the President in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act under the authority of the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security.”

And who sat on this committee in 2007 that decided that governments “may close schools and non-essential businesses”? Let us see.

  • Mr. Edmund G. Archuleta, General Manager, El Paso Water Utilities
  • Mr. Alfred R. Berkeley III, Chairman and CEO, Pipeline Trading Group, LLC, and former President and Vice Chairman of NASDAQ
  • Chief Rebecca F. Denlinger, Fire Chief, Cobb County (Ga.) Fire and Emergency Services
  • Chief Gilbert G. Gallegos, Police Chief (ret.), City of Albuquerque, N.M. Police Department
  • Ms. Martha H. Marsh, President and CEO, Stanford Hospital and Clinics
  • Mr. James B. Nicholson, President and CEO, PVS Chemical, Inc.
  • Mr. Erle A. Nye, Chairman Emeritus, TXU Corp., NIAC Chairman
  • Mr. Bruce A. Rohde, Chairman and CEO Emeritus, ConAgra Foods, Inc.
  • Mr. John W. Thompson, Chairman and CEO, Symantec Corporation
  • Mr. Brent Baglien, ConAgra Foods, Inc.
  • Mr. David Barron, Bell South
  • Mr. Dan Bart, TIA
  • Mr. Scott Blanchette, Healthways
  • Ms. Donna Burns, Georgia Emergency Management Agency
  • Mr. Rob Clyde, Symantec Corporation
  • Mr. Scott Culp, Microsoft
  • Mr. Clay Detlefsen, International Dairy Foods Association
  • Mr. Dave Engaldo, The Options Clearing Corporation
  • Ms. Courtenay Enright, Symantec Corporation
  • Mr. Gary Gardner, American Gas Association
  • Mr. Bob Garfield, American Frozen Foods Institute
  • Ms. Joan Gehrke, PVS Chemical, Inc.
  • Ms. Sarah Gordon, Symantec
  • Mr. Mike Hickey, Verizon
  • Mr. Ron Hicks, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
  • Mr. George Hender, The Options Clearing Corporation
  • Mr. James Hunter, City of Albuquerque, NM Emergency Management
  • Mr. Stan Johnson, North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC)
  • Mr. David Jones, El Paso Corporation
  • Inspector Jay Kopstein, Operations Division, New York City Police Department (NYPD)
  • Ms. Tiffany Jones, Symantec Corporation
  • Mr. Bruce Larson, American Water
  • Mr. Charlie Lathram, Business Executives for National Security (BENS)/BellSouth
  • Mr. Turner Madden, Madden & Patton
  • Chief Mary Beth Michos, Prince William County (Va.) Fire and Rescue
  • Mr. Bill Muston, TXU Corp.
  • Mr. Vijay Nilekani, Nuclear Energy Institute
  • Mr. Phil Reitinger, Microsoft
  • Mr. Rob Rolfsen, Cisco Systems, Inc.
  • Mr. Tim Roxey, Constellation
  • Ms. Charyl Sarber, Symantec
  • Mr. Lyman Shaffer, Pacific Gas and Electric,
  • Ms. Diane VanDeHei, Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)
  • Ms. Susan Vismor, Mellon Financial Corporation
  • Mr. Ken Watson, Cisco Systems, Inc.
  • Mr. Greg Wells, Southwest Airlines
  • Mr. Gino Zucca, Cisco Systems, Inc.
  • Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Resources
  • Dr. Bruce Gellin, Rockefeller Foundation
  • Dr. Mary Mazanec
  • Dr. Stuart Nightingale, CDC
  • Ms. Julie Schafer
  • Dr. Ben Schwartz, CDC
  • Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Resources
  • Mr. James Caverly, Director, Infrastructure Partnerships Division
  • Ms. Nancy Wong, NIAC Designated Federal Officer (DFO)
  • Ms. Jenny Menna, NIAC Designated Federal Officer (DFO)
  • Dr. Til Jolly
  • Mr. Jon MacLaren
  • Ms. Laverne Madison
  • Ms. Kathie McCracken
  • Mr. Bucky Owens
  • Mr. Dale Brown, Contractor
  • Mr. John Dragseth, IP attorney, Contractor
  • Mr. Jeff Green, Contractor
  • Mr. Tim McCabe, Contractor
  • Mr. William B. Anderson, ITS America
  • Mr. Michael Arceneaux, Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)
  • Mr. Chad Callaghan, Marriott Corporation
  • Mr. Ted Cromwell, American Chemistry Council (ACC)
  • Ms. Jeanne Dumas, American Trucking Association (ATA)
  • Ms. Joan Harris, US Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary
  • Mr. Greg Hull, American Public Transportation Association
  • Mr. Joe LaRocca, National Retail Federation
  • Mr. Jack McKlveen, United Parcel Service (UPS)
  • Ms. Beth Montgomery, Wal-Mart
  • Dr. J. Patrick O’Neal, Georgia Office of EMS/Trauma/EP
  • Mr. Roger Platt, The Real Estate Roundtable
  • Mr. Martin Rojas, American Trucking Association (ATA)
  • Mr. Timothy Sargent, Senior Chief, Economic Analysis and Forecasting Division, Economic and Fiscal Policy Branch, Finance Canada

In other words, big everything: food, energy, retail, computers, water, and you name it. It’s a corporatist dream team.

Consider ConAgra itself. What is that? It is Banquet, Chef Boyardee, Healthy Choice, Orville Redenbacher’s, Reddi-Wip, Slim Jim, Hunt’s Peter Pan Egg Beaters, Hebrew National, Marie Callender’s, P.F. Chang’s, Ranch Style Beans, Ro*Tel, Wolf Brand Chili, Angie’s, Duke’s, Gardein, Frontera, Bertolli, among many other seemingly independent brands that are all actually one company.

Now, ask yourself: why might all these companies favor a plan for lockdowns? Why might WalMart, for example? It stands to reason. Lockdowns are a massive interference with competitive capitalism. They provide the best possible subsidy to big business while shutting down independent small businesses and putting them at a huge disadvantage once the opening up happens.

In other words, it is an industrial racket, very much akin to interwar-style fascism, a corporatist combination of big business and big government. Throw pharma into the mix and you see exactly what came to pass in 2020, which amounted to the largest transfer of wealth from small and medium-sized business plus the middle class to wealthy industrialists in the history of humanity.

The document is open even about managing information flows: “The public and private sectors should align their communications, exercises, investments, and support activities absolutely with both the plan and priorities during a pandemic influenza event. Continue data gathering, analysis, reporting, and open review.”

There is nothing in any of this that fits with any Western tradition of law and liberty. Nothing. It was never approved by any democratic means. It was never part of any political campaign. It has never been the subject of any serious media examination. No think tank has ever pushed back on such plans in any systematic way.

The last serious attempt to debunk this whole apparatus was from D.H. Henderson in 2006. His two co-authors on that paper eventually came around to going along with lockdowns of 2020. Henderson died in 2016. One of the co-authors of the original article told me that if Dr. Henderson had been around, instead of Dr. Fauci, the lockdowns would never have taken place.

Here we are four years following the deployment of this lockdown machinery, and we are witness to what it destroys. It would be nice to say that the entire apparatus and theory behind it have been fully discredited.

But that is not correct. All the plans are still in place. There have been no changes in federal law. Not one effort has been made to dismantle the corporatist/biosecurity planning state that made all this possible. Every bit of it is in place for the next go-around.

Much of the authority for this whole coup traces to the Public Health Services Act of 1944, which was passed in wartime. For the first time in US history, it gave the federal government the power to quarantine. Even when the Biden administration was looking for some basis to justify its transportation mask mandate, it fell back to this one piece of legislation.

If anyone really wants to get to the root of this problem, there are decisive steps that need to be taken. The indemnification of pharma from liability for harm needs to be repealed. The court precedent of forced shots in Jacobson needs to be overthrown. But even more fundamentally, the quarantine power itself has to go, and that means the full repeal of the Public Health Services Act of 1944. That is the root of the problem. Freedom will not be safe until it is uprooted.

As it stands right now, everything that unfolded in 2020 and 2021 can happen again. Indeed, the plans are in place for exactly that.

Author

Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Life After Lockdown, and many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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