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

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“…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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Georgia county admits illegally certifying 315k ballots in 2020 presidential election

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Approximately 150 ‘tabulator tapes’ tracking the votes of more than 300,000 early voters were not signed.

Fulton County, Georgia, has admitted to including 315,000 early votes in the disputed 2020 presidential election despite the fact that they were not properly certified according to state law.

State law demands that voting “tabulator tapes” that publish the recorded results of polling stations must be verified and signed by poll workers, but approximately 150 tapes tracking the votes of more than 300,000 early voters were not signed.

In a hearing before the State Election Board (SEB), an attorney for Fulton County said the county does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.”

“It was a violation of the rule,” she said. “They shouldn’t have done it.”

“At best, this is sloppy and lazy. At worst, it could be egregious,” fired back Georgia SEB Member Janelle King. “It could have affected an election.”

The December 9 hearing was the result of election integrity activist David Cross, who filed a challenge with the board in 2022, alleging that Fulton County’s handling of early voting violated the state’s election rules.

“These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” Cross said during the hearing.

“Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the secretary of state. Yet it did,” said Cross. “And Secretary [Brad] Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia’s official total without questioning them.”

“This is not partisan. This is statutory. This is the law. When the law demands three signatures on tabulator tapes and the county fails to follow the rules, those 315,000 votes are, by definition, uncertified,” said Cross.

“Georgia has the most secure elections in the country and all voters were verified with photo ID and lawfully cast their ballots. A clerical error at the end of the day does not erase valid, legal votes,” averred Raffensberger.

Meanwhile, Republicans took issue with Raffensperger’s denial of the seriousness of Fulton County’s procedural lapse.

Republican Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones ridiculed Raffensberger’s post.

“If only Georgia had an official responsible for preventing clerical errors that undermine election integrity,” said Jones, a candidate for Georgia governor.

“Is there anyone in Georgia who has that job, Brad?” asked Jones, his opponent in the state’s gubernatorial race.

“We just started peeling the layers back on this onion and it already stinks,” said U.S. House Rep. Mike Collins (GA-10). “Years later, when the truth finally comes out, Trump was right.”

“President Trump is owed a massive apology,” asserted Collins. “Turns out over 300,000 early votes in the 2020 election were illegally certified but still included in the final results.”

Collins said he is “tired of empty words from weak leaders. The people of Georgia demand action.”

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden narrowly beat out incumbent President Donald Trump by less than 12,000 votes in the Peach Tree State.

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Federal funds FROZEN after massive fraud uncovered: Trump cuts off Minnesota child care money

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The Trump administration has cut off all federal child care payments to Minnesota, ordering a sweeping audit of the state’s day care system as investigators dig into what officials describe as one of the largest fraud schemes ever tied to social service programs.

“We have frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota,” Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Jim O’Neill wrote Tuesday afternoon, saying the move comes after mounting evidence that taxpayer dollars were being siphoned to sham or non-operational day care centers. The freeze follows a viral investigative video that put a national spotlight on facilities across Minneapolis that were receiving large sums of public money despite appearing closed or barely functioning.

According to Alex Adams, assistant secretary at HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, Minnesota has already received roughly $185 million in federal child care funding this year alone. Those funds, the administration says, will remain locked down until the state can demonstrate that payments are being used lawfully. “Funds will be released only when states prove they are being spent legitimately,” Adams said.

O’Neill accused Minnesota officials of allowing abuse to fester for years, alleging the state has “funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade.” To halt further losses, HHS outlined a series of immediate enforcement steps. Going forward, states seeking reimbursement through the Administration for Children and Families will be required to provide receipts or photographic proof documenting how funds are spent.

The department has also formally demanded that Gov. Tim Walz order a “comprehensive audit” of the day care centers flagged by investigators. O’Neill said the review must include attendance records, licensing documents, complaints, investigative files, and inspection reports. He pointed directly to a video published Friday by YouTuber Nick Shirley, who visited multiple Minneapolis-area centers listed as receiving millions in public funds but found locations that appeared closed or inactive.

In addition, HHS has launched a dedicated fraud hotline and email address at childcare.gov to encourage tips from parents, providers, and the public. “We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said, urging anyone with information to come forward.

Federal prosecutors say the scope of the alleged abuse is staggering. Authorities have already confirmed at least $1 billion in fraud tied to Minnesota child care programs, with 92 people charged so far. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has warned the total could ultimately reach as high as $9 billion as investigators continue combing through records.

The funding freeze marks one of the most aggressive crackdowns yet by the Trump administration on state-run social programs accused of lax oversight, sending a clear message that federal dollars will not flow until Minnesota can account for where the money went — and who was cashing in.

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