How To Opt Out of the Digital Prison - Hakeem Anwar | Ep. 137

Hakeem Anwar is a software engineer with over 20 years in tech, and the founder and CEO of Above Phone, a conscious technology company building open source phones, laptops, and software services that free people from reliance on Big Tech. After years of building web and mobile apps for large corporations, he walked away from corporate life during Covid. He also runs Take Back Our Tech, a weekly show covering the biggest stories in tech - always with solutions. Hakeem has done extensive research into the global digital ID rollout, co-authoring the "Life Under Digital ID" report, which maps how 90% of countries already have operational digital ID or will within three years. In this conversation, we discuss global standards enabling biometric interoperability across borders, why "voluntary" always becomes mandatory, and Hakeem demonstrates the Above Phone on screen, making the case for why the window to migrate to open protocols is closing faster than most people realize.

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– LINKS –

Hakeem on X: https://x.com/takebackourtech Hakeem’s Substack: https://tbot.substack.com/ 

Take Back Our Tech’s Website: https://takebackourtech.org/ 

Digital ID report: https://abovephone.com/digital 

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– CHAPTERS – 

00:00 - Coming Up...

01:23 - Introduction to Hakeem Anwar

07:23 - "Life Under Digital ID" Report: 90% of Countries Already In

16:24 - Global Standards Making It Interoperable

19:36 - Ad-Break: Ledn & Trezor

21:16 - Biometric Tracking, Digital Opt-Out & the 2027 Window

30:48 - Above Phone: What It Is and Why It Matters

37:15 - Private Messaging: Signal, XMPP & the Funding Problem

40:34 - Ad-Break: Abundant Mines

41:56 - Decentralized Protocols & the Open Internet

47:55 - Above Phone Mission & Features

58:50 - GrapheneOS x Motorola & Age Verification Laws

1:08:16 - Nostr: Self-Sovereign Identity as Antidote to State Digital ID

1:17:09 - Where to Follow Hakeem