Let’s assume Pienaar is right: the government knows we will not accept e-ID. How, then, does it coerce us into adopting it?

It announces a Mickey Mouse, pretend digital ID and deliberately raises the specter of government overreach in our lives. It knows we will react viscerally and anticipates the backlash. In so doing, it focuses the public debate on the introduction of a single, government issued e-ID which it doesn’t need and has put no effort into developing. Waiting for us is the real digital ID system that government and its corporate partners, like Palantir, have actually been engineering.