Apple’s Quiet Path to Identity Control
November 18th, 2025Via: The Highwire:
Apple’s new Digital ID feature has arrived. And in true Apple fashion, it is dressed in the language of ease and convenience. Scan your passport into your iPhone or Apple Watch. Move through TSA with a quick tap. In other words, no wallet, no cards, and no friction. If you listen to Apple, it is a much-needed quiet upgrade to today’s modern life. But, beneath the surface, the pattern is all too familiar and increasingly global. Much of the world is already living inside digital identification enslavement systems that began in the same way, professing to be voluntary, limited, and wrapped neatly in claims of convenience.

Yesterday, after signing in on my phone to my US credit union app, I was asked if I wanted to set up digital ID, then asked if I wanted to link any accounts with *other* US banks to *their* app.