It all depends on exactly when they're mandatory and what tracking is associated with them.

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.

Could you please give me your real name "celticninja", your phone number, your address, your NI number -- oh, and you'll need to install this app on your phone which I promise will never be used to monitor your location, purchases, friends. Then I'll explain.

>I mean if you have a passport then you already have an 'ID card',

So why do we need this digital ID then?

I am sure by now it has been explained by others. But basically - an ID document is like a bearer token that does not need to call a central authority every time it is verified. I am sure there are cases where it is, but a digital token that is linked to location every time it is verified is a quite different thing. Currently in the UK the law states that ultimately only a court can force you to identify yourself - by which time hopefully the purpose for which identification is being done is quite a serious and valid one. Making it cheaper to track people is not exactly a goal worth pursuing in my (not so humble) opinion.

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*?

Should be used for basic things like driving a car or signing up for a government service. Should be used to determine if you can make money to survive on or walk down the street without being stopped to very that you as a brown person are legit. "What are you doing in this part of town? Your sort isn't usually around this area"

> to prove my age

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.

What I find distasteful about them is the lies and prevarications that surround them.