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WEF 2025: AI CEO Says Facial Recognition Will Replace Digital IDs in Smart Cities

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10 months ago

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By Didi Rankovic

“…you won’t need a digital identity” because “you have the facial recognition and other things built into your smart cities.”

One of the panels during last week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting – “Empowering People with Digital Public Infrastructure” – saw the participation of Avathon CEO Pervinder Johar, who provided a vision of a gloomy future of “optimized” and omnipresent surveillance.

Johar, of course, would not put it quite that way. Avathon, which produces AI tech, including the surveillance kind – believes that in the next five to ten years there will be no need for digital ID since facial recognition “and other things” will be built into “smart cities.”

The panel was dedicated to digital public infrastructure (DPI) – a buzzword used by digital ID proponents like the UN, the EU, the WEF, and Bill Gates – and Johar said the financial and identity portions of digital ID will “converge” to produce the result he predicted.

This suggests that the population will be under constant surveillance and identified at all times. Johar had more “good news” – Avathon makes what it calls an industrial AI platform, a surveillance system that the CEO shared has been deployed in Round Rock High School in Texas – “for children’s safety.”

It “utilizes a school’s existing camera infrastructure to proactively detect everything from a weapon to an open door, unauthorized access, or even a fire.”

Another panelist, Hoda Al Khzaimi, Associate Vice Provost for Research Translation and Entrepreneurship at New York University Abu Dhabi Hoda Al Khzaimi, also spoke about the connection between the DPI and “smart cities.”

“Digital public infrastructures came into manifestation because governments want to make sure that they provide seamless services in the rise of smart cities,” said Al Khzaimi, at the same time effectively suggesting that “the optimal application of DPI” is pushing digital ID on citizens.

Al Khzaimi also addressed the issue of DPI data. “What’s positive is that if this data provided by the DPI infrastructure are open and in many kinds of scenarios, you have open marketplaces for these data, users themselves can nudge governments and can nudge providers of these services and to tell them what do you want, and what do you not want and control the trends of how to deploy and build for solutions,” she said.

Al Khzaimi also praised the public-private partnership on the DPI. And while acknowledging the potential for abuse (“you don’t want to subject the citizens to mass analytics if they don’t want to have this mass analytics infrastructure”) she quickly contradicted herself by saying there are cases when this should be done – such as to “analyze population data for health pandemic outbreaks.”

Kapital Co-Founder and CEO Rene Saul spoke about Mexico’s digital passport (which utilizes biometric ID verification at the borders – something Saul did not mention), which he is a holder of, as a positive example of digital ID.

After all, it saved him 35 minutes.

“I arrived to Europe for the first time, and I saw the sign with other three countries that had electronic passport. So, I saved 35 minutes just to enter Europe when it took me one hour. So, that’s one of good examples, and that, and another good example of this technology is, it opened our borders,” said Saul.

Know Your Customer (KYC) was also mentioned as helpful in developing digital services such as those used by banks. KYC itself is an invasive form of digital ID verification that incorporates document scans and biometric ID verification.
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‘Modern-Day Escobar’: U.S. Says Former Canadian Olympian Ran Cocaine Pipeline with Cartel Protection and a Corrupt Toronto Lawyer

Crime

‘Modern-Day Escobar’: U.S. Says Former Canadian Olympian Ran Cocaine Pipeline with Cartel Protection and a Corrupt Toronto Lawyer

Published on November 19, 2025

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Ryan Wedding, believed to be hiding in Mexico, is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The State Department reward is up to $15 million for information leading to his arrest.

The U.S. government has unsealed fresh criminal charges and sweeping financial sanctions against former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan James Wedding, alleging that he orchestrated the importation of up to 60 metric tonnes of cocaine a year into the United States and Canada, relied on a Toronto lawyer who, according to the U.S. Treasury, “has also helped Wedding with bribery and murder,” and, while under the protection of a former Mexican law-enforcement officer with ties to senior Mexican police officials, ordered dozens of sophisticated assassinations across Canada, Latin America and the United States — including the execution of a federal witness in Colombia, according to U.S. government filings.

According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, “Wedding controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world,” working “closely with the Sinaloa Cartel, a foreign terrorist organization, to flood not only American but also Canadian communities with cocaine.” Bondi said Wedding’s organization is responsible for moving multi-ton quantities of cocaine each year through Mexico into Los Angeles, before the drugs are shipped onward to Canadian and U.S. cities in long-haul semi-trucks.

As reported by The Bureau, these trucks and routes are controlled by Indo-Canadian crime networks. The U.S. government says that a Toronto lawyer, Deepak Balwant Paradkar, “introduced Wedding to the drug traffickers that have been moving Wedding’s cocaine and has also helped Wedding with bribery and murder.”

FBI Director Kash Patel likened Wedding to a “modern-day iteration” of Pablo Escobar and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán and said Wedding is responsible for “engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time.”

The Justice Department and FBI say Wedding, who competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, now heads a billion-dollar-a-year narcotics enterprise that engages in cocaine trafficking, contract killings and intimidation across the United States, Canada and Latin America. Another target named along with Wedding is a former Italian special-forces soldier who helps the network with training, according to the U.S. government.

Wedding is believed to be hiding in Mexico and remains on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, with the State Department increasing its reward to up to $15 million for information leading to his arrest.

Prosecutors say the new indictment centres on the January 31, 2025, murder of a federal witness in Medellín, Colombia. According to U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli of the Central District of California, Wedding “placed a bounty on the victim’s head in the erroneous belief that the victim’s death would result in the dismissal of criminal charges against him and his international drug trafficking ring and would further ensure that he was not extradited to the United States.” The victim was shot five times in the head while dining at a restaurant in Medellín and died instantly, Essayli said.

Justice Department filings and officials at today’s Washington news conference allege that Wedding and his associates used a fake gangland “news” site, The Dirty News, as part of the plot. The indictment states that co-accused Gursewak Singh Bal, a Mississauga man described as co-founder and co-operator of The Dirty News, agreed — “in exchange for payment” — not to post negative material about Wedding and instead published a photograph of the cooperating witness so that he “could be hunted down and killed.” Essayli said the site was seized pursuant to a federal warrant and is no longer online.

Ten defendants were arrested Tuesday in Colombia, Florida, Québec and Ontario. In a parallel move, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against Wedding and nine individuals plus nine entities, effectively cutting them off from the American financial system.

Treasury describes Wedding as “an extremely violent criminal believed to be responsible for the murder of numerous people abroad, including U.S. citizens,” who “continues to direct drug trafficking, murder, and other serious criminal activities” from Mexico while on the run. The sanctions designation outlines a trans-Atlantic laundering system that moves proceeds through cryptocurrency, high-end cars and motorcycles, and front companies on three continents.

Among those named by Treasury:

Edgar Aaron Vázquez Alvarado, a former Mexican law-enforcement officer known as “the General,” who allegedly uses sources within Mexican police agencies to locate targets for Wedding and owns fuel-sector companies in Mexico;
Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno, Wedding’s wife, accused of laundering his drug proceeds and assisting in acts of violence;
Carmen Yelinet Valoyes Florez, a Colombian running a high-end prostitution ring in Mexico who allegedly assisted with the murder of a federal witness;
Daniela Alejandra Acuña Macias, a Colombian national described as Wedding’s girlfriend, accused of collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from him and helping obtain intelligence on rivals;
Deepak Balwant Paradkar, the Canadian attorney who Treasury says provided “illegal services” beyond a normal lawyer-client relationship, including introducing Wedding to key traffickers, helping with bribery and murder, and allowing Wedding to eavesdrop on privileged calls with other clients he allegedly wanted to kill;
Rolan Sokolovski, a Toronto jeweler who Treasury alleges laundered millions through his “Diamond Tsar” business and cryptocurrency transfers; and
Gianluca Tiepolo, an Italian former special-forces member who allegedly helped Wedding park his money in exotic vehicles and ran tactical training camps for hitmen.

According to Treasury, Paradkar “introduced Wedding to the drug traffickers that have been moving Wedding’s cocaine and has also helped Wedding with bribery and murder,” in exchange for luxury watches and additional fees. Vázquez and his Mexico-based fuel firms, Sokolovski’s jewelry company, and a series of Italian and U.K. vehicle and motorcycle dealers tied to Tiepolo have all been designated under Executive Order 14059 as part of Wedding’s laundering apparatus.

At the Washington news conference, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike Duheme emphasized the role of cross-border cooperation, saying: “International cooperation, such as our involvement in Operation Giant Slalom, is vital to our ability to stay ahead of organized crime.”

But that message of seamless cooperation contrasts with what senior U.S. law-enforcement officials were saying privately months ago.

As The Bureau previously reported, a senior U.S. source insisted there has been a troubling lack of RCMP collaboration in probing Wedding’s networks. Not only did the RCMP allegedly stonewall Drug Enforcement Administration requests six years ago to crack down on Canadian trucking routes tied to Wedding’s shipments through the United States, the source said, but there was also a lack of cooperation in targeting his violent cells inside Canada — where associates, competitors, and even an innocent Indo-Canadian family in Caledon, Ontario, mistakenly linked to a trucker from Wedding’s network, were brutally executed.

“We tried to work with RCMP on Wedding too, and they said, ‘No,’” a source aware of probes from three separate U.S. agencies said. “And it’s like — he’s killing Canadian citizens. He’s killed God knows how many. And you still don’t want to cooperate because of whatever grievance. But the RCMP threw up roadblocks. You’ve got to get past those things because Canadians are dying.”

More to come on this breaking story.

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Daily Caller

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Can Trump Legally Send Troops Into Our Cities? The Answer Is ‘Wishy-Washy’

Published on November 19, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Alan M. Dershowitz

If I were still teaching a course on constitutional law, I would use President Donald Trump’s decision to send troops into cities as a classic example of an issue whose resolution is unpredictable. There are arguments on both sides, many of which are fact-specific and depend on constantly changing circumstances.

A few conclusions are fairly clear:

First, under Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the president clearly has the authority to send federal law enforcement officials to protect federal buildings or federal officials from danger. Moreover, the president gets to decide, subject to limited judicial review, whether such dangers exist. State and city officials cannot interfere with the proper exercise of such federal authority.

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Second, and equally clear, is that if there is no federal interest that requires protection, the president has no authority to intrude on purely local matters, such as street crime. The 10th Amendment and various statutes leave local law enforcement entirely in the hands of the states.

Third, the president has greater authority over Washington, DC, even with the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973, than he does over other cities.

Fourth, there are limited situations in which the president has authority, even if there is no direct federal interest in protecting a federal building or authorities. One such instance is an “insurrection.”

Yet the law is unclear as to a) the definition of an insurrection; b) who gets to decide whether an insurrection, however defined, is ongoing; and c) what is the proper role of the judiciary in reviewing a presidential decision that an insurrection is occurring.

The same is true of an invasion. This is somewhat easier to define, but there will be close cases, such as a dictator sending hordes of illegal immigrants to destabilize a nation.

How Do We Legally Define What’s Happening Now?

In a democracy, especially one with a system of checks and balances and a division of power such as ours, the question almost always comes down to who gets to decide? Our legal system recognizes the possibility ‒ indeed, the likelihood ‒ that whoever gets to make that decision may get it wrong.

So the issue becomes: Who has the right to be wrong? In most democracies, especially those with unitary parliamentary systems, the right to be wrong belongs to the elected branch of government ‒ namely, the legislature. At the federal level, that’s Congress, under Article 1 of the Constitution.

However, since the Supreme Court’s decision in Marbury v. Madison in 1803, all legislative decisions are subject to constitutional judicial review. Even a majority of the voters or their legislators are not empowered to violate the Constitution.

And if the Constitution is unclear, ambiguous or even inconsistent? I have a cartoon hanging in my office showing one of the framers saying to the others: “Just for fun, let’s make what is or isn’t constitutional kind of wishy-washy.”

Well, on the issue of presidential power to send troops into cities over the objection of local politicians, the Constitution is kind of “wishy-washy.” To paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when he discussed hardcore pornography: “Perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly (defining it), but I know it when I see it.”

The same may be said of an insurrection. It’s hard to define in advance with any degree of precision except at the extremes, but not so difficult to identify if one sees it.

The Legal Endgame Here Isn’t Clear, Either

The Civil War was an insurrection. Anti-Israel protests on campuses were not. But what about the violence in cities like Portland, where left-wing protesters burned cars and buildings and blocked access in 2024?

Some of these groups would love nothing more than to incite an insurrection, but they lack the power, at least at the moment, to garner sufficient support for anything broader than a violent demonstration or riot.

Does the president have to wait until these quixotic “insurrectionists” have garnered such support? Or can he take preventive steps that include sending in federal law enforcement officials? What about federal troops? Is that different?

These questions will eventually make their way to the Supreme Court, which is likely to try to defer broadly based and categorical answer as long as possible. In the meantime, district judges in cities across the country will rule against the president, except in cases involving protection of federal buildings, federal officials and the nation’s capital.

The president will appeal, and the appellate courts will likely split, depending on the particular circumstances of the cases.

“Wishy-washy” and “we’ll know it when we see it” are the best we are going to get in this complex situation.

Alan Dershowitz is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and the author of “Get Trump,” “Guilt by Accusation” and “The Price of Principle.” This piece is republished from the Alan Dershowitz Newsletter.

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