Yet plenty of people, including some on here, advocate a compulsory digital ID in the UK. A favourite line is "if youv'e nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".
If China is mentioned such people wouild probably say "it couldn't happen here", but of course back in early 2020 when China introduced covid lockdowns the intial line was "lockdowns could never happen in a Western democracy".
I admit I did rather hope that what is happening in China, combined with what happened to the truckers in Canada etc. would have alerted people to the great danger of a society where every action you take, every item you purchase, every place you want to go, requires *permission* from some central authority.
Because of course once that it is the case, the *permission* will become increasingly conditional on being a 'good' citizen, whatever they'll decide that means.
However, rather than see this ever-clearer agenda and try to prevent it, as a society we seem to be openly embracing the construction of the digital prison around ourselves, which is accelerating rapidly. Just look how keen the authorities are to eliminate cash, as one obvious example, which is enthusiastically followed by much of the population. (Or indeed 'anonymous' paper rail tickets, for a very relevant example to this forum).
I do fear that the 'great wake-up' about this will come too late, and one day very soon now we'll find our society has a lot more in common in China than it does with the country we remember from just a few years ago. And at that point there will be nothing that can be done about it, because if you protest or complain, your 'permissions' will be revoked at the touch of a bureaucrat's button.
