Macron launches digital ID in France after re-election

[Stone]

Macron launches digital ID in France after re-election, raises fears of social credit system
Participation is optional, but some citizens believe it could lead to China-style surveillance and societal control.

Fri Apr 29, 2022
PARIS (LifeSiteNews) — Less than a week after French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected, he is already facing backlash after launching a digital ID for citizens.

Macron signed the “Digital Identity Guarantee Service” (SGIN) into a decree on April 26, less than 48 hours after his victory over nationalist Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election.

The SGIN is a project by the French government to create a mobile app that will allow French citizens to access their ID digitally.

The project aims at making France “compliant” with the European Union Commission’s European Digital Identity package.

Though the text of the decree specifies that the use of digital ID “is completely left to the free choice of users,” some politicians see it as a tool to usher in a Chinese-like social credit system in France.

Florian Philippot, founder of French nationalist party “Les Patriotes” (The Patriots), took to Twitter to denounce the new legislation.

“Immediately after the election, the government announced the launch of a ‘digital identification app’! The goal: to introduce a Chinese-like social credit system. A society of control and surveillance,” he tweeted.

“Let’s totally reject this application and fight by any means!”

Other Twitter users echoed his sentiments.

One of them, The Q2 Observer, pointed out that “what is optional and trivial at the beginning will be essential and cumbersome in the long term.”

“In France for the moment, soon the same everywhere … Resist!” he added.

Concerns that digital tools such as the SGIN will be used by western governments to introduce a social credit system through the backdoor have also been expressed in other EU countries, including Italy, where a newly released app, the “Smart Citizen Wallet,” will be launched in Bologna this fall and will reward some citizens for “virtuous behavior” using a point system.

The re-election of Macron last Sunday triggered massive protests throughout France, and during his first official post re-election visit, he was pelted with tomatoes in the town of Cergy near Paris.

Voters are expected at the polls again for parliamentary elections in June, when Macron’s party could lose its majority to Le Pen.