They are known for owning a massive supermarket chain called Boni, but few people know they are also massively invested in Picnic, huge groceries retailer in The Netherlands, about to expand in Germany too, as attested by the mainstream media RTL.
Even less people know is that…
Picnic directly buys from an existing supermarket chain (Boni), which saves them the operational costs on that side. Not having shops saves them big time on distribution and rent, which they can use to benefit consumers:
So whether you buy from Boni or Picnic, you buy from the Dutch Nitrogen Minister. I can’t believe I just wrote this previous sentence and it’s legit too…
But, in September 2021, after pouring in about half a billion dollars, the lead investor in Picnic has become none other than Bill Gates. That kind of money buys you access to anything.
The exact amount that the Gates put down, is unknown. But they did provide the majority of the funds, CEO Michiel Muller says in an interview. The Gates Foundation was joined by previous investors in the Series D funding round, such as NPM Capital, De Hoge Dennen and Hoyberg.
@picnic is the fastest growing company in the Netherlands! This is the conclusion of a yearly study by Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship together with @NLGroeit into the fastest growing scale-ups in the Netherlands. Check out the complete list: https://t.co/5Nd4zaFUaWpic.twitter.com/1zgl4qzmUJ
They have been accused of violating several Dutch labor laws. The FNV said on Thursday it would take Picnic to court for refusing to pay staff according to the nationwide supermarket pay and conditions agreement (cao).
dutchreview.com
And this is not the first time Gates stuck his nose into Dutch food and agriculture.
Dutch Foreign Trade Minister and Bill Gates Discuss Cooperation Between the Netherlands and Gates Foundation
Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Aid Sigrid Kaag met with Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation during the 2018 World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC. Bill Gates expressed his appreciation that the Dutch development budget is ‘going back in the right direction’. Both share the vision that the private sector can provide a key contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Further cooperation was discussed, such as in the areas of agriculture and health care.
The Netherlands and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been involved supporting industry benchmarking for sustainable development from the very start. The Access to Medicine Index was the first industry benchmark of this kind. As early as 2010, Bill Gates was the first to state that industry benchmarks should also be created for other industries to boost the private sector’s contribution to sustainable development and to give credit to companies that set an example.
Since then, the Access to Seeds Index as well as the Access to Nutrition Index were set up with support of both The Netherlands and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Currently the World Benchmarking Alliance is being set up, which will focus on developing new industry benchmarks tracking, disclosing and encouraging the contributions of various industries to achieving the SDGs.
UPDATE: JULY 11, 2022 – EXPLOSIVE PICNIC IN THE NETHERLANDS
Dutch prime Minister Mark Rutte, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announce the launch of the first regional office of the Global Center on Adaptation in China. The two countries have agreed to work closely together to accelerate action to make China and the region more resilient to the reality of the climate crisis on its fragile ecological environment.
About GCA
Launched in 2018 the Global Center on Adaptation works to accelerate action and support for adaptation solutions, from the international to the local, from the public and private sector, to ensure we learn from each other and work together for a climate resilient future.
The Global Center on Adaptation is a Managing Partner of the Global Commission on Adaptation led by Ban Ki-moon, 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank.
The GCA head office is based in The Netherlands.
So there. More interesting connections to be revealed soon, stay tuned.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Every aspect of the Covid crisis has come with evidence of prescience and pre-planning. “Plandemic” is one of the most adequate buzzwords I’ve ever heard. If it’s all planned, the release was planned too, which makes the current debate over the Covid origin retarded. If the cause was a virus (another oxy-moronic debate around “isolation in cultures”), then it didn’t come from animals, it didn’t escape from a lab, it was DISTRIBUTED. Whatever it was, virus, poison, psychosis, EMFs, it was DISTRIBUTED. Better watch the water, the soil and the air!
This first video below was released April 15, 2020. About the same time Trudeau was claiming The Great Reset is a conspiracy theory. Guess when the system was developed and read until the end to find out where it’s at now, I saved you a nice punchline!
How far back does this go? Well, in January 2018, WEF was already spreading this brochure
Among the first to push the Bigger Brother – the Canadian Banksters Cartel, of course.
“The World Economic Forum acknowledges and is inspired by the leadership of our partners whose commitment to this project shows that this future is possible. In particular, we wish to thank Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport of Canada, and the entire team from the Government of Canada for having contributed to ensuring the research and prototype development has been grounded in pragmatic public-sector experience. Together, the World Economic Forum and Accenture, collaborating on Shaping the Future of Security in Travel, hope that this report and the prototype will gain momentum, encouraging public and private parties to pilot and scale this concept in the coming year.”
WEF – Jan, 2018
This quote above, from the aforementioned WEF brochure, shows that WEF’s collaboration with the governments of Canada and The Netherlands on this project extends way before 2018, into the research stages.
From earlier research we know the plan was launched in January 2016:
The Forbes picked up on it, but only in January 2019, yet who was there to care and pay attention? I, for one, was busy enjoying free travel, having nothing and being happy. But Schwab had to take all that from us and replace it with this dumb livestock management app that won’t ever stick on living humans, soulless NPCs only:
Paradigm Shift: Biometrics And The Blockchain Will Replace Paper Passports Sooner Than You Think
Biometrics and blockchain are the keys to the future of traveler identification. GETTY
Crossing international borders without a physical passport may become a reality for some travelers in less than a year. On Wednesday, the World Economic Forum and the governments of Canada and the Netherlands launched a pilot program for paperless travel between the two countries at Montreal’s largest airport.
The new initiative, called Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI), is the first platform to use a traveler-managed digital identity for international paperless travel, giving travelers control over when and how their personal data is shared. The identity data normally stored on a chip on a passport is encrypted and securely stored in a digital wallet on a traveler’s mobile device.
Whereas traditional ID systems are managed by centralized authorities, KTDI is based on the blockchain — specifically, Linux’s Hyperledger Indy, a distributed ledger purpose-built for decentralized identity. This is the secret sauce behind the paradigm shift toward a system where travelers — not government agencies or travel brands — control access to their personal data.
“We’re all wildly frustrated by data hacks, data breaches, our identities being stolen — and that’s largely a result of where our identity data is stored today,” says David Treat, a managing director and global blockchain lead at Accenture, the technology advisory partner on the KTDI project.
“The excitement around digital identity underpinned by blockchain and biometrics is that there is now a solution pattern crystallizing where users can be in control of their own data,” says Treat. “They can decide with whom they want to share it, and for how long, and revoke that access at a later point.”
Right now, our personal data is stored many siloed data structures surrounded by supposedly secure perimeters. But if hackers manage to break into them — as they frequently do — they get all the data.
Every time you book a plane ticket, pass through an airport security checkpoint, or reserve a stay at a hotel, your personal data ends up being stored somewhere. By the end of a trip, your information might wind up in dozens of different siloed data stores, where it might remain indefinitely. “Travelers have no control over it. They are essentially handing over a set of data and they have very little visibility as to what happens to it after that,” says Treat.
With KTDI, a traveler might give an airline — or, eventually, a hotel or rental car company — access to specific pieces of personal information for a finite amount of time. When the transaction is finished, the access is revoked.
“It’s very different from today’s world where an airline or hotel will accumulate data over time and hold on to it, and create this big honey pot of information,” says Treat. Instead, the philosophy behind KTDI is more transactional, where information is stored for a user-approved period of time. “When it’s no longer needed, it’s then no longer stored,” says Treat.
So what might a journey might look like for a traveler using KTDI in the future?
To get started, you would download a mobile wallet, enroll for the first time, and establish your profile. Then, in advance of an international flight, you might decide to share your personal information with border authorities and airlines. Now the airport and airline are expecting you. Once you arrive at the airport, you can go through the security checkpoint and board the plane using biometrics to confirm your identity, without any need for a physical passport. After your flight, you might decide to revoke access to your personal data from the airline.
Meanwhile, over time, a tamper-proof digital ledger would be created through the accumulation of authorized transactions by trusted partners such as border agencies and airlines. This establishes a “known traveler status,” which is a reusable digital identity that makes it possible for more streamlined future interactions with governments, airlines and other partners.
This is not just a theoretical concept. Along with the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, partners — including Air Canada, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol — will be testing the KTDI initiative throughout 2019, with the first end-to-end paperless journey expected to take place in early 2020.
The Forbes piece actually follows the official launch of KTDI two days earlier, as marked by this WEF press-release published from Toronto:
World Economic Forum consortium launches paperless Canada-Netherlands travel pilot
Jun 26, 2019
The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the governments of Canada, The Netherlands and industry partners, launches the first ever passport-free pilot project between the two countries.
The Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI) initiative addresses rising aviation travel demand – expected to grow to 1.8 billion passengers by 2030
The KTDI pilot offers greater control over personal information, putting passengers in charge of when and how data is shared through a ‘traveller-managed digital identity’
MONTREAL, June 26, 2019 /CNW/ – The World Economic Forum and the governments of the Netherlands and Canada launch the first pilot project for paperless travel between the two countries today at Montreal Airport.
Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI) is the first platform to use a traveller-managed digital identity for international paperless travel. It will be integrated with partner systems and tested internally throughout 2019, with the first end-to-end paperless journey expected to take place in early 2020.
The pilot initiative is a collaboration between government and industry – border authorities, airports, technology providers and airlines – to create an interoperable system for secure and seamless travel.
“By 2030, international air travel is expected to rise to 1.8 billion passengers, up 50% from 2016. With current systems, airports cannot keep up,” says Christoph Wolff, Head of Mobility, World Economic Forum, “This project offers a solution. By using interoperable digital identities, passengers benefit from a holistic system for secure and seamless travel. It will shape the future of aviation and security.”
KTDI provides a frictionless travel experience for passengers while allowing them to have greater control over their personal data. The identity data that is usually stored on a chip on a passenger’s passport is instead securely stored and encrypted on their mobile device. Passengers can manage their identity data and consent to share it with border authorities, airlines and other pilot partners in advance. Using biometrics, the data is checked at every leg of the journey until arrival at the destination, without the need for a physical passport.
Passengers establish a ‘known traveller status’ over time through the accumulation of ‘attestations’ or claims that are proven and declared by trusted partners, such as border agencies and recognized airlines. The result is a reusable digital identity that facilitates more streamlined and tailored interactions with governments, airlines and other partners.
“Canada is pleased to collaborate with the World Economic Forum, the Government of The Netherlands and our industry partners to enhance aviation security and make international air travel safer by testing new and emerging technologies,” said the Honourable Marc Garneau, Canada’s Minister of Transport. “The Known Traveller Digital Identity pilot project will help facilitate seamless global air travel and benefit the world economy by enhancing the traveler experience, while ensuring that cross-border security is maintained.”
“This KTDI pilot project is a perfect example of the importance of public-private partnership in implementing innovations in the aviation sector and border management and I am honoured that we are engaging in this pilot from the Netherlands,” said Ankie Broekers-Knol, Minister for Migration, The Netherlands.
The governments of Canada and the Netherlands are joined by Air Canada, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, YUL Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. This pilot group is supported by technology and advisory partner Accenture, with Vision Box and Idemia as technology component service providers.
KTDI technology
KTDI is based on an interoperable digital identity, linked directly to government-issued identity documents (ePassports). It uses cryptography, distributed ledger technology and biometrics to ensure portability and to safeguard the privacy of personal data. The system’s security relies on a decentralized ledger platform that all partners can access. This ledger provides an accurate, tamper-proof record of the travellers’ identity data and authorized transactions.
Once international travel resumes, self-serve check in terminals like these at Ottawa International Airport will become part of a more hands-free travel experience. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)
Just as the 9/11 attacks did 20 years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic will transform the way people travel internationally — with hundreds of millions of dollars in new government spending planned for modernizing border security and updating public health measures at airports.
In the recent federal budget, the federal government announced $82.5 million to fund COVID-19 testing infrastructure at Canadian airports and another $6.7 million to buy sanitization equipment for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.
Ottawa also has earmarked $656.1 million over five years to modernize Canada’s border security.
Daniel Gooch, president of the Canadian Airports Council, said the country’s flight hubs still have no clear idea of what is expected of them.
…
At the heart of the move to touchless travel is a trial the federal government is undertaking with the World Economic Forum and The Netherlands called the “Known Traveller Digital Identity” project, or KTDI.
The project began with the publication of a white paper back in 2018 and was seen as a way to modernize air travel by moving passengers through airports faster. That white paper said that a new, touchless system was needed as the number of international air arrivals was expected to increase 50 per cent from 2016 to 2030.
With international travel almost at a standstill now, the technology is seen as a way to facilitate a return to pre-COVID levels of air traffic.
The touchless travel experience
Under the KTDI plan, a digital form of identification is created that contains the traveller’s identity, boarding passes, vaccination history and information on whether they’ve recovered from COVID-19. Travellers with KTDI documentation would still have to face a customs officer, but all other points of contact in an airport could become touchless.
“We’re still talking about a world where you’ll need to carry your passport because it is an international border,” said a senior CBSA official, speaking on background.
“We’re not talking about replacing your passport. But the number of times you have to take out that document, or your boarding pass, to substantiate who you are and where you need to be, gets reduced.”
Passengers wear face masks as they wait to go through security at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press)
The official said the KTDI program is still in its early stages and technological issues are still being worked out. He said that privacy protections would have to be in place before any such system could be launched.
“It’s not like the Government of Canada holds that information in a central place, or airlines hold it in a central place, or border agencies hold it in a central place,” the official said. “It’s the traveller themselves that holds their own information.”
Vaccinated vs. unvaccinated travellers
A CBSA spokesperson told CBC News that the $656.1 million federal investment in border security modernization over five years will fund other “digital self-service tools” that will “reduce touchpoints” and create more “automated interactions” at Canadian airports
The CBSA said more information on those measures will be released to the public “in the coming weeks.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is attending the G7 summit in the United Kingdom this weekend, where leaders are expected to discuss international vaccination certification — a so-called “vaccine passport”.
The federal government has signaled already that Canadians who have been fully vaccinated will be allowed to re-enter the country without having to stay in a government authorized quarantine hotel. Confirming the validity of those travellers’ vaccination status will require some kind of vaccine passport like the KTDI program. Canada’s airports like that idea.
Fully vaccinated Canadians can soon skip hotel quarantine
The federal government says it will soon ease restrictions for fully vaccinated Canadians and permanent residents returning from international travel. 2:14
“We’re really leaning on vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. That’s a place where you can have some differentiation of the travel experience to make it a little smoother, a little bit more pleasant for those who have been vaccinated. But we don’t know yet what the government’s plans are for that,” Gooch said.
Once a traveller’s vaccination can be verified, Gooch said, they can be treated differently — perhaps by giving them a single test upon arrival or before they depart, rather than the multiple tests required now.
While the exact changes to international travel are still being worked out, Gooch said the travel experience going forward will be very different from the past.
“Maybe you don’t see an individual at all as you walk through the customs hall,” he said. “Your verification is done through your facial ID, which is connected to your Known Traveller Digital Identification, which is connected to your digital health information and your digital travel documentation.
Tucker Carlson / Ben Dichter:
"Yesterday was my 1st time crossing the border with my digital passport, I held my phone to border agent to give him my QR code, you know what he said? It’s okay I don’t need it! Your phone already popped up & correlated your vaccine passport.” pic.twitter.com/HsXlQlQf9G
Paperless Travel Pilot Outlines Best Practices for Digital Travel Experience
18 Oct 2021, by Madeleine Hillyer, Media Relations, World Economic Forum, mhll@weforum.org
World Economic Forum releases findings from its three-year Known Traveller Digital Identity pilot for paperless, cross-border travel
COVID-19 has heightened the need for digital travel credentials, such as vaccination or COVID test certificates, that can be verified across borders
The pilot indicates that a fully digital travel experience is possible but further progress is needed in the areas of governance, legal, global public-private collaboration and technology standards to drive wider adoption
Read more on the Known Traveller Digital Identity pilot findings here
New York, USA, 18 October 2021 – The World Economic Forum today releases findings from its digital passport pilot project which indicate that a fully digital travel experience is possible. However, further collaboration is needed to progress towards globally accepted and verifiable digital travel credentials.
The Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI)initiative, which was started in 2018, has worked with the governments of Canada and the Netherlands plus private-sector partners to pilot digital travel credentials for paperless travel between two countries. Lessons from this pilot are particularly relevant today as COVID-19 has underscored the need for verifiable digital credentials in cross-border travel.
A new white paper, Accelerating the Transition to Digital Credentials for Travel, is the result of collaboration between the World Economic Forum, Accenture and industry and government partners. It draws on lessons from the KTDI pilot and is intended to serve as a playbook to guide decision making and help assess important considerations in the use of verifiable digital travel credentials across borders.
“Creating digital travel credentials that work across borders is not an issue of technology but an issue of governance,” said Lauren Uppink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism, World Economic Forum. “The learnings from the Forum’s KTDI consortium demonstrates that while the technology for the next stage of digital-first travel is ready, thoughtful collective action is what truly enables the design and effective implementation of global governance structures, ensuring that digital travel credentials are easy to use, trustworthy and verifiable across borders.”
“The pandemic has highlighted the urgency for trusted, widely-accepted, privacy preserving digital travel credentials,” says Christine Leong, Global Lead for Blockchain Identity & Biometrics, Accenture. “Leveraging digital travel credentials would provide a much more secure way of sharing verifiable information, leading to greater assurance for travellers, shorter airport processing time, and greater efficiency for airline and border staff. To achieve this, governments and private sector organisations must collaborate to bring about a seamless, paperless and contactless travel continuum for all. The time to work together is now.”
Lessons from the KTDI pilot
The KTDI project established that two major, often misleadingly polarized, technology approaches to verifiable digital identities can work together. Working with governments and technology partners, the consortium found that public key infrastructure (PKI) and decentralized digital identity can co-exist and address the digitalization of various parts of a travel journey.
Furthermore, the pilot project found that these technologies can and must be integrated within existing systems to accelerate adoption and scale.
Interoperability and collaboration were other key areas for progress identified during the KTDI pilot. For paper passports, interoperability already exists as all participating member states agree to follow the specifications through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)’s governance and trust frameworks.
Such an agreement for the specifications of digital travel credentials is not as widespread yet, but the adoption of traditional passport specifications shows that the benefits of using digital credentials in travel cannot be realized through isolated or one-off approaches.
The KTDI project
The first cross-border pilot for digital travel identification, the Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI) project, has been piloted with government partners from Canada and the Netherlands, along with a consortium of technology, private sector and other partners. The KTDI partners have designed and built the first government-led, public-private ecosystem to test the vision of safe and seamless cross-border travel. This vision aimed to reduce touchpoints by using emerging technologies, including biometrics and decentralized identity, and inform the future development of a globally accepted decentralized identity ecosystem.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has affected KTDI pilot efforts, it has also created an opportunity to further analyse how decentralized digital identity and PKI-based approaches could work together or work in sync. Although the initial pilot employed a decentralized identity approach to trial trusted digital credentials, KTDI could in the future expand to incorporate additional verifiable credentials such as COVID-19 vaccination certificates, as well as PKI-based digital credentials.
Moreover, while government officials claimed that vaccine passports only included details pertaining to whether someone has received a COVID vaccine, some claim it functions as a tracking app, with border patrol receiving notification of one’s estimated arrival time well before a traveller gets there. Liberals in Canada have also suggested utilizing tracking via digital IDs to hunt down the unvaccinated during future pandemics to get them their shots.
At a Feb. 1 government event on digital ID an assistant deputy minister asked panelists how they could use the technology to better handle future pandemics.
One panelist suggested it could be used to track people to be vaccinated or to identify if they're due for a second dose. pic.twitter.com/eKgBz4lEwX
Travelling from one concentration camp to another will be as joyless as the camps. You can’t escape if there’s no “outside”.
Alongside @ACI_EUROPE, we call for countries to remove remaining intra 🇪🇺 restrictions, including all testing, vaccine certificates, and passenger location forms.
New evidence shows travel restrictions failed to prevent the spread of #COVID19.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
SILVIEW.media 