On May 19, China’s top law enforcement agency released measures for the roll-out of “cyber IDs” (网络身份认证), a new form of user identification to monitor internet users. Although the measures were released as a draft over the summer last year, they have only just been finalized, and will come into effect in mid-July.
According to the measures, introduced by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), each internet user in China will be issued with a unique “web number,” or wanghao (网号), that is linked to their personal information. While these IDs are, according to the MPS notice, to be issued on a strictly voluntary basis through public service platforms, the government appears to have been working on this system for quite some time — and state media are strongly promoting it as a means of guaranteeing personal “information security” (信息安全). With big plans afoot for how these IDs will be deployed, one obvious question is whether these measures will remain voluntary.
In Australia it was proposed by the Labor government and it was the Greens who passed the Digital ID bill. (Labor needed either the Greens or Conservatives on board).
It was the conservatives who opposed it (similar to when Conservatives opposed the Australia Card in the 80’s).
Go figure.
My best guess is that like 99% of Aussies don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about politics so as long as the parliament does things that loosely resemble working nobody’s gonna ask questions 😅