- Snoopers’ Charter (Investigatory Powers Act 2016): ISPs must keep a year’s worth of records of which websites you visit. More than 40 agencies—from MI5 to the Welsh Ambulance Service—can request it. MI5 has already broken the rules and kept data it shouldn’t have.
- Encryption backdoors: Ministers can issue “Technical Capability Notices” to force tech firms to weaken or bypass end-to-end encryption.
- Online Safety Act: Expands content-scanning powers that experts warn could undermine privacy for everyone.
- Palantir deals: The government has given £1.5 billion+ in contracts to a US surveillance firm that builds predictive-policing tools and runs the NHS’s new Federated Data Platform. Many of those deals are secret.
- Wall-to-wall cameras: Millions of CCTV cameras already make the UK one of the most surveilled countries in the world.
A universal digital ID would plug straight into this ecosystem, creating an always-on, uniquely identified record of where you go and what you do. Even if paper or card options exist on paper, smartphone-based systems will dominate in practice, leaving those without phones excluded or coerced.
I’m not against digital identity in principle. But until the UK government proves it can protect basic privacy—by rolling back mass data retention, ending encryption backdoor demands, and enforcing genuine oversight—any national digital ID is a surveillance power-grab waiting to happen.
I'm certain it's worked well in other countries, but I have zero trust in the UK government to handle this responsibility.
The UK's proposal makes the "digital ID" a pointer to an entry in a centralized database. This database is the definitive record of what you are allowed to do or not do (like reside and work). Which can be changed or deleted at the stroke of a key, through human error or malice. Then what?
When (not if) the database becomes an attribute store across a wider scope, the implications are scary. The "digital ID" as set out today can't work for its ostensible purpose. Therefore its actual purpose isn't being declared. Not hard to connect the dots.
> I'm certain it's worked well in other countries
It has! In the Netherlands for example, it's just an incredibly convenient system, and if there's anything dodgy going on I'm not aware of it.
So what makes the UK so different to the Netherlands? Genuine question, because I really don't know. My only guess is that the people of the Netherlands hold their politicians to account, whereas nothing ever seems to happen to UK politicians whose corruption is so severe that they're sometimes literally criminal.
Notoriously, the national identity system was used during World War II as a system for discovering and eliminating the Jewish community[1]. The lessons learned from that are a frequent topic of discussion in civil liberties groups, and the Dutch experience is often cited, both global conversations and within the Netherlands -- e.g. On Liberation Day 2015, Bits of Freedom held its annual Godwin Lecture on the risks of prioritising ID efficiency over civil liberties[2].
It may be that special protections were coded into the current system to prevent this from happening again, I don't know the details.
Certainly, the reputation for how obligatory papers have been (mis)used in mainland Europe since Napoleonic times have fed into the anglo world's suspicion around introducing similar regulations[3]. There are several recurring memes around how compulsory documents are a sign of an authoritarian environment.
[1] - https://jck.nl/en/agenda/identity-cards-and-forgeries
[2] - https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2015/04/30/during-world-war-ii-...
While the UK have some level of representativeness, each circuit has a winner takes it all structure, making change quite hard to achieve on a larger scale.
It would be ignorant not to fear the ID at this point with all the other mechanisms described by OP.
The ID in itself can be a good thing. There is no evil in itself. The context however is very worrisome as it may become a tool of evil.
Classic human.
The UK has an idiosyncratic relationship with freedom. Technically you have little because (formally limited) monarchy. In practice there’s this aversion to IDs, things like freedom to roam which gives a lot of access to private property, and the ability to get citizenship elsewhere and keep UK, which republics like the US and India won’t allow.
And yet there’s massive camera surveillance from the recent nanny state. And libel laws mean you have to be careful what you print about people. Odd place. Maybe the weather inspires it.
Id say it’s not a difference in the politicians but the citizens. Pessimism and paranoia are rampant in the UK. We already went through this ID card debate 20 years ago and the fear-mongering won. So the idea just reignites that debate with a lot of baggage.
The UK has various systems in place to ensure people are legally allowed to work, rent, etc but in reality they inconvenience people without actually catching “the bad guys”. This system would make life more convenient and make the chance of catching the bad guys higher.
In truth though the problem is dodgy employers on a large scale. Take Deliveroo or Uber Eats. The accounts are rented out to illegal workers. You could literally catch one for every order you make. But for some reason the government isn’t actually going after the obvious hanging fruit.
Furthermore, the former empire was built so that all of the telegraph and telephone lines went to London. If you wanted to make a call from one African colony to the next, London would be in on the man in the middle.
As well as this vast international capability, there is also the domestic front. During the Miners Strike in the 1980s the secret services were tasked with spying, notably on the leader of the miners, Arthur Scargill. Allegedly he used to pick up the phone and just give them a few words, either to misguide them or to tease them.
This spying continued with Northern Ireland being a 'training ground' during 'The Troubles'. There was also considerable opposition to cruise missiles in the UK during the Thatcher years and all of the people active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were under surveillance. This was not the end of it though. Eco-activism was also of interest along with a few high profile problem people.
As well as the secret services, there is also Scotland Yard. They infiltrate every anti-government single issue pressure group as a matter of course, placing people in deep cover. Two Guardian Journalists brought this to light in 2012 or so.
Then, on top of that, there are the capabilities of the big companies such as British Aerospace. They have their spies too.
Hence, on the domestic front, surveillance is vital to cut anyone down to size if they might challenge the establishment at a later date. Everything just gets nipped in the bud.
The 'Special Relationship' is the spying arrangement at the heart of 'Five Eyes'. In the USA, surveillance of the population is not allowed, so the workaround is to get the Brits to do it for them. This is how it works and has been working for decades.
If the UK secret services want to spy on someone in the UK then they will have the manpower to do it without getting caught. They will be able to get school reports, attendance at political demonstrations and much else regarding a person of interest.
There is nothing new that I have said here, Snowden and The Guardian brought all of this to light, in broad strokes. Both HUMINT and SIGINT is world leading. Compare with the USA where they have the dragnet but are not so capable when it comes to the HUMINT needed for monitoring a small group of individuals such as the leadership of a trade union.
It is for these reasons that spying has to be made easy for them, for instance by banning Huawei 5g routers on the pretence that China is using Huawei backdoors to spy on the UK. The problem was not that, it was different. With the likes of Cisco et al, the secret services can specify their own back doors, however, that is not so easy with Chinese owned companies.
There is much in the way of law that has gone along with this, for example the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 and the Terrorism Act 2000. The latter was definitely to target eco-activists, not anyone else. At the time there were eco-activist groups such as Reclaim The Streets that organised things such as rioting in the City of London with no identifiable leaders. They also did not book their protests with the police or organise security for the day, hence they needed to terminated.
9/11 brought new challenges and that brings us on to where we are today. I personally do not think this digital ID is a big deal. Any British citizen can already be easily identified even if they don't know their National Insurance number, and even if they have no photo ID in the form of a passport or a driving license. Name, date of birth and hospital of birth are the three bits of information needed. As well as the police, the NHS can work with that. As for employers and their needs to hire only people legally permitted to work in the UK, this is just for due diligence reasons from their part. If you speak with an accent that can only be British then you can meet the employer's checkbox requirements easily, with no photo ID. Just a bank statement should do.
So, where is this coming from? What plausible reason could there be for a fresh attempt at identity cards, for the umpteenth time?
Brexit...
As you know, Brexit happened and it was ugly. Due to the way that 'The Troubles' ended with the Good Friday Agreement, the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland (The Irish Republic is just 'Ireland', not any other name) has to be kept open.
What this means is that the EU is not a complete fortress, there is this imaginary border in the Irish Sea that can't be closed.
Immigration post-Brexit
A major selling point of Brexit was an end to immigration. However, due to the open border with Ireland, immigration has become a problem to the authorities, not least because working class people despise losing their jobs or getting paid less because there is a constant stream of people that will undercut them in the employment market.
What happens is that some country ends up being regime changed, as per the goals of The War Against Terror. Syria was particularly notable for the refugee situation. However, there is also Afghanistan, Iraq and everything in between up until Ukraine. What happens is very sad. People walk, hitch or smuggle themselves into Europe to arrive in one country such as Greece. Here they are looked after but they are unable to work or escape the refugee camps to buy a house, start a family and all those good things.
So they escape the cage of the EU country they first entered to try somewhere else. Maybe they get to Germany. However, in Germany, they will be asked where they came from, for example Greece, and get sent back to Greece. Maybe they try another EU country, to get sent back again. And so it goes, until someone advises them to go to Ireland, where they can walk over the border to the UK, as in Northern Ireland.
Since the UK is not in the EU, they get a fresh start at claiming asylum. This gets granted and the local authority is then likely to put them up in temporary accommodation.
Next they get 'dispersed'. What this means is that they get sent to another British town or city. Here they get temporary accommodation and a ridiculously small amount of money to live on. This money does not meet their basic needs. The asylum process leads to refugee status, which is not citizenship, however, they are permitted to work, legally. At a guess it takes two years to get to this second hoop. To get past refugee status takes even longer, if successful.
During this time the asylum seeker is not allowed their passport, the government keeps that. They can get a travel permit, however, if they return to their home country then they get banned and are not allowed back.
So that is the general process. To say immigration is out of control is an understatement to some and 'fascist' to others. It is a topic best not talked about, and the practicalities of it are not well understood. A boat crossing the English Channel full of asylum seekers are going to make the headlines of the gutter press, but this Brexit loophole situation is not something that the journalists appreciate fully, particularly if they voted for Brexit, then they are just not wanting to know.
Plausibly, the compulsory digital ID checks for work can be used to make the UK unattractive to asylum seekers that know the deal in the EU.
Currently the biggest threat to the main political parties is Farage and his Reform party. In recent polls, Reform (or whatever they are called) would sweep the board, taking seats from both the Conservatives and Labour. Due to how it works with no proportional representation, the exact outcome of this does not necessarily mean Reform would have a majority, however, it would be the end of the Conservative Party.
Hence, compulsory digital IDs would provide convenience for everyone, when dealing with the government, whilst giving the spies the primary keys they always wanted. However, for reasons of holding on to power, due to the threat of the Reform Party, there may be extra urgency.
In effect the State is no longer a State and is in fact entirely dysfunctional.
Everything accelerates when it becomes digital, for the better or for the worse. One thing that an ID does not do is preventing crime and allowing only legal jobs. People find a lot of ways to circumvent the rules as long as there are money to earn.
This commenter may sound like a paranoid person (and may very well be, I don't know them) but read about the way the UK government handled an IT error in post office accounting software. Someone living there has good reason to not trust the powers that be.
A digital ID requires essentially a digital signature running on a secure device (for example, a smart card).
Thus it implements public key cryptocraphy. Which makes confidentiality and integrity of computing two inseparable sides of the same medal.
You simply cannot break confidentiality of communication without practically breaking integrity of digital signatures at the same time. (Otherwise, a user, for example could generate a fresh random public key, sign it with their digital id, and send it to any communications partner).
Breaking this in turn means that the government can sign on behalf of you, without your knowledge.
Human communication is based on symbols and whatever the means are to transport these symbols, cannot work without trust.
Freedom is incompatible with the UK.
Also, is the data secure? Who else has access to that data? Will I be protected if I am in this system?
If they were open about the system, it would be one thing, but they never are. It is funny how this has cropped up gain after the recent pow wow with the yanks and the tech companies.
No state can ever be trusted with this amount of data. Governments change. Someday, there will be a government in charge that you will disagree with.
NO government can be trusted with data and with too much power (which go hand in hand). This has always been the case and will always be the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interactive_zero-knowledge...
Frankly, you’re just being paranoid. It’s possible that mandatory digital ID could be abused, but officials haven’t yet announced their intentions to abuse it. So why are you so worried? You’re already tracked everywhere you go, and many countries already have this system. It seems to work well there for keeping people in line. Do you have something to hide? Seems a little suspicious, no?
(Did I miss any talking points?)
It gives me no pleasure to be right on this.
I mean if you have a passport then you already have an 'ID card', but I certainly don't want to take that out with me to prove my age.
My own personal thinking has evolved on the subject since I campaigned against ID cards under Blair ("no2id"). It is a question of trust and purpose. Things like the Estonian digital identity scheme do not seem to be bad in practice. The problem comes from identity checkpoints, which serve as an opportunity for inconvenience, surveillance, and negligence by the authorities.
Remember the "computer is never wrong" Fujitsu scandal? The Windrush fiasco (itself a story of identity and records)?
And anything born of an immigration crackdown is coming out of the gate with a declared intention to be paranoid and authoritarian.
So why do we need this digital ID then?
To add to this - there is very rarely in my mind a need for someone to actually identify themselves - there are plenty of examples where it's useful for *audit* purposes to have a record, or to have a role-based credential to be able to do a thing, but *identity*?
If you want to prove your age, there are a host of *voluntary* forms of identity you can carry if you wish to do so. Please tell me how a new *compulsory* scheme (with privacy invading overreach) is going to help you.
> A new digital ID scheme will help combat illegal working
If you are an immigrant you already have to prove your right to work with a share code:
https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-onli...
And if you claim to be a citizen you must show a passport or birth certificate:
https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work
So how exactly will this new digital ID help "stop those with no right to be here from being able to find work"?
The worst part is that we no longer have any power to do something about it. Eventually, after it goes through the testing phase in the UK and Greece (and a few other countries where it's being implemented), this will probably roll out on a global scale, making privacy impossibly. I'm starting to get this feeling that in the next decade, we'll be living in 1984...
Why would I imagine that? There are privacy implications, but a unique ID doesn't mean everyone has access to all your data at any time for any reason.
That's not true. If a large enough mob of citizens went to the capital, burned down the government building and harassed MPs on the street (and followed them to their homes), as recently happened in Nepal and before that in Bangladesh, things would change very quickly.
anyway, privacy is dead - longer conversation, but even if you don't carry your cell, there's cameras everywhere with face/gate recognition.
The cows are long since out of the barn on "don't collect a giant database of everyone's personal information"
Perhaps it is time for the Greek to dust off their guillotines.
How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited in several years. If the idea is that a digital ID authorizes employment ... well I hope people can see the problem, here.
Most of EU and many other countries have something like that, at least you have a citizenship or resident number that they can check against to see what's your situation.
In UK though, everything is run over proof of address and it's quite annoying for new immigrants(legal or not) because its circular. You can't have anything that can be used as proof of address without having proof of address already. At some point you manage to break circle by first having something that doesn't require proof of address but it is serious enough to be accepted as one, i.e. I know people who were riding the tube without tapping in so that when they are caught the government will send them a letter about their fine and they can use the letter to open a bank account.
The Turkish version is both great, annoying and terrible.Great because you can do all your government stuff and some other stuff like see your full medical history, make an appointment etc or managing your service subscription(water, electricity, cable. GSM etc) from the government portal. Annoying because whatever you buy beyond groceries now they are asking for your ID number and all purchases are becoming a chore. Terrible because these systems are regularly hacked and all your private data is online for sale and some even run an API to access your govt stuff live.
It works fine to manage legal immigration, you give the immigrants the ID so the can have their subscriptions etc. Once they are no longer wanted you know where to find them and make providers cut them off. It doesn't work for illegal immigrants because since they can't register to anything they end up just asking a friend to start them a subscription or pay extra to have some employee start them a subscription that in the records look like its for the employee.
The circular issue is quite similar to Spain. Where in order to obtain residency you need an address. But for being able to rent, most likely you’ll need a bank account and ideally a Spanish identification number. But for having a local bank account you need an address.
Similar to the above. This needs to be broken in order to get residency.
So it's unclear how a digital ID solves anything in regarding the proof of address.
They already ask you for a "share code" which they then verify on the Home Office website. What does the Digital ID add to that?
"Once we chewed them up we spit them out"
And no EU country has any illegal immigration thanks to the ID card
/s
Worst I knew for sure of a specific country which had no databases of who was currently imprisoned, with inmates just walking out. Yes, it is that bad.
At the end it can just be viewed as an IT problem, the same way most corporations have multiple CRM and have been working on "a 360 view of their customers" for decades. Even most licensed, audited banks have those types of error margins if you really asked them to provide a clean list of their clients.
So all we hear about Digital IDs is a marketing term for the new version of that database they are working on.
A lot of countries were already collecting fingerprints when issuing IDs decades ago. But those projects fails like most CRMs.
So now the UK and others are arresting people for Facebook posts because it is actually a good database. Probably way better than their actual fingerprints or criminals databases.
I am not sure if you should be terrified or just not care about those announcements.
The Labour government has realised that whatever their own feelings are about people coming to the UK by irregular means and claiming asylum, they need to be seen to recognise the popular narrative right now that the boats must be stopped, and be seen to be taking action.
So I don't think the immediate state goal right here is likely to be anything deeper than desperately trying to head off Nigel Farage, who is capturing a lot of public discourse about this 'crisis'.
If your new hire is a British or Irish citizen, you ask for their passport on their first day and retain a photo/scan. In most cases this means that a layperson has to verify that the (possibly foreign) document is genuine, but I don’t think fake passports are a statistically meaningful problem.
If they have a visa or, probably most likely in recent years, EU right to remain, they will have a share code for online verification. That takes you to a page with their details and a passport-style photo that you can download as PDF for your records.
Identifying whether someone has the right to work has never been a problem. If somebody is working illegally, it’s because the employer is either knowingly employing them illegally, or doesn’t care/bother to check (or even know that they’re legally required to do so – a perennial problem with early stage startups in London, in my experience).
That says if you don't you need a birth certificate and an official letter showing a national insurance number. I guess the new thing would substitute for that?
It does not. That is not what this is for. It is just how they are selling it to the public. Just like with age verification for porn sites to supposedly protect the children or how they limit your cache and financial transactions to supposedly fight money laundering and financing terrorism(what a joke).
It's all about monitoring and controlling citizens offline and online to gain full control over their lives. Yes, it sounds Orwellian and no, it is not a joke.
Digital wallets and money comes next. This way the government will be able to actually control your behavior.
Why do they do that? Why not. It makes their lives easier as they do not have to be accountable to the people that voted for these public servants to manage the country and instead can push unpopular agendas by their puppeteers whom have private agendas of their own that usually, essentially always, goes against the well being of the population and nation itself.
Politics has not changed since we first discovered fire. This is nothing new. We just have better technology.
Proper border checks prevent illegal immigration.
The digital ids are introduced for other reasons - this is something Tony Blair has been pushing for a long time.
IDs (along with verification laws) discourage employers from hiring unauthorized immigrants, and without access to gainful employment, many will opt to return to their country of origin, or choose not to come in the first place.
A big source of illegal immigration is visa overstay (https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/un...), which ID can solve by tracking the visa status.
There are benefits to UK citizens, such as being easier to open a bank account and to comply with Voter ID laws.
It doesn't. The kind of employer who would employ an illegal immigrant is certainly not going to ask to see ID of any kind. They would surely be especially wary of any electronic ID because that would make it easier to associate them with the immigrant. ID cards are only of any use to legal workers and honest employers.
If the UK wants the benefits of a solid ID it should look to Scandinavia. In Norway everyone has a unique number in the population register and this ID is your user ID for all state services. Employers can ask for this number and look you up. Of course it still doesn't prevent people working on the black for cash in hand but neither will an ID card or ID app.
There is no appetite for ID cards in Norway either, yet successive governments keep pushing the idea despite there being no compelling reason to believe that any problems will be solved by them.
No idea how that would solve anything illegal though and realistically, I don't think they do either.
In lots of countries you need a specific right to work, and people who are on holiday visas or who are making asylum applications, or have simply entered the country without the right to do so, are not allowed to work.
Some consider these restrictions themselves to be a problem.
Currently, employers in the UK are legally required to check the right-to-work status of people they employ. This is usually done with a random assortment of ID documents and visa status checks. The proposal (I think) is to replace this and other functions with "Britcard", a digital ID system.
So another problem might be that government security schemes are usually pretty bad.
And a further one could be that there's little to stop (say) an asylum applicant from 'borrowing' someone else's britcard-enabled phone to sign on and work Uber Eats illegally, which is one of the issues that they are allegedly trying to tackle.
Beyond that ... sure there's massive privacy implications etc etc.
So yeah, which problem did you have in mind?
Yes. The rules are complex, and currently the government essentially deputizes employers and banks to enforce them; anyone running e.g. a restaurant is having to essentially guess whether a potential employee is in the UK legally or not, on pain of criminal charges if they get it wrong in one direction and discrimination lawsuits if they get it wrong in the other.
I hate the UK surveillance state as much as anyone, but one-stop ID verification managed by the government is honestly less bad than the current patchwork. The banks are already "voluntarily" sharing everyone's identity information with the government, without any of the legal checks and balances that would apply to an official system.
> If the idea is that a digital ID authorizes employment ... well I hope people can see the problem, here.
Stop vagueposting. If you have something to say, say it.
I don't get this. Is there nothing like some sort of number to register any tax withholding or the like? I imagine that tax authorities and immigration authorities don't actually cooperate together (and for good reason!) but my impression for places like the US is that you really do have to provide some sort of number provided by the government for most kinds of employment.
Unless of course you're just not trying to pay payroll taxes I guess?
Remember that the "problem" is that it can be used as a political tool by outside parties like Reform. It helps this problem by allowing the Prime Minister and others to appear on TV pointing to strong measures they're implementing. The efficacy of the measures is beyond the attention span of someone watching the headlines.
It's presumably harder to forge a cryptographic signature than paper documents? Not saying it's a good tradeoff. But executed competently, it makes sense in theory.
Unless there is both serious pressure from the state and the population at large supports a massive increase in checking and being checked I struggle to see this working.
During the pandemic various countries experimented with mandating showing of QR codes to do stuff to "prove" compliance ... yet looking back on that, all it seems to have done is accelerate the erosion of trust in politicians and systems of government :/
For criminals it is already essentially impossible to forge new polycarbonate documents. Acquiring them by defrauding the application processes remains easy however.
Of course, if the person checking doesn't know what the real document feels like in their hand, whether it's real polycarbonate or a shit laminated TESLIN fake makes little difference.
You know, coincidentally.
(Oh, hold on I guess it helps with immigration numbers because people won’t want to put up with this bullshit.)
A National Insurance Card (needed to get a job), drivers license and passport, one of latter is also needed (in practice) to get a job.
Why would a brit card help us reduce the number of people working illegally?
The only notable 'employers' of illegal workers in the UK are American tech firms Uber and deliveroo (doordash) because they allow driver substitution without verifying that the substitute is legit. That should be made illegal and then fine them into the ground for anyone who slips through. Brit card doesn't help and is a distraction.
Edit - I mean, just play it back in your head. The PM is probably watching small boat arrivals and reform polling numbers like a hawk. And here's his idea to fix both problems, and you're saying, actually no, the PM is just doing this to get data on where I go to work, even though they already have my PAYE details
A NI number is not ID, it's a reporting number.
Lastly, a national ID is a tried and tested scheme in many, many countries and brings a lot of positives. The only "negatives" are slippery slope make-believe scenarios not based in reality.
Anchoring proof of citizenship is going to become a very obnoxious problem going forward if there is not a population register or universal ID system introduced, as you'll have to go back however many generations it takes to reach birth before 1983.
I think the UK and Ireland are the only countries in the entire world that have non-birthright citizenship and no citizenship register, which is a less than ideal combination.
This policy would absolutely sail through, with no controversy at all, if it had just been "free passports for all" reusing all the existing rules, existing IT and existing bureaucracy; and "Optional digital passport on your phone" for those who want that.
Why they're doing this in the most expensive, unpopular way possible - I have no idea.
I don't really understand why I need a Fourth (or Fifth)! National ID?
I don't really get the point on reporting number, true, but it's also a UID linked to a passport or birth certificate.
This is an exaggeration. There are countless examples of how this has played out in the past, a quick google search will yield many of them[1][2][3].
The point is that any kind of data collection by a government can and will (eventually) be misused and abused. The UK government is currently abusing its powers to access Facebook and Whatsapp private messaging to arrest regular people for words (i.e not CSAM)[4].
This particular national ID introduction has about as much to do with illegal workers as the Online Safety Act has to do with protecting children.
1. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/rearvision/the-dark-s...
2. http://www.preventgenocide.org/edu/pastgenocides/rwanda/inda...
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/04/24/s...
4. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
You don't need the card itself in order to get a job, just the number. In this respect it's rather like an American social security card. (I know some US employers will ask to see the card, but that's not a legal requirement: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/SSNcard.htm)
If it's the former, then it means it's now mandatory for all British citizens to become customers of the Google/Apple duopoly LOL
– July 2024
"Asked about the possibility of introducing digital ID cards, Mr Reynolds [then Secretary of State for Business and Trade, now Chief Whip] told Times Radio: "We can rule that out, that's not something that's part of our plans.""
– July 2024
I also don't trust them not to make a complete hash of all this, removing all potential utility while simultaneously increasing the chances of my ID being stolen.
sigh
But being critical of your leaders isn't the worst thing in the world. It's fairly bipartisan too; most of the people who voted for our current PM just a year ago now disapprove of him. A high level of public scrutiny on one's leaders' is probably quite effective at preventing totalitarianism. Whatever can be (often justifiably) said about our ineffective leadership, what we do have is a good track record for stability.
However, sometimes it's really just cynicism for cynicism's sake.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/support-for-th...
IMO this is a gimmick and probably won't have much effect either for good or bad. I would vote against it given the chance. But there aren't that many British people who feel especially strongly about this.
So it's mandatory for everyone except old people and the unemployed. It will almost certainly also be mandatory for renting, which has the same check. Then it will gradually seep into everything else: benefits and pensions, to cover the categories not initially covered. Then police spot checks and ICE sweeps.
We have the border force, and they aren't allowed to cover their faces, yet.
But to your point, its required to have some sort of ID for renting, job or voting _already_ the difference here is there is a digital version of it.
The other thing is that driving licenses are also ID, that carry a £10k fine for not keeping your address up to date.
It's strange how last time I campaigned against ID cards 25 years ago, none of those requirements were in place. Voter ID in particular is a very recent idea imported from the US (and of course doesn't apply to postal votes, where there are actually real concerns about security and diversion).
Just like nearly everybody's medical privacy has been given away in the UK.
Like nearly everybody's rights are unenforceable because they can't pay the enormous costs of a court action.
British freedom is great if you can afford it.
Sorry old boy, but what have the *UK* Institute of Civil Engineers got to do with this?
Surely it will be possible to also store it on some government-issued, GCHQ-vetted digital device, and not rely on foreign companies (Google/Apple) and their locked-down mobile platforms?
It's backed by gov.uk one login, which is already a database that contains a fair chunk of the populations' details.
To me, it feels like the digital id is more a case of joining existing things together than creating something brand new from scratch.
I will be very surprised if the app does much more than dish up a pre-signed chunk of ID data, much like an e-passport does now. It won't actually need a secure device.
(Which isn't to say they will support anything except android and iphone.)
Also, seems to be intended to be mandatory and require a smartphone. Hows that going to work?
Also, what happens when the database is inevitably stolen?
I'm not saying it doesn't need addressing or isn't serious, but I think it's a convenient topic for politicians. It's a lot more media-friendly than the arrivals queue at Luton Airport. And the illegal immigrants aren't the ones putting pressure on NHS, housing market or train driver unions.
0.8m is like on the average a whole county in the UK, and such massive influx would destroy the housing- and job market. Not to mention pressure on schools and healthcare.
They could stop them in a week if they actually wanted to.
But the new form of ID makes work place checks real easy and fast.
Add a real hefty fine for the owner and possibly ban from conducting any form business for a few years, that will have undoubtedly have effect.
This is a proposal at a party conference, not law. Previous initiatives along these lines have not come to pass, and this is unlikely to as well.
Expect universal rejection by the tories, lib dems and reform in parliament, purely because it’s a Labour initiative, and expect plenty of Labour MPs to disobey the whip.
From the BBC this morning:
“Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch calls it a "desperate gimmick", while the Lib Dems fear it would force people to turn over their private data”
If it does somehow get beyond the commons, expect lords to quash it.
I give this about a 20% chance of actually coming to pass.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/digital-id-ca...
Or are those things somehow related? I would be crazily scared to know that immigrant care workers will leave NHS as most hospitals relies on them. The government already made clear they won't pay people more nor will give more benefits for NHS workers and I am quite sure not Brits will take those spots when Tesco express pays more for less hours of work with more benefits.
This minimises the problem. The UK voters have consistently voted for reduced immigration, with polls showing the preferred number to be somewhere between 0-100,000. Those elected have consistently ignored them which has raised tensions.
In the last few years, the UK had around 1 million people net per year. 1 million people is bigger than most cities in the UK for comparison, so imagine a new city of people, every single year. The infrastructure could not, or did not keep up and has contributed to worse living standards through overly-subscribed national services, increased living costs, etc.
>for example the lack of funding of the NHS or the hyper funding of other initiatives such as war in Ukraine.
The NHS is already the single biggest expenditure of the UK's taxes. I remember it being more than 25% of the total budget. How much should be spent on the NHS? 50%? 90%?
The cost of defending democracy and freedom from a tyrannical Russia is also barely a drop in the bucket, while having huge meaning for many. Only 2% of the budget for the entire Armed forces, let alone just some support for Ukraine, compared to the 25+% on NHS. It's nothing.
Those figures relate to general immigration, which wouldn't be affected by ID schemes since people are given approval by the government to arrive and work in the UK. If the government wanted to reduce regular immigration, it could just decide to award less visas.
The ID scheme would only affect irregular immigration which is much lower (approx 50,000 a year by the governments stats, obviously hard to know how accurate that is, but much lower than 1 million[0]).
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-...
I must say I am not doubting nor being pedantic. I am indeed trying to have a conversation based on the facts and people I know. I would happily change my mind if I find reasons for that. At the same time, I would like to share my views which might give some perspective on my opinions.
Based on government figures I've saw, the annual economic contribution from skilled workers alone is estimated to range from 4 billion to gbp. Moreover, it's important to note that these skilled workers generally don't receive government benefits. Literally. They pay double on nurseries, they pay for NHS in advance, they do not have any financial government assistance at all, contrary to what people believe.
I do not understand what kind of problems they cause. Would you mind explain it to me? I am not being pedantic nor ironic. I want to understand what is the complaint?
I agree about drug dealers, rape gangs and etc, but they in the UK before and they will remain independently of the political changes regarding immigration.
Ten years and no settlement will only put away skilled workers as they will not be able to retire on time, nor have any financial safety as the UK only provides 8 weeks for them to leave after the contract termination.It also means spending more on health, education, and living, which is already a struggle.
Refugees receive £50 per week, which isn't enough for groceries and rent. The system is broken, but attacking another unrelated group does not seem to be the answer.
While I acknowledge that some individuals are abusing the system, I maintain that the overall impact is likely positive, especially when considering the near-zero population growth among native populations.
Who will pay for pensions 10 years from now? The money you pay now goes towards current pensions, and the government does not save taxes for future generations.
So 1 million people per year was the supposed peak, right? The actual numbers are definitely far lower than 5 million, I think.
More than that, NHS workers in hospitals are immigrants because no British person is insane to work for it under current conditions.
At the same time, no Brit wants to increase taxes even more to cover the costs of paying more for health.
A short-sighted solution will be another blow to the UK economy as the Brexit was. Well, they are being orchestrated by exactly the same folks.
This also bothers me because there's a clear conflict of interest. Trice is married to an editorial lead at The Telegraph and receives funding from Lloyds.
Not sure about Sky News and others, but I would not be surprised that some digging would lead to the same people.
There is a clear financial cost related to the war in Ukraine. Whether it is a fair cost or not is a moral and ethical point, which I think is an individual opinion. But there is a cost regardless. Money spent in war is money that will never ever come back at any proportion to its society.
I think saying "the NHS is underfunded" all day is just ignoring the other major issue: even when the NHS has funds, they squander most of them.
I don't think solving just one of them will solve the whole problem, but maybe solving the blatant corruption at the NHS's administrative level might improve their financial situation by virtue of the money not lining the pockets of the rich.
I lived in South London at the time and sent a letter to my MP to protest about the creation of a database state and increased surveillance, fundamentally changing the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the state.
About two months later I got a form response that started "Don't worry, it's not just an ID card, there will be a huge database behind it!"
Thanks. Way to show you didn't even read what I wrote.
I think in the intervening years that relationship has already fundamentally changed though. Privacy from government in most western countries seems to be something of a fading memory, it would be hard to make those same arguments in 2025.
I do get your point, as an Indian who migrated to Canada, it’s one of my pet peeves where some of my relatives live in their enclave only, i.e. surround themselves with like minded Indians, but this is pretty ironic when it is coming from Brits.
Presumably the form for applying for benefits has a reasonably high bar for identifying the fact that you are in fact legally present in the country? Or how else do you imagine people living at "taxpayer's expense"? Just begging on the streets?
You don't really need that - you can stand on the beach and watch.
The issue is more with the laws - we have human rights laws where you can claim asylum and a very slow and expensive legal system where almost no one actually gets send back. What the government should do is change the laws to something that agrees more with common sense.
No, this is not supported by any real evidence.
They could create a polite British form of ICE
I can think of few things the UK should do less than ape American attitudes to immigration currently.
The bigger issue is people not contributing to the economy. Let’s not peg laziness as an immigration problem because British people are equally lazy.
> The other complaint I often see is immigrants' failure to assimilate to British norms, language, and culture.
If we forced people to conform to British norms then we wouldn’t enjoy the variety of takeaways that Brits have enjoyed for decades. Which is ironic because a kebab is now considered a British norm for post drinking meals.
Plus it’s not as if British people are particularly good at integrating with other cultures. Most Brits can’t even speak a second language and don’t even attempt to learn the customs and language of any other countries they visit.
> People who complain about these things seem to often run into the UK's limitations on freedom of speech.
I think the opposite is the problem. People have been far too vocal about the mythical problems that immigrants bring and anyone who attempts to present actual facts gets shot down as “woke” or “leftard” etc.
We need to stop blaming other people for our own problems.
If we wanted we could stop illegal immigration extremely fast – as you say we are an island so it's relatively easy to stop people arriving. We don't need drones. At the moment after the French have given life-jackets to the illegal migrants and their boats have set off into the British channel, the people smugglers will call the British coast guard and ask them to go pick up the migrants they're smuggling into the country. The UK coast guard then picks them up and escorts them safely to shore. From here the police will be waiting, not to arrest them, but to take them to their hotel and give them a hot meal. Shortly after this charities in the UK will give them phones (typically iPhones), clothes and bikes to get around. The government will also give them some spending money to spend in our towns and cities.
We obviously don't have to do any of this and ID cards wouldn't stop any of this. We choose to do this and this is why they come.
However between the various reports of migrant hotel stabbings, thefts, sexual assaults, and rapes of children, it's been discovered that some migrants have been working in the UK – primarily in the gig economy. All of the things I've said to this point are not deemed issues and the government has no intention in changing them, but the fact that a small percentage of the migrants coming here are working has caught the eye of our politicians who have stated very strongly that they would prefer the migrants coming here don't work. The digital ID cards will hypothetically help with this "problem"
It's hard to explain to people outside the UK how strange this place is. Most countries want a controlled immigration system and treat border security as a national security priority, and when they do allow immigrants into the country they almost always want them to work and pay their own way. The UK basically does the inverse of this. The explanation varies between some combination of letting hundreds of thousands of Afghans into the country is the right thing to do, to it's the law so there's nothing we can do about it.
Legal note:
This is not an anti-migration post. I am pro-migration.
Like it or not, our high-trust society is devolving into a low-trust society as the world opens up. Our defences must evolve -- and the current free-for-all needs to end.
Or must we absolutely must accept eg every Nigerian, Pakistani, Syrian, Afghan, Indian etc who has a fleeting desire emigrate, else our society will collapse?
Some of the digital ID proposal documents published by UK gov even bear the "Labour Together" stamp - Labour Together being the Israel-aligned "think tank" that McSweeney used for the illegal funds!
Wow straight out of the Tory playbook (see eg Rhys-Mogg "lying [down] in Parliament" to poison search results for lying to parliament). They are so incredibly similar
Having something like that is imo. a cornerstone for building out top notch digital governmental services, and I don't fault the UK for trying to get this in place.
That being said, I'm not convinced it will be that much of a blocker for illegal workers. I'm sure they will find a way around it.
Starmer has been ambivalent on ID cards (at least compared to Blair, who must think Xmas has come twice this year). Really the only reason this is being introduced is because it lets Labour look like they’re trying to tackle illegal immigration/employment/benefits-claiming.
Reform (led by Trump’s mini-me) is making political progress hand over fist by casting immigration as the root of all evil. I’m pretty certain this is Labour’s response. They don’t want the populist (otherwise known as “batshit insane”) policies Reform are proposing (“end all immigration, send all immigrants back home”) - but a more-moderate “you need to prove you’re entitled to work/live here/claim benefits” seems on-message to me.
So for once it might just be ok to take a politicians word at face value. This doesn’t preclude nefarious use later on, of course…
This smells a lot of "think of the children" [0].
Govt surveillance? I'm much more worried by the ever increasing number of cameras in the streets rather than something similar to having a passport to prove who you really are.
At a traffic stop the police have the option to require you to present documents at a police station within seven days if they think something is fishy.
And people do seem to exist quite happily without formal identification. As someone who has always had a passport and driving license it was a bit of an eye-opener to me, but if you don't drive and don't travel, some folks just get by without.
So if there is a requirement to have a Britcard, and to present your 'Britcard' when stopped for any reason, then it is definitely a change.
I thought it was also required to collect any type of government benefit too.
As an ex-Brit I am also used to carrying an ID and a drivers license, and I’ve always found it quite weird that you can’t get an ID card of any kind that isn’t a full-fledged passport or a drivers license.
Well, maybe the app will keep working and you can update it from Aurora Store. Pretty vague so far.
"In 2024, a significant portion of the UK adult population, approximately 8.5 million people (1 in 6), struggles with reading and writing at a basic level, according to The Reading Agency's 2024 report"
Maybe they'll have an exception for people who are more migratory in nature. In that event, I think we'll get to see a nice real-world example of a cyberpunk-style dystopia. "High tech, low life". The upstanding citizens will be surveilled, preyed upon by corruption, and will be running on a social credit score treadmill designed to work them to death. Meanwhile, a plucky band of rebel farm workers, who are free to work outside the system, will bring down the establishment and bring freedom to all. Roll credits.
Yet.
There's a lot of resistance to this because people can see this is the big pill they want you to swallow. Then smaller ones can follow.
You might need digital ID recorded to buy a house. Then a car. Then eventually pretty much anything.
Any legislation allowing the State to link systems via digital ID would be unremarkable and not newsworthy, but the end result could be the Panopticon we are all dreading, or perhaps a toolkit for more hardline governments in the future.
For now, you can sign a Petition [1] against the introduction of Digital ID. In the future, you may need to submit digital ID before signing such a petition (rather than the current email address validation). Imagine what a tool that could be for identifying dissenters and undesirables.
This means when you want to implement things like the Online Safety Act you basically have to implement alternatives to ID verification like age estimators which isn't ideal (for the government anyway).
With a digital ID anonymous age estimators will no longer be required, so when someone is trying to watch porn or view footage of a political protest they'll have to identify who they are instead of using a fake AI face.
They don't have any real benefit over passports expect for the fact that a passport is a selectively issued document which not everyone living and working in the UK has access to or has applied for, but with digital IDs everyone will have one so there will no excuse to not identify yourself any time the government wants you to.
A passport is the universal identity document. It's way too valuable to carry around and expediting a new passport is costly and slow. Checks need to be done in person and the passport holder needs to be told in advance about the check (so impromptu checks don't work and expired passports get through, also catching fake passports and the like is hard).
A digital ID as its name says is digital, checks can be done remotely (as often as you want) in a secure environment with physical checks possible in addition to that. Regular and unscheduled checks are possible with a digital id after the initial check both presential and remote. Online checks especially can cover for things like the same id being used in multiple places, it also means employers cannot fudge it as the actual repository of truth lies online. None of this is possible with a passport.
Citizen IDs and more recently digital IDs have been used in Europe for decades now. Having a redundant piece of ID is incredibly valuable.
What impromptu checks would you need this ID for? The use cases I've seen for it are to make sure you are legal to work, and when renting a house, both of which are circumstances that you can be told about beforehand
>How we will ensure it is available to everyone > > Millions of people in the UK lack access to traditional proofs of identity like passports. It is estimated that 10% of UK citizens have never had a passport, while 93% of adults own a smart phone. > > This means it can be difficult to prove your eligibility for services such as opening a bank account and claiming benefits. Digital ID will give you free, secure identity verification.
I get it, you're the government so double-speak is part of the deal, but it's like you're not even trying to make it sound convincing any more, and that scares me.
Putting aside the fact that the reason why some people don't have a passport is _not because it's difficult to get a passport ordered_, it still doesn't explain why having 2% more people who don't have a passport makes it easier to have this new solution -- let alone address the fact that some people do not have a smartphone!
^1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-id-scheme...
One thing is showing a passport to enter the gay bar, another thing is tap a phone and have time, person ID and bar ID recorded. Much faster. Also the mobile application can collect other data from the phone without distracting a user. So much more convenient.
Is this just going to be a cheeky kickback to Palantir given the investment last week: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-strategic-partnership...
My point: even if this was a good idea, it is easy to get the software wrong in a way that is a complete disaster.
Today it's immigrants, tomorrow it could be dissidents.
In East Germany a common strategy the government used was to not put dissidents in prison, but make life hard for them in many ways including by denying them employment.
Of course none of this stops under the table work - which those engaging in illegal work are probably already doing.
Do you see the flaw here!
> In designing the digital ID scheme, the government will ensure that it works for those who aren’t able to use a smartphone, with inclusion at the heart of its design.
It's not just the elderly and homeless as mentioned on the page, but also those with religious objections, members of the digital disconnection movement, those concerned about electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and so on.
Should there a right to an offline life for the simple reason that you want live offline? A right which is protected in a few other places in Europe, at least to some extent when it concerns government services.
They are considering enabling its use for more than just work, so what happens when my grandma forgets to charge her phone before her doctors' appointment?
What happens if you want to give teenagers a dumb phone because you as a parent decide a smartphone isn't appropriate, but they need the ID for the NHS too?
Which can be used to get everything else, thanks to ridiculous privacy laws in Sweden.
The government steps in solely to manage token issuance. New use cases appear as emergent properties. DebbiesDrawings.com lets you use your tokens to sign eCards. HMRC.gov.uk lets you use then to sign tax returns. RonsRentals.co.uk lets you use it to sign a new lease.
In a pessimistic world, without watching the hyenas closely we end up with Capita or Accenture or Concentrica or Syntegrico (I made the last two up) syphoning off £8bn to create proprietary tokens that can only be used with sanctioned government JavaBeans webcrap. It would also be fundamentally flawed and won’t launch until 2037.
With care, something really cool could happen.
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...
"Hackers obtained the details of tens of millions of British voters in a “complex cyber attack” on the Electoral Commission that went undetected for more than a year, the elections watchdog admitted on Tuesday. The body said “hostile actors” first breached its network in August 2021, gaining access to its file-sharing and email systems and obtaining copies of the electoral register, but “suspicious activity” was not identified until October 2022."
Of course such a thing will never happen in relation to Digital ID Cards, will it?
They'll roll them out gradually. You won't need one at first. You'll still show your passport, driving license etc, until one day you give up because the digital version is convenient and you "might as well". What's your problem? Why do you care? Have you got something to hide?
Then they'll attack the easiest target: porn. We already have age-verification laws, implemented through dodgy third-party providers. But now everyone has digital government ID: we "might as well" unify things so all the porn sites check your age using the centralised government system. What's your problem? Why do you care? Won't you THINK OF THE CHILDREN??? You want to let CHILDREN watch PORN???
Then comes online retail. After all, the Southport killer bought his knife from Amazon — that was the front page headline on every paper, remember how organic and uncoordinated that was? It could all have been avoided with better age verification. And hey, we already have a way to verify age with our digital IDs. We "might as well". What's your problem? Why do you care? You want to let CHILDREN buy KNIVES?
And what about social media? Kids shouldn't use Facebook, it's bad for them. Australia already bans under 16s from social media. We already have age verification for other things. We "might as well". WHY DO YOU CARE????? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
Oh, that's handy, everyone's social media accounts are now tied to their real identities. That'll come in handy when people say nasty things that the government doesn't like. After all, those riots only happened because of "misinformation". Why do you need to stay anonymous anyway? What's the problem? Why do you care? Got something to hide? You're in favour of HATE SPEECH??
The slippery slope has never been more lubricated.
>Article 1 (vi), commonly referred to as the birthright provisions, states that both governments, "Recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish, or British, or both
But yeah, this abandonment of the issues they traditionally represented to try and attract the soft centre right voters might not cause their traditional base to vote for the Tories. But it might send their centrists to the Lib Dems, their lefties to the Greens/SNP/etc and their "I just want change, any change" supporters to Reform. Along with increasing apathy and reducing turnout on their former core. Polling certainly seems to indicate that this is happening.
He'll have to live with the consequences as will the rest of us.
A harsh lesson in believing the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Though mostly in the UK it's usually just apathetic "well time for the other party to have go" (due to 14 years of the last lot) more than anything more educated
Is the implication here that it will become a legal requirement for me to own a modern phone (will it have to be a google/apple blessed phone?) in order to get a job in the UK?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/britain-to-introduce-c...
Text-only:
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1Nmgi0...
https://www.gov.uk/using-your-gov-uk-one-login
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/25/keir-starme...
It is really grim what is happening to the UK. For the most part no one gives a shit. And if you do, you are automatically branded as "right wing".
And given the torrent of inauthentic "right wing" commentators nudging public opinion on the BBC's Have Your Say, the Daily Mail and Reddit, I'm not entirely sure this will be a bad thing.
Recall that Iran cut off the internet for university exams, and the volume of posting by Scottish pro-independence accounts on Twitter/X dropped 98%. Food for thought.
Reddit is the most left-wing moderated, fedora-tipping regime it's possible to get.
This moment is the test for the edifice that the privacy advocates have built in all that time. We should all be watching closely.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44723418
You use the ID to create an IRL identify anchor certificate, then use other certificates with varying privacy profiles that are then cryptographically linked to your identity but in a privacy preserving manner.
When starting a job you already have to give enough ID to do the home offices job for them, this adds absolutely nothing.
“Please employ me.”
“OK, fill out this form with your name, D.O.B. and national insurance number, and if it matches against the government database then you can have the job.”
What am I missing here? I suppose they could use someone else’s details, but then HMRC should be able to easily see that the NI account seems to have multiple taxpayers.
Edit: The Times says this is to include all workers:
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/digital-id-comp...
"Tourism in the United Kingdom is a major industry and contributor to the U.K. economy, which is the world's 10th biggest tourist destination, with over 40.1 million visiting in 2019, contributing a total of £234 billion to the GDP"
>Provide "solution"
A story as old as time.
Unless of course this new system is for some other unclear purpose.
Once you let go of God (worship of truth and love) the government or other totalitarian force will try to control people top down. The logical way is to identify them.
You go from a system of free will and distributed cognition to one of enforcement top down. New things can always be added to it as you don't control it. All the "problems" of the states will tag along.
Making it digital is way worse than anything before because it allow to control you without having to pay a cost in enforcement, you control the flow of money, of exchange, you let the computer control people allowing a system so top down the Nazi and communist couldn't even imagine.
Worse part, it's already there for sure but in shadow form, they have all the info about the people, it's just not tied to financial transactions and out there in the public.
The US tried that back when Social Security Numbers were introduced. It specifically said it was for tax-purposes (a context where it might've been adequately-secure) and not to be used for anything else.
Yet without any actual penalties against "other places", it got misused everywhere by companies trying to save a buck on primary-key choice and authenticating people.
Orwell is turning over in his coffin
1) I don't like centralised ID, its ripe for abuse.
2) I don't like the idea of crapita/accenture/G4S/some other dipshit company designing and running this.
However
if its an extension of the government gateway, then actually the only "innovation" here is the presumable fine for not keeping it up to date. (that and the smartphone integration, which I suspect is largely symbolic)
So long as its GDS rolling it out, and its properly designed (two big ifs) then in principle it could be a useful as the original GDS scheme to make government services "digital"
But, the problems of authoritarianism are not to be ignored. starmer doesn't have the bollocks to be a dictator, but jenrick and farage do. Our constitution has no guards against authoritarian capture, its just "good men" doing "good deeds". That was easily overridden with Boris. A decent majority in the House of commons gives you alomst unlimited power of the state.
Something similar to Estonia would be much less controversial.
Not from the UK so i don't know how much more they're asking for
The issue I have is that it provides a convenient way for people to hassle me for my identity. Being able to identify myself is not a problem I've ever had and I don't like the idea of being forced to buy a smartphone just to remain an employed citizen in the UK.
Works ok
But some don't, and they get away with it
So what will change?
"In the UK ... we have got a right-wing proposition that we have not had in this country before ... so the battle of our times is between patriotic national renewal ... versus something which is turning into a toxic divide."
Your card literally says, "THIS IS NOT IDENTIFICATION"
Anyway, according to some news stories, they don't need to work, since they get everything for free anyway.
This is widely unpopular because the idea of ID cards is unpopular in general in the UK and the people also clearly understand that the argument that this would combat illegal immigration is total rubbish. Even the comments on The Guardian's website are overwhelmingly negative, which should really tell the government something.
The proposal is also drastic because it would be de facto mandatory for all residents. It's hilarious and pathetic to see the government argue that it wouldn't be mandatory, just only needed to get a job (which probably means also mandatory to rent and to study)...
An unpopular government trying to out-do itself.
https://bsky.app/profile/samfr.bsky.social/post/3lzq2w3ovgk2...
At the time of writing, 1,017,754 British people have already signed the official petition opposing them; a petition that has only been running a matter of hours.
I lived in countries that have mandatory unique IDs, and countries that don't. Typically the countries that do not are more a pain in the ass to deal with, because institutions will proxy to the next best thing in the absense of an actual ID, typically documents that are not mandatory and not supposed to be used as ID, but end up being used like that anyway.
The UK already has government issued ID, the proof of age card. This is about tying your identity to your online behaviour.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...
Yeah, not really online posts though is it.
After the UK implements this, other western countries will follow. For example, here in Australia, it's a simple solution to the under-16 social media ban which is about to come into effect. The bill was given deliberately weak verification requirements so it didn't seem too big-brother, but I'd bet real money that there's already an amendment in the works to tie it to digital ID after they discover what everyone already knows (i.e. that it'll be easily bypassed), followed by another amendment to tie the digital ID to site/app ID, for online safety reasons of course.
In time, websites/apps may offer your government's digital ID as an alternative to their in-house identity provider. If this becomes globally ubiquitous, many of them will stop maintaining their own authentication and rely solely on government ID providers. The identity provider you use will depend on where you are, so VPNs will become useless.
This was all inevitable from the day the internet opened up to everyone. Governments have an insatiable desire for power and limitless paranoia about threats to their power.
The biggest risk is from a data breach and this information being accessed by unauthorized parties, but that is something all online services are at risk from. The absolute worst way to implement this will be to contract it out to a third party. If it is built and maintained by civil servant developers who have already proved their mettle with a variety of govuk services then I would have confidence in it. If it is farmed out to Fujitsu or some other 3rd party then it will be an shithshow and an expensive one at that.
The potential for BritCard to be used for surveillance outweighs the benefits of convenience tenfold... Privacy is not something we should compromise for easier access to services- what starts as a way to "streamline services" can quickly turn into a horrible mechanism for tracking citizens under the guise of security..
If you're not from Britain, you must present evidence of your right to work or other documentation. This is already the law.
Any company that does not follow this is violating the law.
In reality, most illegal workers are engaged in cash-in-hand jobs that never require ID. A digital ID alone will not solve this problem.
Adding a digital ID won't make any difference.
We've also seen similar issues with the UK's attempt to censor adult content "to protect children." It sounds reasonable on the surface (no child should have open access to the internet!). Still, the law was written so broadly that even community clubs involving children with no relation to adult content were caught in its provisions.
Threatened by fines and bureaucratic red tape, many closed their doors. International sites that had no idea what to do - now block the UK. And did this stop access to explicit content? No. Anyone can use a VPN, or an anonymity-oriented browser like Brave and use a Tor tab to bypass the blocks completely. For the non-technical, how long before these Age ID check services, which the government wants everyone to use (private companies owned mainly by adult companies), are hacked and everyone's viewing habits are released?
How long before we're required to use our Digital ID to log on to the internet, enabling monitoring of everything we browse?
A more innovative approach would be for ISPs to by default integrated parental controls on residential connections, something that has been technically possible for decades. In fact, any mobile phone contract in the UK operates similarly. Why not home internet? This isn't about new legislation; it's about education.
Parents already understand why they shouldn't give alcohol or tobacco to their children; why not teach them how to protect their children online?
The new NHS app and driving licence app are expected to be available by the end of 2025. How long before they're integrated into a single system where the government maintains one massive database containing every individual's driving information, medical records, browsing history, banking and tax details? It's not far-fetched to imagine such overreach occurring.
Also as of this week, HMRC (our UK tax office) also now has the right to raid any UK bank account for taxes owed (leaving only £5,000 in the account). This applies to both individuals and companies. Consider a company that becomes insolvent days before paying salaries how will they pay their workers? Some companies have already become insolvent after paying wages while still owing taxes and National Insurance. Just HMRC now get their money and the employees won’t.
I realise there are several loosely connected points above, but that's precisely the problem: all these developments have emerged over the past 18 months.
So when the UK government claims these measures are "for the people," the argument falls flat.
It's difficult to believe that policymakers don't recognise these fundamental flaws.
This raises the question: what's the real motivation? To me, it seems less about protection and more about monitoring and control, implemented by people too afraid to speak against their superiors.
At nearly 50, I see a UK very different from the one I was born into. One thing I know for sure: once this process begins, it will only worsen, and a new government will maintain these systems and extend them further. We left Europe - but kept every single law! As a nation, we just allow all of this to happen. It’s the British way!
Then they demand that native citizens accept digital ID to solve that manufactured problem.
But truly their evil genius lies in the fact that a hefty part of natives will dismiss and mock everyone who tells them this as a conspiracy theorist.
>digital id will be made mandatory for all adults in an effort to tackle small boats
WTF? It's obvious when a small boat of Africans turns up they are not Brits and making Brits carry ID will make zero difference there.
Labour has sold British citizens to corporations.
This would in turn enable citizen-operated checkpoints to verify the Britishness of food delivery drivers, mosque worshipers, suspected pedos, anyone who smells a bit too much like curry or garlic, or blokes what look funny like they aint from round ere.
Marvellous! /s
They would have allowed EU travel without a passport, but sadly didn't take off. Initially they would have incorporated driving licenses too - lots of people already carry a driver's license.
Ironically I've of the reasons for not having them, back in the noughties, was because it would target minorities.
Now, the right wing are beying for blood over immigration, national IDs do seems like they would reduce the ability of illegal immigrants to work/collect benefits. Tories left a massive immigration problem, exacerbated by Brexit.
* I have half a dozen different ID numbers for various things like NI, NHS, drivers license, tax etc
* I also have a dozen different GOV.UK logins for various services.
* When need to provide strong proof of identity to AWS to reset a root password, I have to go to a notary and pay £200 for a signature and stamp and then scan the paperwork into an email.
The antis, as always, are clutching at straws. At what point does this stop being acceptable because of libertarian vibes and scaremongering about 'Big Brother' -- especially when most of the rest of the world has had ID cards for decades?
This effectively blocks development of mobile Linux as an alternative in the UK. It is already enough of a challenge to get people to try Linux phones without support for their favorite apps, and now it’s a requirement to own a US big tech pocket spy device? Absolutely absurd and Orwellian, and from the birthplace of Orwell no less.
Since being forced into globalisation and the concept of a border being essentially abolished (of course unless you talk about Ukraine, in which case billions can be spent on enforcing it), everything is flipped on its head. The terrorism act means that you have no right to silence, no right to legal representation and you are compelled to provide your passwords. The government now gets further and further involved with private matters, such as what content you engage with online (online safety act) and have plans to force ID to be linked to social media.
In my area, you cannot walk into a GP and request an appointment, they tell you to go away. You have to install an app, link it to your details, provide evidence of who you are, go on video, wait a few days, and then you are allowed to request an appointment (in a few weeks time). Bare in mind that healthcare is denied to nobody in the UK.
This year the Legal Aid Agency had a large cyber security breach [1]. People's names, financial information, and the fact that they apply for legal aid was breached. One of the few reasons you can get Legal Aid is being a domestic abuse victim.
> This data may have included contact details and addresses of applicants, their dates of birth, national ID numbers, criminal history, employment status and financial data such as contribution amounts, debts and payments. In some instances, information about the partners of legal aid applicants may be included in the compromised data.
This same government wants to collect and centralise the private details of all citizens in the UK. It makes me sick.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-aid-agency-data-bre...
One thing I never understand: if people want to come to your country, that is a vote for the idea that you are doing something right. So, why not use for good? Why not designate a area of the country for the immigrants to initially settle in, using your laws and structures to provide them a better way to live? They are usually very hungry to work. Or, why not band up with other countries to establish refuge cities where the immigrants can initially settle and build new lives?
You never hear of the US etc investing in infrastructure in African countries, for e.g., it is always about a militarization effort to contain supposed terrorists.
Keeping people out betrays that your "success" is built on the back of exfiltrating resources from around the world and concentrating it in your countries, thus keeping the rest of the world poor.
