Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing digital passports and digital wallets. For anybody that has had a little bit of life experience going into 2020, 2020 onward has been a pretty Orwellian ride so to speak. This just constant refrain of trying to get people on digital passports, digital wallets, digital this, digital that; look people are analog and if I haven't made myself clear in prior videos especially regarding the digital wallet or digital wallet schemes throughout the world, I don't know how to make myself any clearer that I find this stuff to be really creepy to say the least. In fact, it is getting to the point where people around the world need to start saying "hey, enough is enough". No one is asking for these things and we don't really want them but this video is less on "digital wallets and more on so called “digital passports”. 

I initially thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Zero Hedge, that is zerohedge.com, the article is titled: Achtung! US travel to Europe will require prior approval, biometric scanning. Quoting directly: “Traveling to most European countries is about to get more complicated and invasive for American citizens. In spring 2025, you will have to first request permission and you will be saying adieu to passport stamps and ciao to facial and fingerprint scans and having your biometric data stored in an enormous Government database." I urge those who are watching this video, check out that Zero Hedge article, a lot of good information in there. Really, really interesting stuff. Coming from my perspective as an American Immigration Attorney, I'm not really surprised by this. In fact I am surprised it hasn't happened sooner in one way. What are we talking about here? ESTA, the Electronic System for Travel Authorization which the United States has been utilizing since the Bush Administration effectively became what was called at the time, a back-door Visa. So up to that point, many countries had Visa waiver with the United States which effectively meant you could get on a plane, travel over to the US be stamped in and not have to get a Visa in advance. ESTA became this digital system, again Electronic System for Travel Authorization that you have to deal with before going to the USA. And yeah in my opinion it has created a platform for quite honestly; now look, again United States is a sovereign country; they have a right to dictate how folks enter the country, the protocols associated therewith. That said, I often wonder why all of this meticulousness and assiduousness is utilized in administering Immigration Law for those who are trying to fly in or have to come in through an ocean and yet down along the southern border, it doesn't seem to be the case that anybody is implementing any of these protocols. So it seems to be at the very least it is a very schizophrenic policy with regard to immigration to the USA. But okay set aside the USA. Now the EU is sort of doing a “tit for tat” kind of thing and saying: "okay, Americans, you're treating our passport holders this way, we will treat you guys this way." It is kind of reciprocity if you will, or negative reciprocity. But that said, okay this is happening. That is an Immigration thing.

More to the point on this whole digital passport thing is what has got me creeped out and I thought of making this after reading recent article from abc.net.au that's abc.net.au, the title of the article is: Passport stamps being phased out around the world as paper-free travel technology moves closer. Quoting directly: "Passport stamps have been considered a souvenir of sorts for decades but if you have been on a trip overseas recently, you might have noticed some countries are no longer inking your passport. Soon, some including Singapore will do away with physical passports entirely. Singapore has recently announced it is introducing "automated passport free Immigration clearance". Dr. Ahlawat," And they go into his credentials in the article, I urge those watching this video go check out that article abc.net.au. "Dr Ahlawat said it was likely physical passports would be entirely phased out around the world in the future. It appears that in the next 10 years, the physical passport can be replaced, at least on a trial basis with a digital passport, he said. However he said it was unlikely our passports would be uploaded to our mobile phones like our credit cards have been "because your battery may go flat, you may lose your mobile phone, [or] you may not have internet access in some of the countries," he said. 

The first thing that came to my mind when I read that, and they said "oh, we are going to do all this digitization but we can't quite put it in your phone." I started thinking to myself, maybe my mind goes to weird places, I don't know, but the first thing it just felt like begging the question "well why don't we just put chips in people?" You know that was what I was just thinking just reading this stuff. Honestly, I have been practicing US Immigration law for 16 years maybe going on 17, I have been dealing with various aspects of the US Immigration System for years, not quite as much time but for many years I have dealt with the Thai Immigration system; I am very used to Immigration. And I get it, on a certain level it is invasive and you don't have privacy quite honestly associated with Immigration. I have never had a problem with this per se because sovereign countries can decide who they let in and the terms under which they let people in. That has never particularly bothered me. What bothers me about this now is one) nobody is asking for this. I don't see where all of this extra biometric tagging and digitization and digital walleting and all of it, because quite honestly it is becoming clearer and clearer to me, this is all sort of one concerted effort to sort of digitize people generally, to sort of tag them with a sort of digital moniker if you will that they then carry on an international basis. I mean if there's any good reason, I don't have any problem with Singapore per se, but with all these policies coming to the foreground, I am not very sure I am ever going to want to visit there moving forward. Quite honestly, Europe the same way. I mean I don't really, yeah it is kind of a sad deal. I culturally would like to see some of the cultural landmarks over there, I wouldn't mind traveling there but honestly if it's going to be some big Orwellian gauntlet to run through, I am not particularly interested in undertaking that particular journey if you will.

The point I am trying to make is I don't see what is really being added by all of this stuff other than you are just tagging people and it just feels like livestock or something; it's very, very creepy and it's all going to facial recognition, biometrics. Again I get some of it, up to a point. No country, Thailand for example doesn't want to let in people they don't know who they are letting in the door, I totally get that, but this movement across the board to sort of digitized everybody sort of place us in this kind of I don't even know what the right word is for it, this sort of Digital Universe that is far more over the top in terms of scrutiny or lack of privacy than anything we would have seen under the former Soviet Union for example. I mean clearly what is going on up in China, and I hate how all this is framed in the media because I read a lot of these stories and the way that this is framed is one, it is framed as very much inevitable - it's not. There was a ton of stuff that was framed as inevitable during COVID that was not inevitable regardless of how it was framed by the media at the time. The other thing that it is framed as is it is framed sort of very matter of factly and as if it's just self-evidently a great thing. Again it's not. I can see benefits but there are also massive drawbacks. My real concern is with digital money. Yes I get even Central Bank to Central Bank and I am not going to go too deep into this; there is an argument to be made for sort of digital instruments in that forum, but in the world of people to people, No. Cash is still viable and there is no reason we should get rid of it. But with regard to for example paper passports, as they say they are not going to put it on a phone so where are they going to put it if they if they are going to digitize your passport? And again, and then it sort of gets into this whole "well is that the next article we see in 2025, is “darn these digital passports are really difficult to interface with people's phones, let's just put a chip in everybody!” I mean does anybody think that that's out of the realm of reason after what we have seen roughly the last 3 years. I don't because there were things I thought were absolutely insane going into 2020 that I would have said you were one of the craziest people on the earth. Vaccine Passports for example and again how hard would it be to implement those once all of our passports are digitized anyway. 

So you know, I am not trying to make a rant video here exactly but I just hope people are thinking and even folks in Government, anybody who is watching which you never know, I kind of doubt it but if you are, I am not making this to just be contrarian; I'm making this because look this has serious ramifications both positive and negative and I am here to say I think that the negatives very likely outweigh the positives and it is not going to be a situation where it is only bad for people who have to deal with it. Everyone's going to have to deal with this. I don't think anyone is going to enjoy how this thing plays out. It's much again like digital money well yeah sort of in theory it's sort of sounds okay, but it mostly sounds okay to people because they don't think it is going to apply to them. At the end of the day I think that is the conceit that most people are not factoring in as they sort of say "in theory that sounds like a good idea". Well do you really want to be sort of tagged based on your prints and your facial recognition or retina scans or do you just want to use a passport and pass through a border?