Digital ID harms
Updated 24 November, 2025
Below are examples of how digital ID goals and decisions by parliament could negatively interrupt the lives and well-being of New Zealanders.
Digital ID example and proposed use cases
This will have verified your passport, birth certificate, residency status, and any other identifier documents that help connect your likeness to your Digital ID.
At surface level this is convenient because it removes data redundancy and in many cases removes having to repeat mundane processes (repeat authorisation applications, submission and wait times)
This information will determine whether you have a right to acquire property, work inside the country, and connect to Welfare and other public services.
Social credit system?
With the ability to connect markers like residency status and qualifications, also comes the ability to create new markers such as 'social score' and 'reliability meter' - things that are subjective and potentially detrimental to certain personality types.
The question isn't whether a governing body can remain objective and fair about adjudicating these things, but whether they are capable of resisting applying them.
Digital lD becomes the default for KYC (know your customer) check when signing up to banks or any platforms where currency is being acquired, kept, and exchanged. This allows for seamless login experiences through multiple platforms, limiting the amount of passwords, checks and processes required to access user funds.
However...
Once a digital currency is linked to the the pre-requisite digital ID;
- Exact transaction logs can be kept and identified for monitoring and review
- Taxation can be deducted automatically without your authorisation or balancing with all expenses.
- Fines can be deducted without your notification
- Time limits can be imposed on the lifespan of digital ID linked currency
- Location limits can be set on where digital ID linked currency can be spent
- Social Credit criteria can be set up to reward or punish behaviour deemed good or bad.
Your ability to send and receive money, within a government surveilled digital ID currency system, will be dependent on the political ideologies and whims of those within government and finance sectors.
Every pupil carries a unique pupil number which provides academic records, report data, attendance logs, and any other information deemed of interest to each pupil.
On the surface, this is a measure of convenience and a benchmark for where any particular student stands within the system of their education place of enrolment.
The downside is...
This unique pupil number can be tied to GPS location data, real-time tracking and facial recognition technology, posing privacy concerns as well as an added layer of stress and tension for each student, not wanting to take a 'wrong step' and therefore living with heightened stress.
The purpose would be to ensure that students are at their allocated locations in real-time when at school, but that does not address other issues like whether their class of learning is appropriate for them.
National Tukituki MP Catherine Wedd has put forward a new members’ bill to protect young people from social media harm by restricting access for under 16s.
This particular measure - age restricted access, is one of the key bridges between a simple government ID and an all-pervasive, full surveillance tool of every individual. The proposed bill specifically being aimed at social media platforms, would enforce the following standards onto social media providers:
- Provider obligations: Social media platforms must take all reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from creating accounts.
- Enforcement: The Bill introduces penalties for non-compliance, with courts empowered to issue financial penalties against platforms that fail to uphold age restrictions.
- Defences for providers: Platforms can rely on reasonable verification measures to demonstrate compliance.
- Regulatory oversight: The Minister will have the authority to designate specific platforms as age-restricted and enforce compliance.
- Review mechanism: The law will be reviewed three years after implementation to assess its effectiveness and consider necessary amendments.
WHAT THIS MEANS
It means that not just under 16's, but ALL adults, will be forced to go through a verification check when signing in to Social Media platforms. This means identity data connected to social media use, which would also mean that every interaction made on platforms like YouTube or Facebook, is now directly traceable by government and your ongoing participation in those social media platforms also becomes controllable by Government.
WHAT'S AT STAKE?
- Loss of online sovereignty - if Government doesn't like or agree with the content you are posting or consuming, they can take your access rights away without notice.
- Loss of Refuge - Your ability to simply wind down and relax using social media platforms is compromised by knowing that even your leisure time is being 'watched'.
- Personal Choice - Your ability to make genuine individual choices online are compromised by 'big brother' government watching over your every move. You are more likely to self-censor and sabotage your own online behaviour by engaging in ways you would think the government would approve.
- Cheaters will still cheat - Governments know that anyone with the desire will always find a way to bypass the system, and this includes malicious actors who prey on others. This leaves regular, innocent people as the victims of government overreach.
'Online Safety' is the sugar coating, control is the pill beneath.
Sold as a means to "boost supermarket competition" the government are proposing to replace physical food labels with digital alternatives
“Information could be made accessible in-store and online via on-shelf QR codes, in-store digital labels, websites and mobile apps"
The implications this has for the customer are numerous:
- The customer could be required to carry a digital device into the supermarket if they need product ingredient information when making a purchase decision.
- Privacy issues: Does registering to the supermarket become a requirement to find this information? Is search data being kept or stored in some way?
- Food labelling requirements could become ambiguous to the point where shop owners inadvertently fail to provide key basic information
Outdoor advertisers are increasingly using smart technology to reach more customers with their 'smart' digital billboards.
These billboards use the following technologies:
Camera analytics (face detection / demographic inference) — cameras analyze visual features to estimate age range, gender presentation, mood or count people and how long they linger. Many operators say they only use aggregate, non-identifying traits to change ads in real time. Consumer NZ+1
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) — some billboard installations include cameras that read licence plates for traffic analytics, routing, or integration with broader city camera networks. NZ transport OIA responses have documented ANPR on some billboard operator cameras. NZ Transport Agency+1
Programmatic DOOH using location and event data — programmatic platforms change what ad is served at a site based on time of day, local events, weather, or aggregated mobile location datasets (from ad networks or data brokers). This is similar to online programmatic advertising but for physical screens. jcdecaux.co.nz+1
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / beacon tracking — some systems use Wi-Fi probe requests or Bluetooth beacons to estimate footfall, dwell time, and repeat visitors. These typically capture device identifiers which may be hashed/aggregated but can be used to build visitor patterns. footfallcam.com+1
Important distinction: detection vs recognition
Face detection / attribute inference = detects a face and classifies age range, gender, emotion, or counts people.Usually non-identifying when no database match is performed.
Face recognition (identification) = matches a face to a known identity or database. This is far more invasive and is treated as biometric identification under privacy law. NZ regulators and civil society treat recognition as higher risk and subject to stricter rules. Privacy New Zealand+1
Are there provisions to stop companies individualising use (or will it evolve to individual targeting?)
Yes — regulators are moving to stop/strictly control individualised biometric targeting. The Biometric Processing Privacy Code explicitly targets automated biometric processing and sets stricter rules for anything that identifies or profiles people from biometric data. The OPC has also said it may effectively ban real-time personalised marketing that identifies or profiles people without a very strong lawful basis. Privacy New Zealand+1
But there are gaps and risks:
Some billboard systems already include ANPR or camera feeds used for other civic systems (e.g., city safety platforms). Once cameras exist in a network, technical capability for more invasive processing exists. OIA responses show billboard operators’ cameras can include ANPR. NZ Transport Agency+1
Programmatic DOOH + third-party mobile location data can create very fine-grained audience targeting without necessarily using faces — it’s possible to target people who were at location X at time Y by tying aggregated mobile location segments to ad buys. That can feel very “individualised” even if no face recognition occurs.
A new Privacy Code designed to deal with technologies like Smart Digital Billboards:
Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC): has been actively investigating smart billboards and biometric uses, issuing guidance and a new Biometric Processing Privacy Code (finalised 2025) that creates tailored rules for automated biometric processing (including facial recognition) — tighter transparency, purpose-limitation, necessity/proportionality, and stronger safeguards. The Code came into force in late 2025 (with transition windows). The OPC has signalled strong limits on using biometrics for real-time targeted marketing without clear lawful basis. Privacy New Zealand+2
See the full article here
The World Health Organisation, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has published a detailed framework for a lifelong, interoperable digital health certificate - anchored to a unique digital identifier assigned at birth or first vaccination contact.
It outlines a system that would:
- Link every individual's vaccination history, socioeconomic data, and health events to a single, globally recognised digital ID from infancy onward.
- Use artificial intelligence to analyse patterns of "vaccine hesitancy", predict service gaps, and trigger targeted interventions
- Enable real-time, cross border data exchange through Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standards.
- Create permanent machine-readable records that can be required for education, employment, travel, and public services.
The stated goal is higher immunisation coverage and pandemic preparedness.
The practical outcome, however, is the first truly global infrastructure for continuous, AI-assisted monitoring of individual health compliance.
This is unprecedented in both scope and permanence.
Once implemented, these records cannot be deleted, opted out of, or meaningfully limited without breaking international interoperability - the system is designed to make exclusion nearly impossible.
The risks are not hypothetical:
- A single large-scale breach would expose the lifelong health and demographic records of billions.
- Mission creep is almost guaranteed; systems built for vaccination can be repurposed for any future "public health emergency" or broader social-credit style frameworks.
- Combining identity location, and behavioural data at this scale hands extraordinary power to both governments and any actor capable of accessing or influencing the data pipelines.
We have crossed a threshold.
The technical and policy foundation for cradle-to-grave digital health surveillance now exists in official, peer-reviewed WHO literature.
Worth reading for yourself - and worth asking whether this is the future we want for ourselves.
With Facial and Licence Plate recognition technology at their disposal,