You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Censorship & Control: The UK’s Digital ID Agenda - Alan Miller | Ep. 101

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

My guest today is Alan Miller, co-founder of the Together Association, a nationwide civil-liberties movement ensuring the public—not technocrats—remain at the heart of politics. Alan’s career spans four decades of creative and civic entrepreneurship: from pioneering acid-house parties and co-creating London’s cultural hub The Old Truman Brewery, to co-founding the Night-Time Industries Association and leading the #OpenForAll campaign during lockdowns. In this conversation, we discuss UK’s policy on free speech, protest rights, Digital ID, Net Zero, Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods, and more. We examine how COVID-era controls became a template for centralization, why free speech and privacy form the core of democratic accountability, and how technology can either entrench surveillance or empower autonomy through open protocols like Nostr and Bitcoin. Alan makes the case for an active citizenry, analog-digital parity of rights, and a future where liberty is defended not by elites, but by the public itself.► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS --→ Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn → Shield your bitcoin with time-delayed transactions over multisig with BitVault: https://bit.ly/bitvault_efrat → Have you tried mining bitcoin? Stack sats directly to your wallet while saving on taxes with Abundant Mines: https://AbundantMines.com/Efrat – AFFILIATES –→ Get 10% off on Augmented NAC, with the code YCXKQDK2 via this link: https://store.augmentednac.com/?via=efrat (Note, this is not medical advice and you should consult your MD)→ Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat → Get a second citizenship and a plan B to relocate to another country with Expat Money, leave your details for a follow up: https://expatmoney.com/efrat → Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Alan's Twitter: https://x.com/alanvibe Open letter petition: https://together.eaction.org.uk/directorsAll Digital ID related activities: https://togetherdeclaration.org/campaigns/no-to-digital-id/ Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Channels: https://linktr.ee/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –00:00 - Coming Up01:38 - Alan Miller's Background03:11 - The Impact of COVID-19 on Social Life05:40 - Vaccine Passports The History of ID’s 12:09 - Ad Break: Trezor & BitVault13:31 - UK: Current Status & Digital ID Concerns19:30 - Global Technocratic Influences22:15 - Ad Break: Abundant Mines & Expat Money24:27 - The Risks of Digital ID & Centralized Systems35:00 - Public Resistance 37:40 - Freedom Tech Innovations: Nostr & Bitcoin44:00 - 12K Arrests in UK for “Non-Crime Hate Incidents” 55:00 - Actions You Can Take & Upcoming Events1:04:00 - Finding Hope in Collective Action

The idea now that you've got this central database with a state and governments that don't want to engage with the public, they hate the public, they're scared of the public, they think the public should just be told what to do, that we're in an emergency for the climate, be quiet, shut up, we're doing it. We need to all get together and have a big umbrella organisation where we can have campaigners, people of faith, secular, it doesn't matter if you come from the left or the right, those things are not important. It's the public in the last hundred years for instance that has helped transform things with civil rights and all sorts of things it's not the smart people writing legislation so i think that that gives

me hope the sense of the belief in what's possible but also in protecting what's so valuable so when we fought back against the jab mandates and the vaccine passports they said good luck but i don't think you're going to win that the question is how we can always make sure that we can have as much of the freedom and democracy and privacy because it's not given to us by these smart people right this is ours. It belongs to all of us, right? Our world, our nation, our freedom. Why should the state be able to see everything about what we do, how we spend our money, where we go on holiday, where we go at home, what we say online? You can't just listen to people's telephone conversations without a warrant. You have to have a warrant. You have to have a reason. We need the same thing

in the digital arena. We need protections. We need to be able to not have an option that you can still participate in society without doing any of these things. Hello, and welcome to another episode of You're The Voice. And I have the honor of being here with an old friend, Alan Miller. Hey, Alan. Hi, Efrat. Thanks for having me here. Thanks for joining me. And this has been a long time coming. Like we've been wanting to talk for a long time and it hasn't happened. And we went through different cycles of shenanigans in the world like COVID and climate and all this bullshit. And now we're into the digital idea. And I'm like, okay, we got to do this.

Alan is all over this. He's in the streets. And I want to hear from you because you are relentless. I just love what you do. And and I'm going to you know, I'm going to start with a quick intro just for my audience that don't know who you are. And then I want to give you the floor to update us on what you're doing and where we're at in the UK. OK. Yeah. All right. So Alan is the founder of and the chair of Together. The Together Association is committed to ensuring the public is at the heart of politics instead of corrupted politicians. Together has changed national policy and is committed to open public debate, upholding freedom, liberties and democratic accountability. So Alan, a bit of background about you. Can you share with us what led you to now and then take us to what's happening these

days in the UK? Yeah, thanks. So, well, my background is in hospitality and events. I used to put on big dance parties around the world, like acid house parties. And then when it became legalized, we had bars and clubs and events. I was one of the people who helped transform. My co-founder, the place called the Truman Brewery in London, and we had hundreds of businesses and big bar. And it was all about bringing people together. It was about creating hubs of people day and night.

And it was in the end, it was very successful. But what we we after 20 years, what happened was there was a big discussion about public health and that the public are a bit of a problem. And when they get together, they're like they're like conveyors or infectors of things. And they took the metaphor of infections and everything. It was everything bad. And they went on the assault and they did that through the police saying they just weren't enough resources. And we had to sort of limit nighttime and hospitality activity. And I say all of that just to say it gave me a little glimmer and a glimpse of the public sector discussion and what was going on with policymakers. And we created an organization to lobby for nightlife, which we set up and I chaired and we ran for six years to save venues, to talk to people like mayors and the government and the home office. And we really managed to convince many people in Britain and around the world.

I spoke internationally a lot of places and many cities know very well that night and day brings people together, brings income, brings benefits and value. And we kind of transformed the discussion until when what happened happened with COVID and then the lockdowns. And basically we were speaking to the government. It was Boris's government at the time. And we were kind of talking about industry and how we could handle things and everything. And then the shutters came down. And I did some campaigning called Open for All, which was getting thousands of hospitality venues, small bars, big chains, venues, nightclubs, saying we would never ask for papers please in britain there's a there was a tradition although we did have national id cards for a while but winston churchill got rid of them after the second

world war in 1952 i didn't know that about the history yeah so we had them for a while during the war uh and he said i'm gonna set we don't we should not have them in peace i'm gonna set you free and then there's been a big debate for quite a long time with people like tony blair and the tony blair institute pushing from the noughties from the 2000s onwards uh and it and it looked like it was beginning to happen in 2006 and a lot after the 9-11 and the terror attacks there was a big push for what they called against the war on terror like war and terror but many things happen in terms of civil liberties we don't have time to discuss them now but that was kind of a pre-emptor for some things and in this attempt to get digital id and it seemed like tony blair always has a

anything that happens he's got a one one response which is let's get id or digital id but in britain in 2010 it was turned away by the government at the time it was actually a joint government um and in the middle of all this that happened with the lockdowns and then we were doing this campaign called open for all against digital id vaccine passports they called them vaccine passports they had different names in different countries as you know i know you know all this but just you know green cards in some places you know in places like the states in new york to begin with they did not ask for them but then they did ask for them and uh they didn't ask they insisted on them which is why i ended up only meeting people in parks and outside in new

york when i was there and i was so disappointed with them but all of this led to a situation where many of us were campaigning in britain individually and we were fighting for certain things until boris johnson said on what he called freedom we're going to have freedom day and by the way we're going to have vaccine passports and so it was this freedom day in 2021 and it was like we can have their lockdowns have been bad and we think we can come out of them but we're gonna but we're gonna have vaccine passports and I said to my phone was ringing crazily and I we work with a lot of different campaign groups I knew many of them now we'd met people and we said they're not listening to anyone and they're saying the trade industry hospitality

that you would say this because you just want to kill people they and they had a reason for everyone saying things and i said we need to all get together and have a big umbrella organization where we can have campaigners people of faith secular it doesn't matter if you come from the left or the right or the center whatever all those things right now those things are not important let's have we need to organize against this and basically we had six key principles we met in a nightclub funnily enough we met in a night but we met six key principles many people that you know and many of your audiences will know and recognize from Britain and some others. And we said the key principles were fundamentally, first of all, was free speech.

If we can't talk to one another, we can't, no matter what people got to say. And around that, no to digital ID. That was a fundamental principle. No to mandates, jab mandates. We must have privacy and we must have autonomy to make decisions. And it's difficult to have informed consent if you don't know anything. But at least you have to have a principle, right? of if you're being told all these things and you trust or don't trust them but at least you've got

to be able to make a decision even if you with the things we're told are not true right you've got to be able to say well and this was because so many of our frontline staff 100 000 of them were saying they were not going to take a mandatory jab a procedure a year in um and we launched then what was the together declaration in 2021 and we got a couple of 200 over 200 000 signatures to say we wouldn't have papers please society and we had a lot of people sign and then we got another 160 000 or so against the jab mandate and we took all of those to downing street as well as organizing all sorts of things so we'd organize small events bigger events campaigns calls to action so we'd have groups of people around the country and ambassadors who'd go to

national health uh and we have the national health system the nhs the national health trust or we'd go to universities where they're saying students had to have a procedure or they would be locked in and there were all these things going on and we were giving out leaflets and holding up posters and talking to people locally but then regionally and nationally we were lobbying MPs and councillors and we have something called a 360 approach because we have many people involved with us from different experiences marketing promotions lobbying events and music and all of that and we tried to create a situation where we can go from the grassroots and have people on the ground knocking on doors talking to people to the cabinet and parliament and MPs

and councillors and lobby everyone and the press but we will remember back then it's not really changed so much but particularly back then the press were very similar saying many things all about that stuff and this is where the online stuff became so important as well and obviously shows like yours and others where people and like what happened with twitter and elon musk and all the other platforms which we could get into but basically that's a very long way sorry that's a very long way of saying we were launched then coming out of some other things with as an umbrella organization uh to challenge things and put the public first so if everybody was properly asked the question and we all looked at the costs and we all looked at the benefits and we were able to

honestly assess what they called the science but like if we were able to honestly say well is this a risk to everyone and a bit more maybe like some did in sweden and elsewhere but if we were able to do that as a part and then everybody said you know what i just don't want to work i just don't want to go out but if that's what everybody really decided in the democracy then you might have to go right fair enough maybe i'll leave this country or i'll keep fighting that battle but that wasn't what happened what happens never is that what happens is we're ordered and told and nudged with psychology units and spy units and press and all these things that have come out since that stuff which we can get into so we're very much about saying we need free speech we need to be

able to have the public honestly engaged with and um and that our privacy and our fundamental rights our freedoms that we are really have a duty to defend and uphold but we are the beneficiaries resolve we are the people that many fought for a long time for hundreds of years actually since the magna carta on onwards but certainly in the modern period the enlightenment the idea of democracy freedom privacy rights all of those tolerance all of those things and that the and and then the relationship between the government and the citizen or subject and what that means so really together has was born out of that and has then continued from there to go on with Various things we could talk about.

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trustless recovery after one year works with trusted hardware wallets open source and built with one focus beyond keys protecting humans only 42 lifetime subscriptions are available at 199 forever. Head over to bitvault.sv to sign up and use code AFLAT for 10% off. Okay, and then we crossed paths during COVID when you guys were very active. And I see that today you are kind of regrouping, rearming everyone in the community around you to take action again and to be active with what's happening around the digital ID in the UK. And so can you, you know, looking from the outside on the state of things in general in the UK, what I am observing is a society that is slowly deteriorating in terms of values,

in terms of safety, in terms of ideology. we see a lot of influence from the the global organizations the the woke ideology that comes from you know the left side of the u.s etc we're seeing borders opening like crazy like i've never seen before with a lot of immigration a big issue in in the uk and and i'm seeing also the rise of the ever present climate agenda to justify a lot of limitations on your freedom of movement and taxing you and just like everything is clamping down at the same time. Not that we haven't anticipated that when we first kind of got to know what's behind the whole COVID agenda, but Now we're actually seeing it playing out. And then they're pulling out that card of the digital ID, first saying it's to justify the open borders and the immigration. And then just everything like the truth is coming out. And it's not even about that. It's about everything else.

So, you know, take us through. This is like my outsider view of what's happening in the UK and obviously with CBDC looming and, you know, I'm in Bitcoin. So I'm seeing how the government is kind of against free money, free, free sovereignty for for people with with Bitcoin. And so it's kind of like disheartening to see the state of things in the UK. So can you can you give us your view of what's happening? It's like a nice commercial advert for a holiday to come. Come. Hey, come to the come to Britain. Look at all the good. I'm sorry. I know. And I love the UK. I'm sorry. I have so many friends. I love.

I know you do. I know. Yeah. We all love you. But I mean, it is so there are serious challenges that we're facing. They're enormous. But I would say that this is a consequence, a result of several decades of things. And partly these technocrats that all share many ideas that don't like the public, that think that they're global institutions and they're global ideas as a kind of like there's an us and them. And they're the ones that have got these great ideas. And a lot of it involves monitoring and tracking and surveilling and limiting. And a lot of it involves the idea that there's just we're all about we being the masses of people, regular people, and that they're the great and the good. and they don't have any of the redeeming features of any of the older elites that went before them they don't have any of a sense of like we want to like really transform things to the benefit or

like a patrician outlook they're much more about you lot are terrible you're rabid you you eat too much you you consume too much there's too many of you you're killing the planet they've got this attitude and so in many ways everything's about useless eaters right yeah consuming avaricious toxic and they use all these terms uh they're very nasty but basically looking as a reflection uh of how they really see themselves but i mean but they're perhaps not conscious of it and they project that onto the public because they don't have a relationship with a public and so what happens is every impulse they've got is to limit and restrict things and also to project these ideas that have been fermenting for some time so some within the elite have wanted lots of people

moving around everywhere partly because it's very cheap labor right so some who are globalists and they they want cheap labor some like the idea that uh there's nothing good about british culture or society or to say that there's anything good in history or tradition is racist and there's that view and that's become a big thing um but the the issue is since lockdowns and covid and we saw them i think nobody could avoid seeing you couldn't like kind of go pretend not to see what was going on during covid and lockdowns even if you went along with the arguments everyone saw what happened right we had he cut no one got away from it you're locked down then lots of things came out afterwards but we're on to a new thing now it's the climate emergency like everyone's

going to die you might so now we've got to shut the roads off using emergency traffic orders under lockdowns to to keep the air better complete lies and we did lots of reports that came out that showed these things and they were published so that was good we had a big campaign no to net zero But it's still the people, the elite, many of them and many of the newspapers were pushing this idea until they all realized we're not going to be able to do notes. We're going to be able to do net zero. In fact, we're one of the few countries that trying to do all these things. But actually, what's that mean? We're not going to keep the lights on. And so gradually, firstly, the conservatives realized it. They were pushing it enormously. And then now Labour is real. And everyone's sort of realizing it. So that is sort of crumbling, although they still have a minister that's pushing it really hard.

we have a minister called david uh ed miller band and we got but most sensible people realize that's not going to be able to work and happen but in that conversation all of the ideas are wrapped up in it we're just mad bad and dangerous we need control we need to be limited we need to be stifled regulated and we saw that the discussions around our streets shutting them down and having cameras everywhere and finding people and not engaging with the public we have these things called low traffic neighborhoods and clean air zones or ultra low emission zones or there's a range of different names they call them but many citizens fought back and we worked for a good like two years year and a half after all those things with lockdowns with many groups who are businesses

and residents who fought back against the councils and there's some very wealthy uh green billionaires people like mike bloomberg and chris hone and others um and people no bill gates and others but they all fund certain things and they fund some of these groups to push this locally because they don't want a national debate so these things are all going on with a discussion of 15 minute cities smart cities they all sound very smart it sounds fantastic a lot of people who wouldn't want it like a smart city that sounds smart right and just to say if we're at we we love technology right we're not like oh we want to just i mean i like going sea swimming and and detaching but we what we know that we couldn't do this we couldn't fly places we couldn't communicate

technology is a good thing if we harness it in the right way what the problem is is that there's always got to be a relationship that's understood between the state and the citizen and then how technology is used so we got a situation where there was an attempt to impose digital id and our friends in australia and canada and also when we fought back against the jab mandates and the and the vaccine passports they said good luck but i don't think you're going to win that now there are many reasons that all of us all together many people fight and we push that back and we won but now they're coming as you say really hard but it's not just this discussion of a brick card and a digital id there is all sorts of infrastructure that has been developing over the years uh people

have heard of things like the online safety act how children will be able that they says to protect children but in a way it makes us all children because in the end you'd have to have biometrics to sign on to prove you're not a child right or there's a there's a lot of there's a lot at least 10 or 12 bits of legislation that have been pushing towards this but the key thing is now they're they're announcing it they're saying it out loud right kirsten has come out from them not having it in a manifesto and not having it anywhere they're now saying we're going to have as you said originally they said we're going to have digital id to stop the boats and everyone laughed and made fun of this so what how are you going to do that what is that they've got in

germany italy france they all have national id cards digits biometrics they've got lots of people coming on boats and across land how that isn't stopping them and they're like oh okay yeah no not really what we're going to do is going to be for your health it's going to be for the children and it's going to be to make everything convenient and really lovely and good And everyone's like, what? So already 3 million people have signed a petition against doing it. But that's just one piece. And many people have still not had the conversations.

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and help you build it legally, safely, and without wasting years of research. Visit expatmoney.com and leave your details for a follow-up. So our campaign at the moment is to remind everyone that they're going after directors of companies. So there's about 8 million directors in Britain, and they're trying to use the government and the tax and what we call Companies House and our accountants to say you've got to now go on digital ID.

now in some countries you have national id cards and it's different right so if you already have some of these things it's a slightly different discussion it's not completely because there's a difference between a i haven't got a card on me but like just a plastic card and all that even it and then they're with a digital infrastructure right but here we've got a situation where people already have given passports and driver's license to their accountants and the people know that but the government's trying to have a joined up system all through their one login now their one login system has had so many problems already many data breaches and we've seen from around the world data breaches hundreds of millions of them with all the big tech companies people selling

data people using it for cyber crime people using it for uh to to um to what i forgot the word but to use it to go after people, to bribe them, to do all sorts of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, to scam, of course. That's one part of it, the breaches, the data breaches, but then there's all the other questions of the privacy invasion of the others which will come to you. So they've got one login system, but the thing is, now they're trying to get everyone a digital ID.

And what we're saying is that we're not going to allow our directors to have that happen to them. We've got a campaign with an open letter of petition, but that's also going to all the councillors and MPs And we've got people up and down the country doing events and rallies. There's a protest here on Saturday. And in Sunday, we've got to I'm actually debating the people that came up with this brick card idea at the Battle of Ideas. But the all together, it's not just that piece, right? There's directors, but there's the whole question of why should the state be able to see everything about what we do, how we spend our money, where we go on holiday, where we go at home, what we say online,

where we go shopping what kind of friends we've got you've got the structure if this happens where everything can be monitored and then also if they whoever they are they might be really lovely now i mean they're not but even if they were really love the next guys may not be so lovely right and then you've got a situation like we see in parts of the world parts in china and north korea and elsewhere hey alan in israel we have it for 11 years yeah we have it this is this we have the one login, we have everything. I have it. Because I didn't know that it was bad when they started it. You know, I only kind of, quote, unquote, woke up five years ago. So I didn't, I wasn't even aware of the dangers and the risks back then, like most people are today. And so I have it,

most people in Israel have it, it's all digitized, it's all centralized, the real risk is the centralization. The fact that they hold everything in one database, like you said, and not only could be breached and cyber attacked, but also the fact that they can have such easy, quick access from one database to another, because it's all connected in one place. This is horrible. And, you know, as someone who already has it, I'm telling everyone, do everything you can to stop it, because it's horrible. You go, you know, that now they've started digitizing our vaccine passports from when we were kids, I'm 45 years old and I have a printed vaccine passport and my son as well. But they did a big project because Israel is a small country, eight, nine million people.

It's not so difficult to digitize all that physical manual paperwork. So they sat down and digitized the kids' vaccine passports. And it's all now in that same login, one login database. So when I go there, I can see my son's vaccine registry. It was never digital before. Next thing they'll do is they'll use, I don't know, maybe the IDF or some cheap labor they have to digitize my vaccine passport and put it in there.

And then they'll be able to tell me, oh, you didn't take the COVID jab. you're not allowed to go in here or there yeah anyway it's a huge risk yes sorry for cutting no no he's exactly right i know yeah and and it would be good maybe talk a bit more about that but and also israel is a very particular in many ways it's a very particular country with very particular circumstances and and and many and and there's a relationship between the citizens and the state there that that's a big discussion but where people have agreed some things like with your national ids and all of that for a long time whereas in other places and certainly in britain

that's not been the case so in many ways these these leaps are huge in britain but your points are absolutely right the other thing is people in britain the last few years have seen all sorts of things we've seen debanking debanking of people that are well known but also not so well known campaign groups because of things that we've said and if you get taken off a bank you can't exist in society now you mentioned central bank digital currency will come on to that but there's debanking there's concerns about what we've been calling two-tier policing but policing and the judges who if you say some things like you might say about covid or lockdowns or migration or borders then you're not the right kind of person and then you could end up now being put in prison or certainly

getting a visit from the police whereas if you say other things and they could be all sorts of things they could be terrible things right um like people killed or died or whatever or then you're not getting a visit because people think well that's all right because you're saying that about those people about these and so we've seen already that there's an approach that the state takes we've seen that we've got more and more facial recognition um of without agreeing it to the police are doing it and then they're saying they're going to do it in different places we're seeing that biometrics and all this data linked and the idea that as you say but the idea that is centralized so like now we talked about the fact that they've got areas with cameras in them

and fines but also if you don't uh recycle your refuse in the right way you get fined in some councils the idea that you're not behaving yourself or saying the right thing or going you're maybe you're you're doing too many car journeys or you're eating too many burgers or I say it sounds silly but think of the last five years right well how I mean if you'd have said to anyone you're not allowed to sit two people in a park together because of some crazy thing I mean we had the police with drones chasing people who had a couple of kids who were playing snowballs or going for a walk it was insane what had gone on right and so the idea now that you've got this central database with a state and governments that don't want to engage with the public they

hate the public they're scared of the public they think the public should just be told what to do that we're in an emergency for the climate be quiet shut up we're doing it we're in an emergency for this virus whatever you don't discuss it there's no questions sit in the corner put your mask on lockdown and if you don't do those things we've also seen that in portugal and spain there was a massive power cut recently partly due to net zero actually but that if you have a power cut what happens what happens if you not just a data breach there are millions of older people and others who can't get on uh online and and digital and don't want to there's all sorts of people and that's why we've got a digital bill of rights as well where we say we understand technology is

important and we want to keep developing technology but we have to have the same amount of rights and privacy that we have in other areas so you can't just listen to people's telephone conversations without a warrant in britain you can't just look at them if anyone writes letters anymore but you can't just look at their mail you have to have a warrant you have to have a reason you have to go to a court and say i think that this guy alan blah blah blah blah blah and then they'll say okay you can have a warrant to go check his house you can't just come into someone's house right we need the same thing in the digital arena we need protections we need to be able to not have an option that you can still participate in society without doing any of these things right and that that must be

enshrined so that part of saying no to digital id and challenging it is also saying we must be able to continue as citizens engaging with all the things that we've got and not have this imposed because if they get the directors all to do it there's eight million of them then they'll use the directors to get all the people working and then they've got something happening for children with the children well-being bill but within all of that to track children there's a digital id and then between that and that and then then there's a few million older people that's pretty much everyone in britain right so you've got yeah so that's why it's the strategy of how they they want to roll it out you know by the way the directors thing this is a very similar tactic

to what they did in australia they during covid they said that the directors in australia have to take the jab and and otherwise they won't be able to work but they they kind of took they've taken that group of directors in australia and they attacked them directly and senator malcolm roberts was one of the people that obviously opposed it and not that it helped but that seems to be one of their favorite tactics to take like the director levels in the companies because they have enough power to then mandate it to the rest of the companies and then they like you said they cover a lot of people by using that strategy so it's it's funny that they're pulling the same card again and they're doing the same thing with the children again so they're repeating a lot of

the the patterns that we've seen them exercising during covid yeah and some of your audience many of your audience will maybe just agree with us but some might have questions but even if they all agree i'd say what we're trying to do is go out to people who don't agree with us or not really sure right they could say don't be so dramatic why are you so worried that's a bit just but you mentioned australia and we saw what happened there but we also look at things like canada and what happened with the truckers and the idea of going into people's banks and now that's happened here in britain with these things as well they're not just somewhere else it wasn't russia or north korea it was canada with the truckers and trudeau and then what it was is here and we

like we saw people in australia and new zealand we saw some of the craziest scenes there like in italy and like i couldn't believe some of the things we saw happening there but then we've seen reactions and responses like that here and what we're saying to people is you don't even have to imagine it now right we've seen very clearly in the last period all these things and concerns and so we really our goal is to get as many people engaged and fighting back and you know one of the things effort as well is that some people are like oh i've been telling you all along or these people but you're all sheep or you're stupid. Well, we really try and encourage a sense of,

look, listen, guys, this is where we're at. Can we all, and we can beat things and we can win things like we've done before. But also there is a sense that this is all too much for some, it's like, in a sense, it's all happened already. It's happening. There's the big powers.

And what I would say is we saw that conversation, but look what's happened in America. And whether anyone loves Donald Trump or hates, it doesn't matter so much about that. the people that are in the cabinet and the Trump moment in number two and look at what they were saying to some of those people like Jay Bhattacharya and others Robert Kennedy Jr I mean there are people now who are in power in America who they were being called all sorts of and everyone's saying you'll never be able to change anything you can't do anything the point is right now

there are big battles as we all know in society and I'd say that everyone can become a leader within all of this we'd encourage everyone to step up and participate and in any way they can right doesn't mean you have to be a public speaker you might give some flyers out you might host an event you could do a show whatever you could do all of those things you could stand but these things are essential and we are cutting through i mean there are people who are we're now getting not just the political um parties who are saying many of them are saying and many of the members and some of the parties saying they'll get rid of digital id they won't have it but also just across the board the the um cut through is much more and the discussions

with people is much more and the question is i think for everyone is how we can always make sure that we can have as much of the freedom and democracy and privacy because we it is not given to us by these smart people right this is ours it belongs to all of us right our world our nation our freedom our this is somehow it's like we think oh we have to beg for it and say oh please let us have it it's not theirs it's ours and we only can give it away yeah absolutely and it's up to us to then reclaim it back and i totally agree with you that this attitude of resignation and giving up and i know you know it's gonna happen anyway so why bother and all that that it's it's it's a slippery slope to nihilism in the end of the day to like completely losing hope and i totally

understand that it's hard. And I have compassion for people who are experiencing hardship in their lives, because it is kind of challenging to live these days just to kind of, you know, live normal, normal life. It's hard, I get it. But at the same time, if you don't look at all the different ways in which you can reclaim sovereignty over your life, and, and demand your freedom and demand your rights you're we're gonna find ourselves in super even more difficult situations that we are in right now and so if anything people have to kind of start either start learning about what's happening around them and be more aware of things look at other countries for examples like you have given a few examples here and also read just read about the capabilities of these technologies to

kind of make yourself more like smarter about what could happen in the future if it lands in the wrong hands. So I, I totally agree with you that there's no room for, for hopelessness and people need to educate themselves. That's why I am in Bitcoin and in freedom technologies, because I'm a techie and I've realized that there are some technologies out there that could allow me for a way greater, um, sovereignty and, and freedom levels that I've had before. Like, for example, just to give you one example, how freedom is being used for good. There is a protocol that was built a few years ago called Noster and I use it. And it's, uh, it's like today it's used mostly for social media, but it can be used for any type of data transfer.

And so the first use case, which is social media, is implemented today with many, many, many apps because it's decentralized and there is no one central database to rule the data and the identity. And I own my own identity. So I have a private key and a public key. It's designed similarly to Bitcoin. And I hold the private key. I'm the only one. And I am the only one to sign my events and my data that I'm transferring and my posts and everything. So no one can scam my identity. And if it happens that one of the apps that I'm using to communicate with people over the social media protocol, the Noster protocol, is shut down by any, I don't know, for any reason, let's say someone shut them down or they've shut down. I can take my identity that is connected to my social graph with all my followers connected to it and go to another app, a totally different app that just speaks to that protocol. And so I own my identity. I also own my followers. And as a content creator, it really is important to me. So it's not like Facebook. If they close me, I lose my 20,000 followers or on YouTube or, you know telegram just banned me recently so i lost two channels with 8 000 people and there's

nothing i can do about it but in noster i if someone censors me or bans me i can take my identity and my followers and then reopen my account in another app and nothing happens because i own the identity so this is a form of owning your own identity digitally but this is for good Like this is mine. No state, no government has hold of this. I own the private key and I save it and then I use it everywhere. And this is also connected to Bitcoin so I can pass money to other people peer to peer without going through any third party. So there are amazing technologies being built, but people just don't know about them. And it's OK. It takes time. But the reason why I'm bringing that up is so that people know that technology is not always a bad thing. Yes, we are resisting a technology that is going to be used in a super bad way and in a centralized way. And we want to break that down and decentralize the control as much as possible. And if you're able to work with tech developers on technologies like that, on open source protocols, do it.

Great. Build something else. Just opt out and build something else and start using that and bring people along. bring your friends or take any of the other um roles that that you alan spoke about before i think being active in life is like the number one thing yeah yeah i think for our health and our and our you know our healthy soul healthy mind healthy healthy spirit it's so important i definitely agree i think everyone's got to get a lot better at just making it familiar and understandable and digestible with with bitcoin and blockchain everything all of that and like open source what

that means and how it works and that's something that everyone can should think about we certainly need to more and talk about that more about how what that can all mean and this you know and the big fight of the states and others to control that arena and what that's going to mean um and yeah so and the thing is that nothing's inevitable of course but what we're pointing to is the one is like anything is that we have to have protections in place and we have to have the public strong and keeping an eye on pressure on things because it's like free speech right you have the constitution and you have the first amendment but there are always people who think there's too much of it so let's suffocate it and there are others who think we should have it for

everyone but that battle carries on but sometimes it gets really bad right and some will want to and so that's the point to make sure that we ensure we have the protections that we need as you say to keep on having technology but not having you know state technocrats that are able to limit and stifle and censor and control exactly in all these areas so yeah alan so you you're saying free speech this is i i want to take you down that that path for a second so you mentioned before visits from the police right this is something that is now happening in the uk in the last few years can you talk a bit about that thousands of arrests of people saying things online like give some examples maybe and then what can people do to protect themselves in that sense

to still be able to speak but not be arrested for it yeah so um 13 000 arrests last year uh for not what they call non-crime non-crime hate incidents so if George Orwell was writing a book now he'd be they've basically taken so it's non-crime so it's not a crime a hate incident so then what is a hate incident is it because you say to me Efrat well I don't your blue shirt looks a bit rubbish and I go and I report Efrat and say Efrat said something's really offensive and i felt unsafe so then now obviously sometimes when people go and not really but actually some of those things have happened a few years ago if we look back at the me too movement some of those things but then they didn't go and get people who were being they didn't listen to girls who

were being gang raped in different cities in britain although they listened to them but they ignored them and some people encouraged them and got involved in it local authorities so those two things were also going on at the same time by the way in this country now the reason i i sort of say that is that i'm a free speech absolutist right so i know that most people are not what i believe that but i don't believe you should be allowed to get on the thing and say i'll pay you this money to go and do something right so i don't you want to use the word k-i-l-l because someone will cut it and say i've said it but you know i don't believe and there are laws about that and that's real incitement to violence and making agreements and saying go and do this

thing i'm instructing you or telling you i'll ask you to do this yeah now what's happened is People have started saying that when you say things that might be offensive, and this started really, it's been around since the Salman Rushdie problem that we've had in Britain, where people were saying he's offending us. This was 30 years ago. They called for a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, and he went into hiding. And again, he was attacked in the States. Recently, people will know about that. But from that came the idea is you cannot offend anyone. We've seen Charlie Hebdo.

We've seen lots of terrible things where people have been killed. really recently Charlie Kirk obviously um terrible terrible things but in Britain what it's meant is that language in the last decade particularly but much more recently but the thing if you say oh I'm offended on the college campuses people have been shut down the idea you're not allowed to say that it's offensive people have been cancelled for saying I think a woman is a woman a man is a man and it's simple people have been um all these things have happened and now what's happened is people get reported to the police or and the police are monitoring social media posts right so people will complain about alan or efrat and they'll say well they've said things about

mask or thing whatever about women or men borders and then like graham like linehan who is a comedian that came back from the states he got met by five armed police because he did three posts where he had said some things um and also the fact that people report you all the time now we've seen for instance a really couple of good example terrible examples one is bernie spofforth who is a friend of together uh but she she put some posts out during the one particular one during the southport riot she had six police come to her house we've seen allison pearson uh where the police came to her house and she still doesn't know exactly why that we never get because partly the process is the punishment right you get the police come over

you may get arrested you there's all this stuff going on and you have to go through it and then you might get out and there might be no further action but there are a lot of people who are arrested and in prison now many of the people who put posts up or some who went to protest but did things like shouted at a dog or shouted at the police they've been arrested and because some of them did not have legal representation and they've never been involved in the police and the grandparents that peter lynch was a grandfather he ended up killing himself in prison because these people have never been i mean they didn't really they didn't really have proper representation they didn't know about proper representation and we would say to everyone say just don't speak to

them and say no please plead not guilty you have to be and get a really good lawyer we work with the free speech union there are others the free speech union has done really brilliant work in this area but you know together contact us we've got you know there are people but the the point is that there are on a weekly monthly basis there are scores of people who are still being arrested for these non-crime hate incidents or hate speech meanwhile the government is saying they want to have an islamophobia law which means that if you start saying things and say well i think there's an issue with radical jihadism for instance or is it a problem that mainly pakistani men uh in britain have been the rape gangs and they're muslim is that why is that you start

they say well that's islamophobic you can't say which is the very reason by the way many people did not talk about these things because they were scared of being called racist yeah others were involved in it local apparently local police local mps like like councillors and not getting mp so much but councillors social service terrible terrible and we still haven't got to the bottom of it all not where nowhere near and now they want to like introduce new speech laws and new speech codes around islamophobia and others and what that really means is and it's like with the online safety act where they say it's to protect young children but then you find that you can't say certain words or you're in breach of it and partly they outsource it after partly they give

it to silicon valley and they say we fine you either five million bucks uh or ten million or you get two years in prison or you get 10 of your turnover in this country now that can be a lot of money so then what happens is that in all the big platforms in silicon valley they see this legislation in britain and in the european digital services act they've got a similar thing for the whole 440 million people and so then they end up outsourcing censorship to them but still at the same time as well as having to like verify to get onto the internet soon if we have digital id then even when we've been on there you can't say certain things or you'll be um uh visited by the police and knock at the door or worse we've seen countless examples of veterans shared a post

of a trans logo and it was turned around and it looked a bit like a swastika and many people had shared it and he just reshared it but the police went around to arrest him and again we've got people like we are fair cop and harry miller and those guys doing good stuff with that with the police many people are fighting back now you see they're challenging it and also and this is the thing there are other people saying things that have a different political point of view that are not being arrested or not being held accountable for these things so the public is getting very furious because one guy called nick lowes who runs a a group called hope not hate um also did a post during southpaw had got it wrong and deleted it the same as some others had done

but nothing ever happened to him and he had a hundred thousand reposts of it saying that these people had done something to a muslim woman and then they hadn't and yet some people did get beaten up because not because you know there's all part of a climate that's created he says sorry nothing happens i'm not saying something should happen to him because i think that we should be able to say all sorts of things that most things are legal we should be able to they might be horrible we may not want to hear them but we have to be able to discuss them and thrash them out but but it's not the same it's not the same with the protests how different protests have been but then recently there's been a mega ultra ultra reaction so now what's happened is the

government has been accused of these things and now what it's doing is saying right we're going to clamp down on everything right if you feel unsafe we're going to stop a protest they've prescribed a whole organization it's called palestine action because of some of the acts that some of them have done rather than using the laws they've got to hold them accountable for what they've done but not to prescribe a whole organization which a lot of them are out with placards or posts or just standing and saying that people may like it they may hate it but the problem is once the state starts saying we're banning you here we're banning you what's next the farmers people who don't want lockdowns on net zero and we've got this climate where what you say

is being weaponized and people are being arrested for it what if you go out and protest these things are being weaponized and and all that and and actually they're um what it ends up doing is it just strengthens the technocrats who are rudderless and they're very dangerous because they're weak authoritarians so when you're a strong authoritarian you don't need to do too but you can have a like a functioning society where people are critical because you're like we don't there's no big fetish this lot are petrified right and it's dangerous because they're not in control they're reactive all the time and that's partly why we saw such responses but in some countries against lockdown protests and some of it early on here but they're they're nervous and they don't feel

confident they're out of control and these legislation the laws they keep passing to try and deal with things knee-jerk impositions are really dangerous and so the thing is that um now many people are talking about these things in the public but as as new things emerge um similar similarities continue so it so you have to keep this is a kind of a big fight i suppose and also the people that this is the other thing many people make new friends they fought against lockdowns they got and then these new things happen right like russia or ukraine or like israel and gaza people people argue but the thing is the same core principles are still there right you can't say i'm for free speech but not when those people say it right so that's a thing for

all of us to remember kind of thing just as with yeah i was attacked by some fellows of ours from the covid uh freedom movement when i spoke about october 7th because they didn't like what i had to say like fuck off did you forget what we went through you know it's uh it's very easy to forget as long as it suits your position you're okay with that and once it doesn't suit your position you're against it then you forget that if you don't allow free speech to just be there and respectfully let people voice their opinions then this is going to come back and haunt you yeah 100 a thousand percent okay my question to you is you said three million people signed the petition what are the next steps on that front what's going to happen with those that's a petition

that has gone to have firstly it's a petition it's a one that's through the government to get them to debate it in parliament okay and and you have to get a hundred thousand and then the government's already responded saying well we're doing it so that can get more people but that so our what we're doing is we do slightly different petitions it's not so much to get a debate in parliament once that's happened ours are used then to do calls to action to get people so we have people we have we know their postcodes if they're directors or not and we get them in different regions speaking to their councillors and mps where we focus our campaigning activity so doing it and we have elections in may and like with the farmers we did a big campaign hold on

hold on i want to i want to make sure that people get this like all the there's a lot of details here and i'm gonna get you to give me the links to it so we can also put it in the show notes and everything so you're saying the petition with the three million is already gone i mean they're going to do a debate about in parliament that's fine right yeah and then what's the next one they're actually saying they're doing we're doing what they're doing thank you but we're carrying on anyway that's what they're saying yeah i know i know okay our open letter petition this next one that we've got is to say that we will not have directors being forced to to take digital id and that open letter petition is going to people like the department for trade and business

going to the uh cabinet going to the members of parliament for labor conservative reform liberal democrat across the board scott learned elsewhere then being used for things like the institute of directors the small business federation the trade associations getting all that and creating all round let them understand that this is not going to be a simple thing you're just going to do this and there is opposition and getting the public behind it as well so we're getting all the signatures going but they're also going to be things that are part of a strategy that we found has worked really well to email people to phone them to go to their surgery to post about it to then get the press involved and see that people are doing it making videos as they go along saying

i'm not going to do this put it everywhere linkedin in the business communities so people think i'm not on my own they get this email from their accountant or company's house they say you now need to do this digital id they're like what so we've got a letter explaining to the accountants and also companies house why we won't be doing this and we'd encourage you to stop asking everyone to do it and not do it yourself so we're just creating some tools and abilities for people to say no and say this is not it's not needed there's no reason for it and we don't have to have it and we're not going to do it and by the way guys you're going to have a big fight you're talking like you think it's all done you have to still go to parliament you have to still like go back

and forth unless you're just going to do an emergency legislation which i can't see them doing right now if they want a peaceful country that would be a really bad move right but then they have to go and it has to go through process so there's time for us to push this all back although it's mid-november it's starting for new directors and anyone who's a new director who wants to set up a company is going to want to set up a company we know that right and they know that so they're going to try but there's millions who exist and many of them are very deeply unhappy we've got people saying we're going to close our companies here or move to different places and we've already had a lot of people move because of the taxes a lot of people are like we're just not

doing this not with the taxes that you've done and just to say that i was going to say that during the last election of the local councillors we have in may we we work with the farmers we've helped a new farming organization set up with farms to action but they went around to all the areas in the rural areas where the votes were and all of them in where were labor they lost their positions their seats and many of them ended up being reformed but they because reform said they would get rid of inheritance tax for everyone now in the same way when people are arguing about the digital id the government knows that even its own mps many of them are deeply unhappy about it and there's a new party that's set up partly from labor people that's happening and all the other

parties are saying they're against it it's a big fight right this is not going to be easily won for and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna win this part of the fight afra it's gonna take a lot we are going to win this bit but it's going to continue and it's going to have multiple forms right but um i know that we can push this back and and and but everyone's got to get behind it so it's a lot of work you know it feels like it hasn't stopped since lockdown you've been on a roll for the past four or five years okay so you're gonna give me the link to the open letter petition and um and then what what are the upcoming events that you have yeah so this weekend we're going to be at the battle of ideas which is in westminster and church house

is a few thousand people it's a couple of hundred speakers with sessions and panels all day it's really good i'm on um in the mornings well sunday saturday and sunday there's a protest on saturday afternoon in london and then we have a big event our big annual event on 16th of november sunday 16th of november where some really good people are speaking like jay baticharia and kaizen and a number of others so people should really try and come to that that if you are able to be in britain or london we do have some streaming of it too um and we have then some other events around the coast you can like we will be live streaming it so people can log in but if you can come it's a really good experience then we've got some events around the country in wales scotland

and north of england and the south i speak quite a lot in different places just mainly because we're trying to get the the message out and connect with more people to get the public speak to friends and neighbors and colleagues um and so we we and we really ask people obviously to to become a supporter but we like them to become a member if they like what we're saying because we don't have big sponsors or big donors people say like where do you get your money from we get it from members right so people who pay five pound a month or something whatever they do some students less but if people think that this is important and they want to help it continue obviously we want people to volunteer to get involved to help but also becoming a member is really important because

that helps it it means we can do more and where is the best place that they can be updated because there are things happening all the time is it on your x or is it on the together website yeah mainly i mean x is good for immediately so at together deck but also on our website's good together declaration.org we say a lot of the main things there um sign up to be a member there as well yes okay okay wonderful um what's the immediate call to action for people right now well the immediate call to action is i would love everyone to become a member and i'd love everyone to get involved in this campaign against digital id the digital id is the key thing right now everything else is important but this is the one this is the thing so if you really want to do

foundational right exactly so this is the thing to to stand on and we're gonna we can win this part of it and when you fight and win it's really good in a world where people say there's nothing you can ever do whatever but it's gonna say but it's so i don't it's gonna be a fight right they're saying they're gonna carry on and they dig down so it's not gonna be hey hey it's gonna be a fight and so the call to action is please get involved and we can all serve in the best way we can right everyone will know what that means for them if it means printing some leaflets off and putting them in the local cafe and up and down the street and in the library and talk to people and have a little that's cool right if it means you're gonna say right i've just sold my company let's say someone's

got a few million bucks and they want to give it a call right i just throw that in but i mean it's whatever it is if you want to if you are young and you want to do social media and you want to help out lots of things right however people be what you can be to make it something that we can really we can all get it done together perfect and alan um anything else you want to add before we we're we're going to our last question of what gives you hope well um things like this give me hope what i mean by that is meeting new people and people when i was in a previous situation and if you'd ever said well imagine the governments and they're all going to try this and do anything and then you lose some friends or associates along

the way but you meet new people and you get and you have new um brothers and sisters in arms right where you do things and you learn new things and you get inspired you're like wow this is and i never would have wanted this but actually can you imagine if we didn't have these so that that is a thing that gives me hope right that that you meet amazing brilliant and i i genuinely think that most people are amazing and brilliant and and and beautiful and decent and that um and that i think that's the human story but we're also capable of all sorts of things right and and that also is history and so it's important that we're able to all have as much of a say because the thing that keeps everyone honest and that keeps everyone honest is having as much of

the public saying things and being strong as possible where things got you know if the public's got strong muscles and asserts itself asserts ourselves you all the things we see right and seen in history but you can't really have them because the public is saying this is what we want this how we want it and generally it's not the public that does mad things it's the public in the last hundred years for instance that has helped transform things with civil rights and all sorts of things it's not the smart people writing legislation so i think that that gives me hope the sense of the belief in what's possible but also in in um protecting what's so valuable uh and beautiful and also look i mean there's mad stuff in the world but we live in a beautiful

world i mean there's a lot so in the midst of everything and some tragedy and you know in your part of the world people don't need in my part of the world people talking about tragedy you know what that means right but in darkness there's also a lot of light and beauty and the important thing is to do what we can in our way to help make it be the thing we more want to see right otherwise other people are going to do it that's the thing yeah absolutely thank god for people like you thank god for your spirit thank god for everything you do your action your wisdom i thank you so much for sharing yourself so generously and for fighting this fight you are doing the lord's work thank you so much well thank you if i really appreciate you having me on and that's

very kind thank you my pleasure okay so thanks alan good luck and i'm gonna put all those links so if you want to follow alan or together please do that and please support their work it's amazing and thank you for doing what you're doing it's really appreciated afra my pleasure thanks for being with us please take a minute to give this episode a like a comment and subscribe or follow. And please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives. Till next time.