The WallBuilders Show
The WallBuilders Show is a daily journey to examine today's issues from a Biblical, Historical and Constitutional perspective. Featured guests include elected officials, experts, activists, authors, and commentators.
The WallBuilders Show
Digital ID Crossroads
A simple promise—“digital makes life easier”—can mask a complicated reality. We dive into the fast-unfolding world of digital ID and how it’s being stitched together with payments, health credentials, and online access under the banner of “digital public infrastructure.” With Alex Newman, we examine concrete examples from Canada’s account freezes to China’s social credit system and Europe’s emerging digital wallet to understand what happens when identity, money, and movement live behind the same gatekeepers.
We unpack the policy pretexts—child safety, fraud prevention, immigration control—and show how noble goals can harden into tools of control once systems interlock. Alex explains why central bank digital currencies are often designed to tie back to ID and personal data, and how that linkage can turn “verification” into a lever over daily life: work, travel, banking, and speech. We revisit constitutional guardrails like the Fourth Amendment and discuss why rights can erode by default when access requires consent to always-on surveillance.
This conversation isn’t doom for doom’s sake. We map tangible ways to push back: state laws that block CBDC adoption and protect cash, procurement limits on interoperable ID mandates, strict constraints on biometric capture, and legal off-ramps such as gold and silver transactions. We also share everyday steps—opting out where possible, supporting privacy-respecting services, and giving legislators workable alternatives that address safety without building a universal control layer.
If you care about liberty, faith, and the balance between security and freedom, this is a must-hear exploration of the choices in front of us. Listen, share with someone who thinks “it could never happen here,” and then tell us what safeguard you want enacted first. Join the conversation so we can keep building smart defenses for lasting freedom.
Links:
https://libertysentinel.org/
https://classicalconversations.com/
https://thenewamerican.com/
https://x.com/ALEXNEWMAN_JOU
Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Learn more about us at wallbuilders.com. That's wallbuilders.com and then if you just need to catch up on some of the programs you might've missed or you want to share them and we really encourage you to do that, especially your friends and family that may not be familiar with WallBuilders. Great opportunity to introduce them to us. You can go to wallbuilders.show and just share those links. Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton, Alex Newman will be joining us a little later in the program. Fantastic guy on the front lines in so many different areas. One of those intellectual guys that you can actually sit around and visit with. And as we talked about yesterday, sharpen each other's countenance. So looking forward to having Alex on today.
Tim Barton [00:00:49] Yeah, he reminds me a little bit of like a Mark David Hall, one of our professor friends, who definitely is more in the academic intellectual capacity position, and yet can engage in a great conversation, and especially for us, where we are nerds in a lot of ways. And I say that in the sense that we really enjoy studying and learning. And of course we try to make things as practical and relevant as we can. We're real people down to earth. But Alex Newman, as an example, is one of those really fun guys. And he has a podcast, a radio program. He's an author. So he engages the culture in lots of ways, but he definitely is one of the intellectual academics. And we had a question come in from a listener that normally on Foundations of Freedom Thursdays, and we do the normal questions from listeners, this is a question we thought could be strong enough. We maybe need to dedicate some time to this, because this is an up and coming issue, looking at digital ID. We look at some of the things happening around the world right now. There's a lot of move toward going digital in a lot areas, and certainly there's advantages, there's practicality to that. You know, guys, we have some friends who are carry cash in your front pocket kind of guys. They don't even like the fact that there's... Any kind of digital connection with currency and we're not talking about digital currency. It's not like a central bank digital currency No, just the fact that like your credit card or whatever else your your Apple pay, they're like, I don't like it because it's moving us closer to the digital ID System and once you get to a digital ID system it it allows and creates opportunity where there can be more digital control from people way outside of your reach like federal leaders government in Washington, D.C. That Mike could close down. From a practical perspective.
Rick Green [00:02:41] Tim, that's like the, I always think of the Canadians, right? The truckers, that the first thing that comes to mind when you talk about what you're talking about.
David Barton [00:02:47] Hang on, Rick, explain that, the reference to Canadian truckers. What do you mean?
Rick Green [00:02:51] When they were protesting and in all the COVID stuff with everything being shut down and the, the Canadian government literally seized their money and seized their, their bank accounts to try to shut them down. And, and that's what I think of when I think a digital currency, I'm like, okay, if they have the ability to stop me from being able to buy food. Because they don't like my politics, I'm concerned.
Tim Barton [00:03:11] Well, and this is the concern connected to digital ID, which also like as another side note, but connected to this, when you go through TSA, for anybody that flies, when you went through TSA, they now do a digital ID where they just, they take your physical ID, then they do a picture of you, and it matches up and points a connection. You still have the option when you go through TSA to opt out of the facial recognition, which they call Real ID and just out of principle, I opt out every single time which I know is gonna mean nothing in the long run because I know this direction of removing I just in my little show of protest. I'm always going to opt-out in this situation because when you move into a digital ID again, like this is this is closer to the movies the books we can talk about the you know, that 1984 dystopian novel, or the Minority Report, or iRobot, right? Something like the Terminator kind of things. Some of these movies that show the potential dangers of what can happen when you move into that world. Now, all things guys, we're saying kind of big picture, 30,000 foot view. And there's a lot of speculative notions in this. This is the reason we said, hey, we need to get our friend Alex Newman on here to talk about this. Because he has been one of the leaders in this conversation of What is a digital ID? What is it not? What are the potential dangers? What are the connections? Is this a concern or not etc? And really, again, this is based on the fact we had a question from a listener come in. Rick, do you have that question in front of you we can read and tease that a little bit before we go to break and maybe get Alex on?
Rick Green [00:04:50] Yeah, Tim, here goes. They said, I've been keeping up to date with digital ID and the Prime Minister of Great Britain who's forcing digital ID. The Prime Minister, Great Britain, with so far as to say the citizens of Britain, you won't be allowed to work without it. I'm concerned that digital ID may be implemented here in the United States soon enough. According to Agenda 2030, digital ID will be required and connected to your social media, your banking, how much food you can purchase, if you can travel, whether by train or aircraft, how can we as Americans opt out of digital ID? Texas is about to adopt digital ID. Utah is adopting digital ID and so they're asking, you know, what can be done or should we be concerned? So it's really good question. Tim, this is gonna be a great conversation today. Everybody stay with us. We'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show.
Tim Barton [00:06:33] Welcome back to the wall builder show. This is Tim Barton joined by our friend and special guest, Alex Newman. Alex, thanks for being on with us today.
Alex Newman [00:06:46] Great to be here. Thank you very much for having me.
Tim Barton [00:06:48] Okay, so my dad, Rick and I were talking, trying to come up with good answers, and obviously all of us have ideas. We are all thinkers, we're communicators, so we don't even have a problem saying what we think. It just, sometimes on some of these issues, we go, you know, we are not the smartest guy on this issue, but we felt like we might know the smartest guys on this issues, so we said, let's call Alex. So, the question we got from one of our listeners, They were saying tracking some of the digital ID going on and Prime Minister of Great Britain is forcing digital id the Prime Minister of Great Britain went so far as to say the citizens of Britain, you won't be allowed to work without it. I'm concerned that digital id may be implemented here in the United States soon enough. According to Agenda 2030 digital id will be required and connected to social media banking food purchases, etc. The question I think comes down to in Texas, they're about to adopt Digital ID, Utah is looking to that ,there are some states moving that direction. How dangerous is this? How concerned should we be? And what should we doing advocating for or against in this situation?
Alex Newman [00:07:55] Well, thanks again for having me, Tim. Honored and a pleasure to be here with you. The Digital ID threat is enormously significant. Now, the Digital ID is not the threat in and of itself, but it's one piece of a much broader totalitarian system that's being built. They often refer to it, people like Bill Gates, the United Nations, they call it digital public infrastructure. It includes central bank digital currency, it includes the unified digital blockchain ledger through which they intend to tokenize every asset so that we can buy and sell. Through this ledger using our digital IDs and our digital currency. So they are building a comprehensive digital system that is not designed to do the things that they're telling us it is, keep children safe from pornography, prevent illegal immigration, things like that, but is rather designed to track and control everything we do. So, I think the person asking the question is right to ask this question. We've seen over and over on this, Tim, that the people pushing these ideas use an excuse to push the totalitarian policy. Knowing full well that it's just an excuse. And let me give you a clear example of this. And I talked with Glenn Beck about this just like a week ago on this very issue. 2010 was the first time I saw the U.S. Government seriously propose this idea of a biometric digital ID to have some sort of privilege. In this case, it was for the ability to work. And so this was 2010. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and Chuck Schumer in New York joined forces to create this bipartisan bill. And it would have required every American to have a digital biometric federal ID to be able to work in this country. Now, in the UK right now, we're watching them argue that this digital ID is gonna supposedly get control in the illegal immigration situation. Well, the first bill in the United States that was introduced to do this actually would have given amnesty to tens of millions of illegal immigrants. So, it's not about illegal immigration in the U.K., it's about illegal immigration here, and it's now about protecting children from pornography. To be clear, protecting children from pornography is necessary, it is a very important policy response, but to use that as a pretext to force everybody to have digital ID to be able to use the internet is a dangerous step, I believe it's misguided. And so I think legislators need to go back to the drawing board on this and figure out a way to protect children from this filth without putting in the architecture that's gonna end up removing our freedom.
Tim Barton [00:10:09] Well, as you say, legislators need to go back to the drawing board. We are very grateful that you're actually gonna be speaking to a group of legislators, giving them some insight on this. And Alex, one of the things that, from the outside perspective, so there's a lot of things that obviously we get into the weeds on at WallBuilders, usually it's American history, constitutional, religious liberty kinds of things. And this is not that far removed from some of those thoughts, but if we go back to COVID. This was the first time I think a lot of Americans really saw the reality of people were saying hey If you don't have this vaccine, you can't shop. You can't do things. Well, that's not that far removed from what a digital ID might be and could be because if you look in places, and Alex and I'm saying this if I'm saying something you're like, "Well, Tim, I'm sure I agree with you." I would love to know that insight because this is just again the the outsiders perspective. But I look at somewhere like China where they have a social credit score. And it's largely this digital ID program, but because they all have a digital ID, because it's all linked to everything they can do, where they can buy, sell, trade, travel, whatever it is, if you do something somebody doesn't like, they literally can shut this down, which as you mentioned, even the central bank digital currency, some of those connections, I look at stuff like this, and it's not, as you mention, it's that the great fear is that somebody having a digital I.D. Is an evil in and of itself, but this is almost in my mind like the camel's nose under the tent. That once this happens, it's just a matter of time before this can go a really wrong direction really quickly. Is that something that I'm seeing correctly? Is this part of the concern? Because I think that's what I hear you're saying. I just am wanting to affirm. That's what that is.
Alex Newman [00:11:46] You're 100% correct, Tim. China is really the pilot program for this. And so what you see in China, combined with the digital ID, as you pointed out, is the social credit score. And we're watching this being implemented in Europe as well. China was just the pioneer because that's kind of the model they're gonna roll out worldwide. They started this in 2015, and I did major articles about it at that time. They basically give every slave in China about 1.5 billion people, they say, a number. And that number is based on a number of factors, including whether you ask questions about the government, whether you type in things into your search engine that you're not supposed to be asking about, like Tiananmen Square or Freedom or the US Constitution. Those things will get you a negative score. And then your privileges in society are determined based on that score and it's all linked back through your digital ID. So, if you have a bad score, you can't get a passport and travel to another country. You can't even get on a fast train. You can get your children a good job, you can get them into a good school. And if it drops low enough, you might find yourself in a re-education camp or worse. So eventually I believe that's the model they want to use for the entire world. And the really interesting thing about this, Tim, is we don't have to speculate about this. They're telling us what they're doing. So look at Europe, for example. The European Union is creating right now, and you can go on their website and read this, a European digital wallet. And this digital wallet will include, according to the European Union, your digital ID, your Digital Currency, your vaccine passport, and your health certificate. And we have the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Khabrasis, very recently, within the last couple of years saying we're going to use the European technology and the European model to roll this out internationally where every person in the world is going to have all of this tracked digitally. Now do I think legislators in Texas and Utah and Mississippi and some of the other conservative states that are rolling out digital IDs have all this in mind? Of course not, right? These are decent honorable people for the most part who are being told that this is the only way to move into the future and protect people and so on. The reality is, and this has a direct bearing on the constitutional principles that you mentioned, we have rights in this country, rights that come from God, rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. I would encourage people to read the Fourth Amendment again if you haven't read it lately. We have a right to be secure in our papers, in our houses, in our effects without unreasonable searches and seizures. This digital ID paves the way for a nightmarish future, and it won't come all of the sudden. It'll come piece by piece by piece, just like so many totalitarian policies do. But yes, the digital ID, to be clear, and they've been saying this for many years now, will be combined with your personal data. The Financial Times wrote about this a few years ago. CBDCs must be linked to digital IDs, which must be link to your personal data, your credit history, and of course all the big tech companies will be providing your information as well. This is a recipe for a global digital gulag, and I believe it's essential that citizens and lawmakers resist this.
Tim Barton [00:14:33] Well, Alex, as you said, this is a very nightmare scenario where this could go. And we're looking at real examples in the UK where not only can we track Europe where they've largely removed freedom of speech, freedom of religion, other things. In the U.K. Where they're actually imprisoning people for thought crimes, right? I mean, I remember reading 1984 and feeling like these people are crazy and not realizing how prophetic this was for a lot of where the nation has gone, not just in America, obviously, over in Europe around the world. What is happening now. And I'm saying that to reiterate what you're saying is part of the nightmarish danger of this is usually America follows 5, 10, 12 years behind what happens in Europe. And one of the important questions fundamentally that we always should be asking is who decides who's in charge. And it used to be the founding of the nation was, that God's in charge because there's a Creator who gave us rights and our rights don't come from government they come from our Divine Creator government exists to protect those rights. But the further we are removed from that the more secular we become as a nation, we are following some of these trends in Europe again saying this to reiterate the nightmare scenario that could be coming. If we are coming to the place where now thought crimes could be a thing, and by the way, to think that that's not a consideration in California right now, that that is not a consideration in some of these states, where they want to criminalize people for having different ideas, that's a real thing. And if we're now linking the digital ID, which could then lead to digital currency, which then you're linking to thought crimes, which is your social credit score, we are now setting ourselves up for what could be a very disastrous future, as you mentioned, if we don't kind of check this. So, let's not just doomsday this, which I will now jokingly say, right? Different than the Glenn Beck program. We wanna go and say, not just, you know, this is the end of the world. And I say that in love because Glenn's a friend. What solutions are there? I know that hopefully very soon you're going to be our legislators conference and you're gonna have some suggestions for those legislators, but for the average American, what can we do? Is it simply contacting our legislator? What steps can we take? Because for people that right now are going, man, I'm in. I believe it. I see it. I don't want that in America. What can we
Alex Newman [00:16:50] Well, I would say one of the first and most important things is we need to learn how to say "no". We here in Florida got very good at that during the COVID pandemic, whenever Joe Biden came out with a new mandate. Not only did we the people here in Florida say "no", but we were backed out by our governor. We were backed up by our state legislature and they took a very deliberate and very concrete steps to protect our rights from that. And so I'm very grateful to them. And we need be doing that on other issues. We've already passed, for example, here in Florida, a ban on central bank digital currencies. We've done a lot of things to try to insulate ourselves from this, we've passed measures to allow transactions in commerce and gold and silver in case this stuff should come down at the federal level at some point in the future. So, I think it's essential first of all that citizens learn how to say no and that we learn how work with our elected officials to help them have a spine and also learn how to to say "no". There are very simple legislative steps that state governments can take. To protect ourselves from this kind of nightmarish future. We can refuse to cooperate with these things. We can refused to allow these technologies or at least force these technologies on citizens. To be clear, a whole bunch of states, including some of our most conservative states, have already started rolling out digital IDs. And I've talked to some of these legislators, most of them have nothing but the best of intentions and so I'm grateful for what they're trying to do. But we as citizens need to say, no, we won't participate in that. No, we wont help facilitate that. And no, we won't allow our elected representatives who are supposed to be representing us to help impose these kinds of things on us. And again, there are a lot of statutes, a lot policies that can be passed at the federal, at the state, and even down to the local level to try to protect us from the nightmarish future that we know they would like to impose on us is we don't even have to speculate here, Tim. We saw what they did to us during COVID. They wanted to lock us in our house. They wouldn't let us go to work. They told us church was not essential. These are the kinds of ambitions that these totalitarians have. We cannot allow them to have the infrastructure that would make it possible for them to do that again on a whim if and when they ever regain control of the White House or the Congress.
Tim Barton [00:18:45] Alex, it's it's so good and as you have mentioned you've written about some of this and you've written about an awful lot of stuff. If people want to read some of what you've written and not just about this because you're a voice of clarity on so many issues. If they want to listen to you, if they want follow you, where's the best place or places to go for them to find out more about what you're doing.
Alex Newman [00:19:05] Well, thank you so much, Tim. So my website is LibertySentinel.org. People can follow that, get our newsletter. I'm on X at Alex Newman underscore J-O-U. Also work closely with Classical Conversations. People can check them out at ClassicalConversations.org and then NewAmerican.com. And yeah, best place again, my website, LibertysentinelL.org and I look forward to seeing you next week in Texas, sir.
Tim Barton [00:19:23] Yes, and we'll have links on the program as well for those that want to come and easy shop. If you're driving right now, couldn't write it down, come to our show notes. We'll have those links there. But Alex, so grateful for you offering the clarity, maybe even more grateful for you coming to help these legislators get some direction on this, what we can do to protect the inalienable rights of the American citizens. And we're just grateful for You thanks for being on with us today.
Alex Newman [00:19:46] Well, the feeling is mutual. Thank you so much.
Tim Barton [00:19:48] We'll be right back in a moment with David Barton and Rick Green.
Rick Green [00:20:58] Welcome back thanks for staying with us here on the WallBuilders show. Thanks to Alex Newman for joining us today as well. Talking about digital currency and of course, you know, I, you know, there was the movies. What was the, Left Behind series that, you know, uh the, the whole thing, you know, about the whole mark of the beast and everything and being able to buy or sell things. I mean, do you guys think about that when you hear these stories?
David Barton [00:21:21] And yeah, the, the sum of that and I'll, I'll take you back even, you know, a generation ago, maybe two generations ago, cause I've been through a few of them. And it's like, this recycles in a different level of technology every 10, 15, 20 years, you now, 20 years ago, they were saying that to, to use an electronic kind of thing introduced with electronic checks and, and you couldn't buy or sell without it was going to be the fear that they had. And they said, that sounds like the mark of the beast that you can't have any economic transactions out this which, kind of sounds like what you guys are reading from the Prime Minister of Great Britain, but I've been through two or three generations of different technology changing, and each time it gives more control to the government and less control to individual, and they said, that's the mark of the beast, and who knows, maybe it works out sometime, but I think the thing that draws people in more than anything is the convenience. It's just a lot more convenient to do this, I don't have to have other stuff, whether it be cash in the front pocket or whatever, and I was reminded of a quote that came from Benjamin Franklin. And he said, "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". And I thought, okay, so you could say those who give up the essential liberty to purchase the little temporary convenience deserve neither convenience nor liberty. So, you know, maybe this is one of those things where you just stand firm on principles. And certainly Alex laid some stuff out there that's worthy of consideration. And it does appear that this has been. Kind of the the tendency of people over the years to take more and more control and more and freedom and do it in the name of convenience and ease and that's never been a good formula.
Tim Barton [00:22:55] Yeah, one of the things too, as he points out, is when you look at how this has been utilized already like in China, where China has a social credit score, and we talked about this, that ultimately you see a lot of these things tying together, and I think one of reasons it's a concern is when someone says, oh, but we would never allow digital ID to move us into some kind of central bank digital currency, some kind social credit, score, et cetera, we would ever go that far. This is when we ought to have enough wisdom to go guys, this is a slippery slope that you are messing around with. And once you start down this hill, it's just about impossible to come back without something significant happening. And again, this is where you have multiple examples you can point to. And it's also why we mentioned it briefly in the interview, but why I'm very excited to have him come to our legislative conference next week, because there are some practical things we can do, not the least of which he points out. Just, just say no. Right? We ought to be able to just to say no, if something is coming up or going on that can infringe on inalienable rights, which certainly this has great potential to do that.
David Barton [00:24:03] And one thing I would throw in to Tim is, you know, you were saying, Oh, this will never happen. Well, that's true. If we were in charge, if we were.
Tim Barton [00:24:10] I didn't say this would never happen. I said there's people that say it never happens.
David Barton [00:24:13] Let's say it never happens. That's right. Talking about people who say this will never end, that's true, talking about people who say, this will ever happen. That's true if you were in charge, but you're not always the one in charge. And the people that are in charge don't always have the same motivations and goodwill that you do. And, so, it is always a safe place to assume, to assume that they don't have those motivations. Cause that's been the story of history throughout. America has been able to preserve good intents, may be longer and better than any other nation. But throughout history we've messed it up a bunch of times too and mess it up generation after generation and so have the other nations. So that's not a good assumption to make is because I wouldn't do it, nobody else would do it.
Tim Barton [00:24:53] Well, that's what the founding fathers put the very checks and balances into the system. They did. That's why in the constitution there's the separation of powers is why you have a bicameral legislature that there's a lot of things that were done because the founding fathers knew quoted by John Adams and George Washington and Madison and Hamilton, the heart of man is wicked and deceitful and can't be trusted. Well, that's a quote from Jeremiah 17:9, which informed their thinking because the Bible was the most influential source found in any of their writings that the Bible is the most influential source in the founders lives and one of the things they learn is about the depravity of man and so we can't trust man that's why you have to have separation of powers and so, Dad, to your point the idea that there might be this incredible tool but it it best case scenario it's not abused very much but when you have people with different motivations and intentions, they don't have the same moral framework, and again, knowing there's a sinful heart of man... You don't want to bring in a system that the best possible outcome is it only infringes a little bit on your liberty and inalienable rights. Worst possible outcome, it takes them away from you and will shut down your bank account, will shut your traveling ability with social credit score, whatever else, et cetera. That is certainly one of the realities of where this could lead. And again, why we're grateful for guys like Alex Newman, who's helping lead the way on this and as mentioned, he's got a lot of great stuff written about this would encourage people to check out some of what he's already done on this very topic
Rick Green [00:26:24] Well, and this is also what we talked about yesterday in terms of iron sharpening. Some of these topics, we have to do this because we're so unfamiliar with how it works. So folks, if you're listening today, be sure and share this with your friends and family. Guarantee you they've heard a little bit about this and they're wondering, just like the rest of us, how to dive a little deeper on this topic. Thanks so much for listening today to the WallBuilders Show.
