I can see some justification (sorta) for not making it mandatory, but saying it won't improve citizens lives is complete rubbish. Having one login for all government services would massively improve the efficiency, especially if other departments can share data (with consent ala oauth) with each other. Even in the NHS itself this would be a huge boon, if you get referred to two different NHS trusts they basically cannot see any other data. If all medical records could be linked to an ID (that is more sophisticated access control wise than the NHS number) it would actually be a huge boon for privacy/audit/logging.
Government website login isn't really a 'digital ID' is it? I've never thought of it like that anyway - could be used as one, maybe, but it isn't currently. E.g. you say this would help the NHS - well gov.uk login isn't any different from NHS app login is it? So the NHS already has 'digital ID' too.
(Don't expect this to solve multi-computer-system NHS though, ha! That's been tried and failed how many times, for how many billions? At least we have the app now, such as it is, I suppose.)
Yeah, gov.uk is a thing. But the Zeitgeist-y think seems to be blocking adult content and avoiding saying naughty things on social media, and no Keir, I'd rather not link my gov.uk login for permission to use those parts of the internet, thank you very much
Brazil has a similar system (gov.br), which provides access to almost everything you might need from the government, including notary services, public healthcare records, driver's licenses, consulate services abroad, income tax, social security, unemployment benefits, welfare benefits, and more.
I also understand the privacy argument that arises from consolidating all these systems, and I'm generally pro-privacy, including in some extreme cases. However, this service makes life so much easier across many dimensions of daily life, and I think it's worth it. I can only hope that the GOV.UK login achieves a fraction of this.
One Login is an "authentication" system, an oAuth provider with identity added on. This means you can prove your identity once (to various levels of confidence, as defined in GPG45 [1]), and use that same verification across different government services.
When people talk about a national ID system, they're often talking about some form of "authorization", i.e. proving that you are entitled to certain things.
There currently isn't a system in the UK that can definitively prove that you have access to every service. For example, even being a British citizen and having a British passport doesn't automatically entitle you to access the NHS.
No I get that but you could eg link your passport to the One Login and it'd make the UX much better for many services. For example, if you linked passport, driving license and NI/tax account, then I think for 99% of services you wouldn't need to fill anything in.
FWIW I was impressed with the DVLA driving license process, where you can type your passport number in and it pulls your photo from the passport. Very smooth. Could be even smoother if it could link automatically your passport.
> Having one login for all government services would massively improve the efficiency
I'm quite surprised that's not a thing over there
In Poland you can log in into governmental services platform by: scanning QR code with a digital id app (requires authorizing it beforehand but once it's done it works like a charm), a separated national id card app - only for newer documents with rfid chip, 3rd-party login via bank (as long you pick bank that offers it - some smaller ones don't), a qualified digital certificate within yet another app. There should be another option for EU citizens who in theory would use their national SSO platform as a provider but seems it doesn't work right now.
That digital id app will likely integrate everything else since it already provides a way to secure your national id number (a SSN equivalent) and driving license, health services (doubling the functionality) and train tickets components.
A separated health service app is also available where you can manage prescriptions for medicines, referrals for tests and vaccinations.
How would this solve the disparate NHS systems issue? The NHS id exists and is used by all of them. It's the various systems with no central data repository that is the problem. Throw in the fact that Scotland and NI have completely separate NHS's again and I don't see how another id ever solves it. The solution is bringing the NHS in all regions into the 21st century - which costs money they don't have.
The already tried one login for all government services (Government Gateway Id), but they released it when all the services had their own tech teams and it was a general disaster.
Each service would issue you a different one.
It's not so bad now, but it's extremely irritating to have a number as the user id as when you run a business or two, you end up with more, and then you have no idea which is which.
OTOH - partly playing devil's advocate here - I'm dealing with several bank and inheritance-related issues in the UK from my home in Sweden now, and needing to do pretty much ANYTHING with an authority in the UK feels like stepping back into the 17th century.
There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)
These then need to be 'notarized' by a legal person - with seals and embossed stamps before they can be used to identify me. It's medieval.
Swede here. I would not want to go back to days without BankID and related tools. That being said, the implementation has some less than desirable features. It's privately owned by some kind of joint venture by the banks. It only supports the major OS:s. So you're pretty much forced to own a Android or IPhone to function. Also, I haven't had the need to do this myself but taking care of somebody else's legal dealings (like an old parent or children) I understand is quite cumbersome. I think that kids are kind of forced to get BankID when they are quite young.
There are alternative implementations but I'm not aware of anyone that uses them.
It's more like we've slipped into this solution out of pure convenience than having made a deliberate choice.
Agree. Proof of ID in the UK often means copies of utility bills. You can fill out your own with an online template pretty easily. Inside the UK you don't even need to bother with the notarization requirement. It is indeed backwards.
You can say "well you have a driving license" except if you're a teenager or an elderly person who surrendered theirs, you don't. You can also say "use a passport" but they're not convenient to carry and some people have never left the country so never owned one.
An ID card isn't a bad idea per se. It's the same as a driving license except everyone can have it.
What is bad in this round is the government making everyone have it on their phone "because digital is cheaper" (guarantee it will cost billions either way). Similar problems - what about people who don't have phones, how do you mandate I install this on my dumb phone?
The previous iteration might've worked had they not gone overboard on sequencing everyone's genome and giving every government agency and their dog access (only slight exaggeration) to the data.
> There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)
These are always digital in the UK too. When I did my mortgage application I had to go to my bank, ask them to print me out a statement and then stamp it to 'verify' that it was real.
I'm in the process of renewing my mortgage. Both my and my wife's banks allow you to export the most recent statement as a PDF, which we passed to the broker and have had no complaint. Same thing with the initial mortgage five years ago.
The clearest example of the deficiencies of identity documents in the UK is the "Right to Work" process.
If you're an employer, you are legally required to check that anyone you hire has the right to work in the UK. The penalty for hiring an illegal immigrant - even accidentally - is a £60,000 fine. The guidance on how to perform a Right to Work check is 60 pages. A whole industry of third-party identity verification providers has sprung up, because the system is so complex that most employers don't feel able to do it themselves.
Ironically, performing a right to work check on a legal migrant with a work permit is trivially easy, because we've digitalised the visa system. They give you their Home Office share code, you type it in to a website, and the website shows you a photo of that person and clearly states whether or not that person has the right to work. We already have a really good digital ID service, but British nationals can't use it.
I visited Sweden this summer. One or two things accepted only Swish payment. Seems to be impossible for a visitor to use, you need to set it up with your bank.
I managed by asking a friend to use theirs. But don't assume that tech that "makes life easier" automatically means that it's inclusive. (See also parallel discussion today about EU Age Verification app [0]).
Part of the reason this is difficult maybe that there's an ongoing problem in the UK of foreign gangs using faked documents to steal inheritances[1][2].
I'm skeptical though whether a compulsory ID card for British nationals would help with that.
On the other-other hand, here in Spain we have universal digital IDs, and we still need notarised paper copies of every document for every official process. Sometimes these processes are lining enough pockets they will never die...
I too not long ago went through the inheritance gunk with the UK.
> These then need to be 'notarized' by a legal person - with seals and embossed stamps before they can be used to identify me. It's medieval.
My experience of this was they (the insurance/solicitors) were just being obstructionist for fun, because when confronted with the requested notarized documents they kept moving the goalposts around, and only a threat to withdraw business from them on other fronts made them snap out of it.
Nor have I ever had to prove my identity to a utility company to initiate service, so I'm not sure why a bill or statement with a name on it is proof of anything.
And when my father died, the water and electric service stayed on in his name for another decade at the house. Nobody really seems to care as long as the bills get paid.
The Swiss are voting again for the e-ID this weekend. It is likely to pass this time although there are still some issues.
The implementation of the self custody wallet is open source: https://github.com/swiyu-admin-ch . What is missing is the verification system used to issue the ID which is not open at this time and the law is vague on who gets to ask for the ID. These two things still need to be settled.
Crucial point on this though: it isn't going to be mandatory. Swiss ID cards are not mandatory either although in practice not having one can be inconvenient.
Next year Swiss ID cards will come in two variants: biometric if you want to travel around the EU and existing plastic card if you just want to have it for Switzerland.
So you can even go so far as to opt out of biometrics providing you don't intend to travel internationally.
It works. No need to call it great. Just the other month 35.000 danes lost access to their digital id because their phones are running too old android. There are edge cases where people get locked out of the system without access to public services, and why it is resolvable it can result in missed benefits and inturn missed rent payments.
I myself have experienced being between housing, and wasn't able to access my digital ID without an address, which I could only get if I could access my e-banking and pay deposit for my new place, but I needed digital ID to access the bank. It got resolved. But its a completely avoidable chaos that mainly is an issue for those with the least resources.
Generally, yeah, to use the online government and financial services in Sweden need BankID, which is almost always on your mobile phone. You can also use a PC, although that is fading away.
ID cards are also a thing, and in principle every grownup should always be carrying ID although its not like everybody really does when walking around the park etc.
There are paper and in-person alternatives to the online services, but the ease and prevalence of the online services makes those actually relatively efficient. The times I've had to do something in person has all been slick.
I think underneath the key concept is that everyone has a unique ID number and means to prove it's them. 99% of the time that ends up being Mobile BankID.
> Generally, yeah, to use the online government and financial services in Sweden need BankID, which is almost always on your mobile phone.
Can someone explain to me why phones seem to be considered more secure than online communication channels or desktops? The way I see it, it's a computing device you install all sorts of crap on, sourced from all sorts of questionably trustworthy sources (especially as all sort of retail companies have started moving from loyalty cards to apps).
The Estonian solution from the early 2000s - a dedicated identification device, seems far more secure and reasonable than the modern Swedish one. If any bank in my area started offering YubiKey in leu of app authentication, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat.
Because it can be more secure and everyone has one. And it can be made quite hard to tamper with, unlike your average desktop. Consider that apps are sandboxed by default, and hardware secure element key storage should be available. Of course a Yubikey would be better.
> ID cards are also a thing, and in principle every grownup should always be carrying ID although its not like everybody really does when walking around the park etc.
Tangential: I may be misinterpreting what you mean by ”should”, but no one is required by law or regulation to carry identification on them in any Nordic country (except for in certain circumstances, like while operating a vehicle that requires a license).
If the police have a valid reason to ascertain your identity as part of performing their duties, and you refuse to tell them your name, date of birth and address, or they have reason not to believe you, they can detain you until your identity has been confirmed. An id card can save you that hassle.
So if you’re just saying that it’s a good idea to always bring your id with you, then sure.
For me the objections in the UK is not really about the principle (although there are always going to be some privacy/liberty/etc. concerns in that sense), but about the likely implementation.
If we could be assured that whatever was put in place was genuinely privacy/security focused, had open and transparent governance, and wasn't susceptible to capture by corporations/other powerful actors, I suspect many people wouldn't be too bothered. But that's not really the offer, it never is with public IT infrastructure in the UK. The likelihood is that it would be farmed out to one more private corporations to build and maintain, generally for a lowest bid, and overseen by people without sufficient expertise to avert many/any of the potential harms from a poor implementation.
There are good ways to do things like this: public ownership, open governance, security/privacy baked in, all based on a reflective national conversation about trade-offs and the valid fears that many have. What people don't trust is not really the concept of ID cards, it is instead the track record of this and previous governments with both IT and privacy impacting legislation, and even more so the potential inclinations of future governments, particularly at a time when far-right parties are floating ideas like mass deportation of people legally entitled to be here.
Digital ID and a free society are not inherently opposed, but there is no sign that this or other administrations are sufficiently interested in, or aware of, the complexities involved to produce anything other than a semi-permanent disaster.
An anomaly for sure, and I think as much as anything else one caused by the fact that Covid meant that government couldn't do business as usual. It wasn't procured and developed in the usual way, it didn't have the usual political pressures and fights from all sides. Yes, it's an example of what could be done if government was insulated from the usual environment!
Why is the UK politics scene so focused on digital ID? Blair first proposed it and I feel like I've heard about it continually since with no progress. Different justifications every time too
Because 20 years later, everyone has given their data away on TikTok anyway and we're still dealing with the same issues with different digital government ID numbers that aren't joined together at all.
I have (that I remember, probably more):
National Insurance Number
NHS Number
Unique Taxpayer Reference number
A student loan Customer Reference Number account number
Best part about gov id, there is no link between accounts. I have my personal gov ID account, I have my director of a business gov ID account and I also have a gov ID account for the business.
Why are these all separate, why am I 2 people according to gov ID. Why can't I access my director of a business gov ID from my personal gov ID???
The kicker is these are all linked, it knows they all belong to the one person, but if you log into the wrong one it tells you to use the other one.
That isn't too different from America, where you have a social security number, driver's license number, passport number (possibly two if you also have a passport card), and any other random identification the government demands.
In the us several of those are administered by different governments (state v federal) and at least one is literally forbidden from being used as an id number because the numbers are reused (but everyone does anyway).
Most people in the US only have the first two only ~46-51% of people in the US have passports and way fewer actually have a passport card on top of that. That's the majority of ID numbers most people have to keep track of.
Governments are always looking for better ways to track (and control) their subjects. The idea of a national ID[1] has been floated by various US politicians since before it would have been digital. Many Americans oppose it because they fear a government using it to round up dissenting citizens, and others oppose it because they fear it would be used to more effectively identify illegals (some oppose it on both grounds), so between them it's never gotten started.
The UK government does seem especially keen on the idea of a digital/video dystopia, though. Weird, like they're trying to prove Orwell right.
[1] Social Security numbers aren't unique and you aren't required to carry your SS card, so it doesn't work for that purpose.
The UK has a bunch of deeply divided issues: 40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners). The same is true for taxes and immigration and crime/justice and welfare etc.
So governments are desperate NOT to do anything on most issues. And they are desperate to do SOMETHING (as a distraction) on issues seen as more neutral and less likely to offend vast numbers of people.
>40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners).
I think it is more that the electorate and their agents don't know how (or disagree on how) to keep housing affordable or more precisely don't know how to avoid passing laws and regulations that have the unintended effect of raising the cost of housing.
Rising house prices are routinely presented as a good news story by the Tory tabloids. To a generation of homeowners, their house is a store of vast amounts of unearned wealth and they bitterly oppose anything that might erode that wealth.
Because the UK does not have a national ID system like nearly every other country in Europe, the reason it goes nowhere is that it costs money and no one wants to spend the money on it.
I don't think so. I think it raises peoples' hackles because it is "not something we do here" - English-speaking countries seem to not go with mandatory ID in the same way as continental Europe. Maybe a Napoleonic/Common-Law thing?
This seems to be a pub bore talking point... the usual seemingly-clever street-level arguments that don't stand up to serious scrutiny.
If people think that if they get ID card, the government is coming to take their precious bodily fluids, then the country has bigger cultural, political problems than a mere public safety measure.
Some of the UK's biggest industries are money laundering and offshore tax evasion schemes for the very rich. They're literally worth hundreds of billions a year.
It's not a pub bore talking point, it's an oligarch and non-dom talking point. A lot of rich people would be inconvenienced if beneficial owner information records had reliable links to real people.
The pub bores are collateral damage - people who post unironically about privacy on social media.
The new justification (to deter illegal immigration) is expecially obviously bogus because, as the law stands, people must already prove their "right to work" to get a job and their "right to rent" to rent accommodation. Illegal immigrants manage, they would manage, too, with digital IDs because some employers and landlords are fine exploiting them. Or the plan is in fact to be asked "papers, please" where ever you go and whatever you do.
This is really easy to fake though and employers kind of have to take your word for it that the documentation you provide is real. I'm assuming a digital ID scheme will just bring all the data together and make it instantly verifiable for employers. I would normally be suspicious about this sort of thing but I do think a lack of a single entity bringing all the data together is limiting us technologically in the UK. What Estonia have done is awesome, it'd be cool for us to work toward something like that!
I have had many jobs and scenarios where I need to provide proof of residency and I have never once had a share code like you mention @mytailorisrich like this. The reality is that it doesn't happen like this. Usually about 6 months into your job someone forgets you haven't done the necessary checks and reaches out for you to send a couple of sketchy photos of your IDs so they can upload it to their HR system and forget about it.
The people who have to do the check (businesses and landlords) don't have access to the system to check those numbers, or any training on what a real identify card or passport looks like.
A relative had this problem when renting out a spare room. How was she supposed to verify the Colombian passport shown to her?
As @vinay427 mentioned this is most digital now so you get a "share code" from the Home Office, which you provide to your prospective employer. In turn they go to the Home Office's website, input the code, and should get your picture, details, and entitlement to work.
If you're a foreigner on a visa(or an EU settled status resident), yes. If you are a British person(or pretending to be one) then you just need to show your employer your British passport(or one of several other acceptable documents), and obviously faking a picture of a passport is pretty trivial. And since employers generally don't have access to the system that can verify passports they take your word on the document being valid.
As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...
I think it is much, much, much more common to have dodgy employers/landlords who do not carry out the checks at all because they are fine exploiting illegal immigrants, and no type of ID card would solve that...
Most people are paid cash in hand if they're working illegally realistically. I'm not sure that would change. But in enforcement it might since you could theoretically make it a legal requirement to produce the ID, that's the norm in many other countries.
Honestly the biggest problem is that government requires companies to verify identity of their employees but doesn't give them any means to do so. There was a recent case where a fish and chip shop owner was fined £40k for employing someone without a legal right to work in the UK, and the owner said the guy literally showed him his British passport, turns out it was a fake - but how was he(the business owner) supposed to know, if the government doesn't allow him to check this?
Articles in this case all say that the illegal worker only provided a photocopy of his alleged British passport.
I.e. the employer did not properly and seriously carry out the checks as he didn't ask for the original, hence the heavy fine.
"The business did not see the original copy of the man’s passport, which its owner, Mark Sullivan, said was a “clerical error”" [1]
As I commented previously it is hard to counterfeit a modern British passport in a way that looks genuine and obviously any checks require sight of the original passport...
I literally just got a job with a big British corporation and all they wanted was a photocopy of my passport, no one checked the original. So this practice seems at least relatively common.
>>As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...
A lot of employers just want a photo/scan of a passport. I'm not saying making a whole fake passport is easy, it's obviously not - but modifying a picture of a passport is not exactly rocket science.
You just cherry picked two examples which are not issues in other countries with ID cards.
ID cards can prove who is an illegal immigrant or not, and with the current atmosphere. I want to know and be confident that we can check people's status efficiently and correctly who's here.
Sure there might be some small process mishaps but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it.
UK politics is very simple: People have a lot of economic grievances and they are frustrated. People are made to believe that the source of their problems are immigrants/non-white people. So for a lot of people in the UK, anything against immigrants, even more drastic measures, are worth it and it makes the government appear to do something about their problems. Nothing ever really gets better of course, but they have no way to think about it any other way.
Fair to add that, despite every winning party promising reduced immigration on some level, and everyone that wanted to remain in the EU rightfully annoyed that Brexiters were simply voting because of migration, nobody in power has ever given the people what they want in this regard.
And no one will, because the UK wants cheap foreign labour. To no one's surprise, immigration rocketed after Brexit.
This allows the ruling party - the one whose names and faces keep changing, but whose policies don't - to keep using immigration for political leverage while also benefiting from it.
It doesn't really matter, people's grievances won't go away because those have nothing to do with immigrants anyway. They will just move on to the next scapegoat.
I don't think you mean "for the safety of the Nation". I think you mean "for my piece of mind my business is unlikely to get caught in a sting operation".
Anyone who is a legal immigrant can easily prove it and must prove it to live and work in the country. So what does that make anyone who cannot prove it?
The point is that digital IDs make no difference to illegal immigration, as can also be seen in countries that do have ID cards...
In particular, this is already done using a digital ID for foreign residents (at least on most visas) in the UK, which was phased in over the past few years.
At this point, the benefits of an official governmental digital ID system exceed the drawbacks; the argument against digital identity documents died a long time ago with the total loss of privacy due to the amalgamation of all existing systems combined with the ubiquitous tracking of physical and online presences; that horse has bolted, and trying (and failing) to shut the stable door now won't help.
The current battle for digital personal rights is the right to private communication and data storage, and thanks to encryption and open source software, that one's not lost yet.
Reality is that digital ID (and far more) is owned by American corporations already. A digital ID (but not a physical card) may be the least worst option.
I learnt recently the head of Palantir's UK department is Oswald Mosley's grandson, that of course doesnt mean anything out right, but it's just interesting the way these things happen.
I'm really looking forward to a future where participating in society is completely dependant on agreeing to a legal document with either Google or Apple, and staying in their good books forever.
So there are a number of digital IDs, but the problem is they are not really joined up or all that useful.
In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments.
In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a passport and oauth2, and it'll fail hard and be horribly insecure.
The better option is to tie everything to your government gateway ID (the thing that lets you renew passports, talk to the HMRC online, and a bunch of other services)
> In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments.
It depends. Here's a nice example for you - A while ago the BBC ran a series on council house investigators and their cases. It was very clear for it, that councils don't routinely check whether a prospective council tenant (who'd eventually become a buyer) doesn't already own a property. No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.
Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps, I'm sure it won't be that big of an issue. But as of right now, this is enough to stop routine fraud prevention, which is likely an immediate threat to far more people.
> No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.
I'd have to look it up, but some level of background checks are explicitly banned by the RIP act. It was put in place to allow local councils to "snoop" but only in defined situation. (for example if you have noise complaint, the council can't make a recording, but they can accept a recording you make.) but on the other hand they sometimes can inspect your bins to make sure you are not mixing waste streams.
> Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps,
The UK constitution is pretty vulnerable to this. However, even a strong written constitution isn't going to stop that if it becomes socially acceptable.
If this is an argument
> In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a passport and oauth2, and it'll fail hard and be horribly insecure.
then we'll never do anything in the UK and we should all just give up on changing anything.
Also, btw the passport renewal is done without government gateway ID.
> btw the passport renewal is done without government gateway ID.
Fuck its driving license isnt it?
Side note, driving license is an ID that carries a £10k fine if you don't update your address in time.
Thats the frustrating thing, GDS could have done "digital ID", and were kind of doing that already. When I came to renew my passport, I could use the photo I had on file from my driver license(or it was the other way around). Absolutely wild.
Can anyone explain why this is a bad thing? All I hear about this is conspiracy theories or anti-government rhetoric but never a clear reason to why this is bad. I can't see a reason considering all of the benefits it can bring, and similar things have been rolled out across Nordic countries.
I think its that some anonymity gives safety from the government.
IE during WW2 Holland kept such meticulous records on its citizens that it indirectly leads to the greatest numbers of imprisoned ethnic groups ( because the information was there , easily accessible by the invading forces.
I think thats a good example of how too much info results in vulnerability for citizens.
I dont have an opinion on this just sharing what I think is a good example.
Drivers licenses are effectively already being used as state ID cards in all but name, so it's not as if the government doesn't already have that information.
Only big tech should be allowed to have databases of people and all their preferences (or the other companies / governments they sell their databases to).
Well, for one thing, the project would be gifted to one of the usual gravy-train companies, Fujitsu/TCS/Cognizant/Accenture. They will spend untold tens of billions on a half-baked bag of crap, beg for yet more money to fix it (blaming gov in the process). Eventually it'll be rolled out several years late and many billions over budget. And of course, there'll be board positions for those in gov that play along.
You don't want Palantir to be able to buy list of Uber riders traveled to/from locations near MI6. A universal government backed ID cards on signup, or worse yet used as substitute for credit cards, makes that kind of things easy.
You can have such ID card system that can produce proof of authenticity of card itself, without any digitized card-face information included. I think that's how most existing systems are implemented.
> You don't want Palantir to be able to buy list of Uber riders traveled to/from locations near MI6. A universal government backed ID cards on signup, or worse yet used as substitute for credit cards, makes that kind of things easy.
If you can purchase Uber rider's data then you already have this - you need proof to work/ID to get a job in the UK. I don't see how 'digital id' would increase the risk here.
I don’t think it’s bad on its own, but from my experience, the rollout can be messy and lock people out. Aadhaar in India had long registration queues, biometric issues, and banks making it mandatory. Even in the UK, the digital residency permit switch caused issues at border control.
There are several reasons. I believe, many would acknowledge that it absolutely has good sides. But there are worrysome sides. As I life at the moment in Switzerland I know a little bit about the discussion there:
The implementation of an E-ID could just not good. In Switzerland people voted against E-ID already once and I believe now everyone agrees nowadays that it would have been an bad bad implementation back then (too much reliance on external companies). The same was true e.g. for Covid Certificates. The different implementations around Europe had different qualities and e.g. Switzerland ended up with one of the better (or maybe best) ones, where the identity of people were protected.
Let's just take the example of voting. It is already hard to explain to people that voting works as intended. Look e.g. at the US were I've the impression people do not trust regular voting anymore, despite having people from other countries checking if voting works correctly in the US. But overall it is a system almost everyone is able to understand. But the moment you bring cryptography into the game it's over. 99% will never ever understand why they should trust this. And honestly I feel with them. There are a lot of software people here and we all know how awful our whole industry cares about security overall and how critical software components depend sometimes on a few people. At least the whole implementation should be open source, everything else should not be tolerable.
What I have the impression most people fear, is not the E-ID itself, it is how it will be misused. Suddenly websites will now request verification for dubious reasons. While it is not the case with a regular ID, it will be trivial to do so in the future. The same with mass surveillance, it was not practical before internet, now it is, so governments do it. I think here comes one of the main arguments against it people would bring up, there is no simple instrument for people how they can fight back in case they dont like to identify with their E-ID.
To some degree there is mistrust in government (in Switzerland less then in Europe I believe) for very valid reasons. But still e.g. in Switzerland they had records of many people years ago. After the whole topic came to the surface it was a debacle and new laws were created to explicitly forbid this. E.g. in Switzerland it is not allowed by law to just store some information because are from the left-wing or right-wing (just regular left-wing/right-wing, not extremist), just as one example of something simple. Despite of this government still started to do again. Several newspaper requested this information, which now has to given out, and found it, despite being against the law, the government is doing it again. This kind of thing you can find for other European countries as well, and for the US I assume I don't even have to start.
Then what about people without Internet? At the 38C3 in germany last year was a presentation about this topic (Don't remember the full name, just that is is somehwere on https://media.ccc.de/c/38c3): that we always think it is just the old people, but this is not true.
Sure you could argue, that people give away they privacy willingly anyway, but I'm not sure if this a good reason to argue against all the suspicious some people have.
At least in Switzerland I believe, if they just slightly would change the law it would benefit everyone. E.g. that in case an internet page expects an E-ID, that first it needs to through (a probably costly) evaluation what data is really, really needed, with many privacy experts at the table, to always reduce it to the absolut minimum (the E-ID has this feature to be even better than an ID regarding this). Additionally that there must be e.g. always a possibility to somehow call and have a possibility to do it without E-ID.
You can implement any of this without digital ID. Are there any real privacy concerns in Estonia after their digital citizenship? These arguments could be made against passports/driving licenses. It just doesn't seem like real legitimate concerns. Governments already have multiple databases on who you are. If digital ID unlocks more possibilities I am all for it - there is unbelievable amounts of missed opportunities in Government. One example - using a pen tablet to sign your name with the job centre to 'prove' who you are: utterly ridiculous!
I don’t want this, but I don’t really see a future where it isn’t a thing. One group of people are right to point out the scope for abuse and control of a population, and another are correct that we already have multiple forms of digital ID in the shape of driving licenses, national insurance numbers, and passports. At this point, I view it as a thing we have to navigate as a society and get to the other side of. If I have any energy at all to fight anything related to this, I’m saving it for after the implementation because, as I said at the start of this post, I view it as inevitable. Luckily for us, though, through total coincidence, we’re now going to have massive AI data centres to help us with this brave new digital identity.
I don’t find what either side is saying here very convincing.
Anti-ID “it will change our relationship with the state, cause irreversible damage to our civil liberties and fail to deter illegal immigration”. They say it will lead to “frequent identity checks as we navigate our daily lives”. That last part isn’t true, for sure. I’ve lived in a country with a digital ID and you had to verify your identity a few times a year at most - submitting taxes, opening bank accounts etc. They’re exaggerating here.
The pro-ID group is even less convincing, if that can be imagined. Tony Blair, former PM has been batting for this for ages - Digital ID is the Disruption the UK Desperately Needs (https://institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/to...). And it all sounds like snake oil to someone who is even a little tech inclined. He’s promising all kinds of things, like the UK will see dramatically higher growth. I’ve seen India before and after Aadhaar. It helped, but it didn’t fundamentally remake the economy. UPI did do that, but it’s not dependent on Aadhaar.
And the government wants to show they’re cracking down on illegal immigration so this is an easy win. But it will take more than 5 years to roll out and by then the PM would be out of a job. Even if it could be rolled out to 70 million people in 2 years (that’s 100k people per day), it wouldn’t have all these incredible benefits. As for illegal immigration, it would catch a few but not all.
The technical issue is that while you can issue everyone an ID, it would take much, much longer to make that ID the primary key in every database. The NHS ID has existed forever, and it is still not possible to query all the healthcare information associated with an ID. (This is why the NHS can’t estimate how much a patient costs). Adding a second ID doesn’t make that nearly unsolvable problem solvable.
Almost no one is being realistic or well informed. I just don’t know how you can have a political discussion when everyone is exaggerating like this.
If the UK rolled out a system like Aadhaar, it wouldn’t be earth shattering. It would take many years, it would have several hiccups along the way, take way longer than expected, but it would get over the line eventually. And it would make a few admin tasks smoother, certainly. It would reduce some kinds of fraud slightly. And that’s about it. No one’s civil liberties would be destroyed.
To end on a lighter note, the political comedy Yes Minister covered the idea of introducing a universal ID in the 1980s. Political suicide, the minister was advised. https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE. Thank god the UK is no longer in the EU, so Brussels can no longer force a compulsory ID on British people. Downing Street can take all the credit for this one.
Perhaps the recent Banquet of Oligarchs in the UK, the recent age verification (tracking) law, and the recent deals with Palantir, etc, suggest what this is really about.
Labour (and the Tories before them) seem to be pushing very hard to stop any anonymous internet usage in the UK with the justification that the government knows best and have a duty to track everything we do[1].
I really wish that they would instead at least consider strongly improving our rights because it's highly likely they will loose next general election and the incoming government will not be "good actors".
Sadly, instead we get Baroness[2] Thangam Debbonaire rolling her eyes on Newsnight at any critism of what they're doing.
Labour need to stop making these petty unforced errors that don't deliver but instead just piss people off.
In the UK we already have population-wide tracking of internet usage, no warrant required.
Once we have a citizen id number, it's probable the UK government will mandate that it is bound to our internet access.
The UK government has form for arresting people (about 30 per day at the moment) for online speech under vague laws criminalising messages that cause ‘annoyance’, ‘inconvenience’ or ‘anxiety’ [1]
This is widely criticised as politically-motivated (Google "two tier Kier" and you'll see what I mean). This phenomenon will only get worse once we have citizen id numbers and the cost of investigation trends toward zero.
Also the technical barriers to shutting down an individual's access to online and IRL services will be reduced.
As we saw during Covid, the UK government seized advantage of the situation to remove civil liberties, and it's likely to do so again, given the lack of apology for bad policy-making at the time.
It's BS. Having a single ID instead of having to show a gas bill to prove your address is the right approach. Most European countries have a single ID card, and that's perfectly fine. In fact anyone who drives in the UK already have an ID card -- driving license. Now it's just a question of one card everyone would have and you could use to ID yourself when using banks or government services.
This always felt weird to me in the UK. As a foreigner, I have to carry my passport anyway, but how do citizens who don't have driving licences identify themselves in day-to-day life? Say they get carded at a pub?
You don't have to carry any form of ID in the UK and there are no ID cards, anyway. That said, obviously most people have their driving licence on them.
As a foreigner you do not have to carry your passport.
No-one is going to ask for ID unless you are doing something specific at a bank or government office, for instance. Or, indeed if you are trying to buy alcohol or cigarettes anywhere and look very young... But young people can get provisional driving licences before they have passed their driving tests.
> That said, obviously most people have their driving licence on them.
Just to point out for the wider audience: you're not legally obliged to have your driving licence on you either when driving. You have 7 days to produce it a police station
I wouldn't say you need to look very young. I've been asked to show my ID when entering venues and buying alcohol[1], and I'm nearly 30. I might look under 25 if you're being generous. As a result, I usually carry my passport.
[1] Well, zero-alcohol beer, which is considered alcohol for this purpose.
Chiming in as a Brit: I m generally opposed to this.
I already have a passport and that is digitalised and universal. Why not just use that?
The UK has a bad habit of launching these programs and not being able to deliver on them.
We have had National Insurance numbers for a long time, these are used to track income tax payments and benefits. But that doesn’t work apparently. So I had to set up a Unique Tax Reference number. Just to do my tax return. This involved several letters back and forth. Actual paper sent in the post over several weeks. The government already have all the tax information they just need me to do 20h of work because they can’t keep their files straight.
They made a mess of that. So I now have an additional Unique Tax Reference number. 2 unique IDs…
And they are still getting my taxes wrong. And writing to me about other peoples taxes/benefits payments because they have similar names and live in the same municipality.
Also, I’ve never had any difficulty proving who I am online when I want to. And I should not need to do so anymore than I already chose to.
> Mandatory digital ID would fundamentally change the relationship between the population and the state by requiring frequent identity checks as we navigate our daily lives.
This seems like a dubious fear. We already have plenty of ad-hoc digital IDs (see physicsguy's comment) and none of these fears have come to pass.
My wife who is from a large mainland European country, has an ID card. Everyone has one and they're mandatory. It makes it trivial to prove your bona fides and is good for air travel within the Schengen area. Her ID even has a chip which can be used to create digital signatures for situations where rock-solid proof of identity is required.
Amazingly, they've always had ID cards and the world hasn't ended. These countries are in some ways freer and more democratic than the UK.
'Civil libertarianism' has become a self-licking ice cream cone, and their advocacy is not only shrill and counterproductive, but also enables common criminals and bad geopolitical actors, engaging in aggressive hybrid war against free countries.
One of the few ways we are going to be able to fight off the Russian and Chinese hybrid war aggression that is assailing the West online is to hold online commenters accountable by binding their online identities to real-world strong IDs.
The libertarians may not like it, but this is the direction the world is going. Strong ID is a common sense, tried-and-true approach to protecting ourselves against criminals and foreign aggressors. And we'll eventually get digital strong ID, unless the boot-leather connoisseurs amongst us win this argument.
Counterpoint...the UK government is already jailing people for voicing opinions they don't like. You are basically saying that this is OK by you. This can be abused very badly by bad actors in the government. It is also one of the things we criticize China for. Becoming like an authoritarian system isn't the solution for opposing authoritarian systems.
If you work really really hard, and come up with a really good media campaign, and there's not a riot or a genocide that your country is supporting that will allow digital ID to be rammed through, you'll be able to put it off for the 4 years until new Prime Minister Nigel Farage (or Zarah Sultana, or whoever) announces it as the government's first priority.
The UK already has (various) digital IDs but this is the 'new' one https://www.gov.uk/using-your-gov-uk-one-login. So what's going to be different? Just making it mandatory?
I can see some justification (sorta) for not making it mandatory, but saying it won't improve citizens lives is complete rubbish. Having one login for all government services would massively improve the efficiency, especially if other departments can share data (with consent ala oauth) with each other. Even in the NHS itself this would be a huge boon, if you get referred to two different NHS trusts they basically cannot see any other data. If all medical records could be linked to an ID (that is more sophisticated access control wise than the NHS number) it would actually be a huge boon for privacy/audit/logging.
Government website login isn't really a 'digital ID' is it? I've never thought of it like that anyway - could be used as one, maybe, but it isn't currently. E.g. you say this would help the NHS - well gov.uk login isn't any different from NHS app login is it? So the NHS already has 'digital ID' too.
(Don't expect this to solve multi-computer-system NHS though, ha! That's been tried and failed how many times, for how many billions? At least we have the app now, such as it is, I suppose.)
Yeah, gov.uk is a thing. But the Zeitgeist-y think seems to be blocking adult content and avoiding saying naughty things on social media, and no Keir, I'd rather not link my gov.uk login for permission to use those parts of the internet, thank you very much
Brazil has a similar system (gov.br), which provides access to almost everything you might need from the government, including notary services, public healthcare records, driver's licenses, consulate services abroad, income tax, social security, unemployment benefits, welfare benefits, and more.
I also understand the privacy argument that arises from consolidating all these systems, and I'm generally pro-privacy, including in some extreme cases. However, this service makes life so much easier across many dimensions of daily life, and I think it's worth it. I can only hope that the GOV.UK login achieves a fraction of this.
One Login is an "authentication" system, an oAuth provider with identity added on. This means you can prove your identity once (to various levels of confidence, as defined in GPG45 [1]), and use that same verification across different government services.
When people talk about a national ID system, they're often talking about some form of "authorization", i.e. proving that you are entitled to certain things.
There currently isn't a system in the UK that can definitively prove that you have access to every service. For example, even being a British citizen and having a British passport doesn't automatically entitle you to access the NHS.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/identity-proofing...
No I get that but you could eg link your passport to the One Login and it'd make the UX much better for many services. For example, if you linked passport, driving license and NI/tax account, then I think for 99% of services you wouldn't need to fill anything in.
FWIW I was impressed with the DVLA driving license process, where you can type your passport number in and it pulls your photo from the passport. Very smooth. Could be even smoother if it could link automatically your passport.
steal wallet, receive identity
> Having one login for all government services would massively improve the efficiency
I'm quite surprised that's not a thing over there
In Poland you can log in into governmental services platform by: scanning QR code with a digital id app (requires authorizing it beforehand but once it's done it works like a charm), a separated national id card app - only for newer documents with rfid chip, 3rd-party login via bank (as long you pick bank that offers it - some smaller ones don't), a qualified digital certificate within yet another app. There should be another option for EU citizens who in theory would use their national SSO platform as a provider but seems it doesn't work right now.
That digital id app will likely integrate everything else since it already provides a way to secure your national id number (a SSN equivalent) and driving license, health services (doubling the functionality) and train tickets components.
A separated health service app is also available where you can manage prescriptions for medicines, referrals for tests and vaccinations.
How would this solve the disparate NHS systems issue? The NHS id exists and is used by all of them. It's the various systems with no central data repository that is the problem. Throw in the fact that Scotland and NI have completely separate NHS's again and I don't see how another id ever solves it. The solution is bringing the NHS in all regions into the 21st century - which costs money they don't have.
The already tried one login for all government services (Government Gateway Id), but they released it when all the services had their own tech teams and it was a general disaster.
Each service would issue you a different one.
It's not so bad now, but it's extremely irritating to have a number as the user id as when you run a business or two, you end up with more, and then you have no idea which is which.
OTOH - partly playing devil's advocate here - I'm dealing with several bank and inheritance-related issues in the UK from my home in Sweden now, and needing to do pretty much ANYTHING with an authority in the UK feels like stepping back into the 17th century.
There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)
These then need to be 'notarized' by a legal person - with seals and embossed stamps before they can be used to identify me. It's medieval.
Swede here. I would not want to go back to days without BankID and related tools. That being said, the implementation has some less than desirable features. It's privately owned by some kind of joint venture by the banks. It only supports the major OS:s. So you're pretty much forced to own a Android or IPhone to function. Also, I haven't had the need to do this myself but taking care of somebody else's legal dealings (like an old parent or children) I understand is quite cumbersome. I think that kids are kind of forced to get BankID when they are quite young.
There are alternative implementations but I'm not aware of anyone that uses them.
It's more like we've slipped into this solution out of pure convenience than having made a deliberate choice.
BankID is the worst of both worlds, where a private company can deny you the access to public services.
You can use the “säkerhetsdosa” to authorise yourself, at least with Swedbank. I use FreeBSD.
But yes. An open, free software solution would be welcome.
Agree. Proof of ID in the UK often means copies of utility bills. You can fill out your own with an online template pretty easily. Inside the UK you don't even need to bother with the notarization requirement. It is indeed backwards.
You can say "well you have a driving license" except if you're a teenager or an elderly person who surrendered theirs, you don't. You can also say "use a passport" but they're not convenient to carry and some people have never left the country so never owned one.
An ID card isn't a bad idea per se. It's the same as a driving license except everyone can have it.
What is bad in this round is the government making everyone have it on their phone "because digital is cheaper" (guarantee it will cost billions either way). Similar problems - what about people who don't have phones, how do you mandate I install this on my dumb phone?
The previous iteration might've worked had they not gone overboard on sequencing everyone's genome and giving every government agency and their dog access (only slight exaggeration) to the data.
> There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)
These are always digital in the UK too. When I did my mortgage application I had to go to my bank, ask them to print me out a statement and then stamp it to 'verify' that it was real.
I'm in the process of renewing my mortgage. Both my and my wife's banks allow you to export the most recent statement as a PDF, which we passed to the broker and have had no complaint. Same thing with the initial mortgage five years ago.
The clearest example of the deficiencies of identity documents in the UK is the "Right to Work" process.
If you're an employer, you are legally required to check that anyone you hire has the right to work in the UK. The penalty for hiring an illegal immigrant - even accidentally - is a £60,000 fine. The guidance on how to perform a Right to Work check is 60 pages. A whole industry of third-party identity verification providers has sprung up, because the system is so complex that most employers don't feel able to do it themselves.
Ironically, performing a right to work check on a legal migrant with a work permit is trivially easy, because we've digitalised the visa system. They give you their Home Office share code, you type it in to a website, and the website shows you a photo of that person and clearly states whether or not that person has the right to work. We already have a really good digital ID service, but British nationals can't use it.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6878ead80263c...
https://www.gov.uk/evisa/view-evisa-get-share-code-prove-imm...
I visited Sweden this summer. One or two things accepted only Swish payment. Seems to be impossible for a visitor to use, you need to set it up with your bank.
I managed by asking a friend to use theirs. But don't assume that tech that "makes life easier" automatically means that it's inclusive. (See also parallel discussion today about EU Age Verification app [0]).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45359074
Part of the reason this is difficult maybe that there's an ongoing problem in the UK of foreign gangs using faked documents to steal inheritances[1][2].
I'm skeptical though whether a compulsory ID card for British nationals would help with that.
1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/shadow-world-the-grav...
2. https://www.theabi.org.uk/news/is-eastern-european-organised...
On the other-other hand, here in Spain we have universal digital IDs, and we still need notarised paper copies of every document for every official process. Sometimes these processes are lining enough pockets they will never die...
I too not long ago went through the inheritance gunk with the UK.
> These then need to be 'notarized' by a legal person - with seals and embossed stamps before they can be used to identify me. It's medieval.
My experience of this was they (the insurance/solicitors) were just being obstructionist for fun, because when confronted with the requested notarized documents they kept moving the goalposts around, and only a threat to withdraw business from them on other fronts made them snap out of it.
I haven't had any organisation insist on a paper copy of a bill/statement for probably 10 years now
Nor have I ever had to prove my identity to a utility company to initiate service, so I'm not sure why a bill or statement with a name on it is proof of anything.
And when my father died, the water and electric service stayed on in his name for another decade at the house. Nobody really seems to care as long as the bills get paid.
The Swiss are voting again for the e-ID this weekend. It is likely to pass this time although there are still some issues.
The implementation of the self custody wallet is open source: https://github.com/swiyu-admin-ch . What is missing is the verification system used to issue the ID which is not open at this time and the law is vague on who gets to ask for the ID. These two things still need to be settled.
Crucial point on this though: it isn't going to be mandatory. Swiss ID cards are not mandatory either although in practice not having one can be inconvenient.
Next year Swiss ID cards will come in two variants: biometric if you want to travel around the EU and existing plastic card if you just want to have it for Switzerland.
So you can even go so far as to opt out of biometrics providing you don't intend to travel internationally.
[dead]
Digital ID works great in the nordic countries and doubtless elsewhere.
It works. No need to call it great. Just the other month 35.000 danes lost access to their digital id because their phones are running too old android. There are edge cases where people get locked out of the system without access to public services, and why it is resolvable it can result in missed benefits and inturn missed rent payments.
I myself have experienced being between housing, and wasn't able to access my digital ID without an address, which I could only get if I could access my e-banking and pay deposit for my new place, but I needed digital ID to access the bank. It got resolved. But its a completely avoidable chaos that mainly is an issue for those with the least resources.
Do you have more background links? Did it cause a national dialogue? Did anyone in government take accountability for that?
I think it's probably this:
https://www.mitid.dk/en-gb/about-mitid/news/soon-you-can-no-...
They removed support for Android 9. Affected devices would not be getting security updates either.
It can also be very difficult to get one if you are non-citizen.
It certainly works and is very convenient but there's certainly room for improvement on the privacy and agency front.
Does it require using a Google or Apple product?
Generally, yeah, to use the online government and financial services in Sweden need BankID, which is almost always on your mobile phone. You can also use a PC, although that is fading away.
ID cards are also a thing, and in principle every grownup should always be carrying ID although its not like everybody really does when walking around the park etc.
There are paper and in-person alternatives to the online services, but the ease and prevalence of the online services makes those actually relatively efficient. The times I've had to do something in person has all been slick.
I think underneath the key concept is that everyone has a unique ID number and means to prove it's them. 99% of the time that ends up being Mobile BankID.
> Generally, yeah, to use the online government and financial services in Sweden need BankID, which is almost always on your mobile phone.
Can someone explain to me why phones seem to be considered more secure than online communication channels or desktops? The way I see it, it's a computing device you install all sorts of crap on, sourced from all sorts of questionably trustworthy sources (especially as all sort of retail companies have started moving from loyalty cards to apps).
The Estonian solution from the early 2000s - a dedicated identification device, seems far more secure and reasonable than the modern Swedish one. If any bank in my area started offering YubiKey in leu of app authentication, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat.
Because it can be more secure and everyone has one. And it can be made quite hard to tamper with, unlike your average desktop. Consider that apps are sandboxed by default, and hardware secure element key storage should be available. Of course a Yubikey would be better.
> ID cards are also a thing, and in principle every grownup should always be carrying ID although its not like everybody really does when walking around the park etc.
Tangential: I may be misinterpreting what you mean by ”should”, but no one is required by law or regulation to carry identification on them in any Nordic country (except for in certain circumstances, like while operating a vehicle that requires a license).
If the police have a valid reason to ascertain your identity as part of performing their duties, and you refuse to tell them your name, date of birth and address, or they have reason not to believe you, they can detain you until your identity has been confirmed. An id card can save you that hassle.
So if you’re just saying that it’s a good idea to always bring your id with you, then sure.
The most common version does (in Denmark), but you can get a code display to login if you want: https://www.mitid.dk/en-gb/get-started-with-mitid/how-to-use...
For me the objections in the UK is not really about the principle (although there are always going to be some privacy/liberty/etc. concerns in that sense), but about the likely implementation.
If we could be assured that whatever was put in place was genuinely privacy/security focused, had open and transparent governance, and wasn't susceptible to capture by corporations/other powerful actors, I suspect many people wouldn't be too bothered. But that's not really the offer, it never is with public IT infrastructure in the UK. The likelihood is that it would be farmed out to one more private corporations to build and maintain, generally for a lowest bid, and overseen by people without sufficient expertise to avert many/any of the potential harms from a poor implementation.
There are good ways to do things like this: public ownership, open governance, security/privacy baked in, all based on a reflective national conversation about trade-offs and the valid fears that many have. What people don't trust is not really the concept of ID cards, it is instead the track record of this and previous governments with both IT and privacy impacting legislation, and even more so the potential inclinations of future governments, particularly at a time when far-right parties are floating ideas like mass deportation of people legally entitled to be here.
Digital ID and a free society are not inherently opposed, but there is no sign that this or other administrations are sufficiently interested in, or aware of, the complexities involved to produce anything other than a semi-permanent disaster.
The COVID NHS APP was open source, secure and excellent?
An anomaly for sure, and I think as much as anything else one caused by the fact that Covid meant that government couldn't do business as usual. It wasn't procured and developed in the usual way, it didn't have the usual political pressures and fights from all sides. Yes, it's an example of what could be done if government was insulated from the usual environment!
Why is the UK politics scene so focused on digital ID? Blair first proposed it and I feel like I've heard about it continually since with no progress. Different justifications every time too
Because 20 years later, everyone has given their data away on TikTok anyway and we're still dealing with the same issues with different digital government ID numbers that aren't joined together at all.
I have (that I remember, probably more):
National Insurance Number
NHS Number
Unique Taxpayer Reference number
A student loan Customer Reference Number account number
A passport number
A government gateway ID number
A driving license number
An account with the land registry
Best part about gov id, there is no link between accounts. I have my personal gov ID account, I have my director of a business gov ID account and I also have a gov ID account for the business.
Why are these all separate, why am I 2 people according to gov ID. Why can't I access my director of a business gov ID from my personal gov ID???
The kicker is these are all linked, it knows they all belong to the one person, but if you log into the wrong one it tells you to use the other one.
That isn't too different from America, where you have a social security number, driver's license number, passport number (possibly two if you also have a passport card), and any other random identification the government demands.
In the us several of those are administered by different governments (state v federal) and at least one is literally forbidden from being used as an id number because the numbers are reused (but everyone does anyway).
Most people in the US only have the first two only ~46-51% of people in the US have passports and way fewer actually have a passport card on top of that. That's the majority of ID numbers most people have to keep track of.
I actually like this and don't want them to be joined up.
The Tony Blair Institute still wields a lot of power in UK politics, and they're still pushing for ID cards.
https://institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/to...
>institute.global
hubris
The real question is why do all UK politicians, no matter their party, hate people so much?
Newspapers. And the lurking pool of resentment of fellow Brits from many, especially older, voters.
Because they have to choose between liking people and making themselves/their friends rich, and they always pick the latter.
The real question is "why do all politicians hate people so much?"; and the answer is power and money.
Governments are always looking for better ways to track (and control) their subjects. The idea of a national ID[1] has been floated by various US politicians since before it would have been digital. Many Americans oppose it because they fear a government using it to round up dissenting citizens, and others oppose it because they fear it would be used to more effectively identify illegals (some oppose it on both grounds), so between them it's never gotten started.
The UK government does seem especially keen on the idea of a digital/video dystopia, though. Weird, like they're trying to prove Orwell right.
[1] Social Security numbers aren't unique and you aren't required to carry your SS card, so it doesn't work for that purpose.
The UK has a bunch of deeply divided issues: 40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners). The same is true for taxes and immigration and crime/justice and welfare etc.
So governments are desperate NOT to do anything on most issues. And they are desperate to do SOMETHING (as a distraction) on issues seen as more neutral and less likely to offend vast numbers of people.
>40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners).
I think it is more that the electorate and their agents don't know how (or disagree on how) to keep housing affordable or more precisely don't know how to avoid passing laws and regulations that have the unintended effect of raising the cost of housing.
Rising house prices are routinely presented as a good news story by the Tory tabloids. To a generation of homeowners, their house is a store of vast amounts of unearned wealth and they bitterly oppose anything that might erode that wealth.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14735531/British-ho...
Because the UK does not have a national ID system like nearly every other country in Europe, the reason it goes nowhere is that it costs money and no one wants to spend the money on it.
I don't think so. I think it raises peoples' hackles because it is "not something we do here" - English-speaking countries seem to not go with mandatory ID in the same way as continental Europe. Maybe a Napoleonic/Common-Law thing?
(Personally, I don't object to the idea).
This seems to be a pub bore talking point... the usual seemingly-clever street-level arguments that don't stand up to serious scrutiny.
If people think that if they get ID card, the government is coming to take their precious bodily fluids, then the country has bigger cultural, political problems than a mere public safety measure.
Pub bores might make that argument but it doesn't mean it's not what motivates most of the objectors, who may indeed be boring about it in the pub.
Some of the UK's biggest industries are money laundering and offshore tax evasion schemes for the very rich. They're literally worth hundreds of billions a year.
It's not a pub bore talking point, it's an oligarch and non-dom talking point. A lot of rich people would be inconvenienced if beneficial owner information records had reliable links to real people.
The pub bores are collateral damage - people who post unironically about privacy on social media.
And entrenched (if fading, perhaps) cultural opposition to it.
The new justification (to deter illegal immigration) is expecially obviously bogus because, as the law stands, people must already prove their "right to work" to get a job and their "right to rent" to rent accommodation. Illegal immigrants manage, they would manage, too, with digital IDs because some employers and landlords are fine exploiting them. Or the plan is in fact to be asked "papers, please" where ever you go and whatever you do.
This is really easy to fake though and employers kind of have to take your word for it that the documentation you provide is real. I'm assuming a digital ID scheme will just bring all the data together and make it instantly verifiable for employers. I would normally be suspicious about this sort of thing but I do think a lack of a single entity bringing all the data together is limiting us technologically in the UK. What Estonia have done is awesome, it'd be cool for us to work toward something like that!
I have had many jobs and scenarios where I need to provide proof of residency and I have never once had a share code like you mention @mytailorisrich like this. The reality is that it doesn't happen like this. Usually about 6 months into your job someone forgets you haven't done the necessary checks and reaches out for you to send a couple of sketchy photos of your IDs so they can upload it to their HR system and forget about it.
Why do they have to take your word for it? if you present a few forms of id (drivers license, etc) can't those be checked against a central DB?
is someone forging physical ID cards and also getting them real numbers somehow?
The people who have to do the check (businesses and landlords) don't have access to the system to check those numbers, or any training on what a real identify card or passport looks like.
A relative had this problem when renting out a spare room. How was she supposed to verify the Colombian passport shown to her?
No, it is not easy to fake.
As @vinay427 mentioned this is most digital now so you get a "share code" from the Home Office, which you provide to your prospective employer. In turn they go to the Home Office's website, input the code, and should get your picture, details, and entitlement to work.
That's on top of having a passport to go with it.
THats only if they ask for it.
I changed job recently, and they just wanted a passport.
If you're a foreigner on a visa(or an EU settled status resident), yes. If you are a British person(or pretending to be one) then you just need to show your employer your British passport(or one of several other acceptable documents), and obviously faking a picture of a passport is pretty trivial. And since employers generally don't have access to the system that can verify passports they take your word on the document being valid.
As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...
I think it is much, much, much more common to have dodgy employers/landlords who do not carry out the checks at all because they are fine exploiting illegal immigrants, and no type of ID card would solve that...
Most people are paid cash in hand if they're working illegally realistically. I'm not sure that would change. But in enforcement it might since you could theoretically make it a legal requirement to produce the ID, that's the norm in many other countries.
Nah this is over come with data.
E.g. if a firm is doing better than its peer group with less employees on the books, something is suspect.
Honestly the biggest problem is that government requires companies to verify identity of their employees but doesn't give them any means to do so. There was a recent case where a fish and chip shop owner was fined £40k for employing someone without a legal right to work in the UK, and the owner said the guy literally showed him his British passport, turns out it was a fake - but how was he(the business owner) supposed to know, if the government doesn't allow him to check this?
Articles in this case all say that the illegal worker only provided a photocopy of his alleged British passport.
I.e. the employer did not properly and seriously carry out the checks as he didn't ask for the original, hence the heavy fine.
"The business did not see the original copy of the man’s passport, which its owner, Mark Sullivan, said was a “clerical error”" [1]
As I commented previously it is hard to counterfeit a modern British passport in a way that looks genuine and obviously any checks require sight of the original passport...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/22/surrey-chipp...
I literally just got a job with a big British corporation and all they wanted was a photocopy of my passport, no one checked the original. So this practice seems at least relatively common.
This just means that incompetence, or worse, is widespread (not a surprise, though).
Then they will feign ignorance when fined 40k+.
>>As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...
A lot of employers just want a photo/scan of a passport. I'm not saying making a whole fake passport is easy, it's obviously not - but modifying a picture of a passport is not exactly rocket science.
Yeah most employers just take photocopies of the ID for record keeping purposes and that's it.
You just cherry picked two examples which are not issues in other countries with ID cards.
ID cards can prove who is an illegal immigrant or not, and with the current atmosphere. I want to know and be confident that we can check people's status efficiently and correctly who's here.
Sure there might be some small process mishaps but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it.
"but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it"
That's a pretty chilling phrase.
UK politics is very simple: People have a lot of economic grievances and they are frustrated. People are made to believe that the source of their problems are immigrants/non-white people. So for a lot of people in the UK, anything against immigrants, even more drastic measures, are worth it and it makes the government appear to do something about their problems. Nothing ever really gets better of course, but they have no way to think about it any other way.
Fair to add that, despite every winning party promising reduced immigration on some level, and everyone that wanted to remain in the EU rightfully annoyed that Brexiters were simply voting because of migration, nobody in power has ever given the people what they want in this regard.
And no one will, because the UK wants cheap foreign labour. To no one's surprise, immigration rocketed after Brexit.
This allows the ruling party - the one whose names and faces keep changing, but whose policies don't - to keep using immigration for political leverage while also benefiting from it.
> nobody in power has ever given the people what they want in this regard
Net migration in the UK dropped by 400,000/yr in the last year and they’ve toughened the criteria further so seems unlikely it won’t drop further.
It doesn't really matter, people's grievances won't go away because those have nothing to do with immigrants anyway. They will just move on to the next scapegoat.
I don't think you mean "for the safety of the Nation". I think you mean "for my piece of mind my business is unlikely to get caught in a sting operation".
Everyone knows that none of the countries with mandatory ID have any illegal immigrants, right?
(sarcasm, obviously)
I did not cherry-pick anything.
Anyone who is a legal immigrant can easily prove it and must prove it to live and work in the country. So what does that make anyone who cannot prove it?
The point is that digital IDs make no difference to illegal immigration, as can also be seen in countries that do have ID cards...
> Sure there might be some small process mishaps but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it.
Just like that database that recognises your face and links it to your pornhub preferences is worth it, for the safety of the children?
In particular, this is already done using a digital ID for foreign residents (at least on most visas) in the UK, which was phased in over the past few years.
Eric Arthur Blair, perchance?
At this point, the benefits of an official governmental digital ID system exceed the drawbacks; the argument against digital identity documents died a long time ago with the total loss of privacy due to the amalgamation of all existing systems combined with the ubiquitous tracking of physical and online presences; that horse has bolted, and trying (and failing) to shut the stable door now won't help.
The current battle for digital personal rights is the right to private communication and data storage, and thanks to encryption and open source software, that one's not lost yet.
Reality is that digital ID (and far more) is owned by American corporations already. A digital ID (but not a physical card) may be the least worst option.
In completely unrelated UK news:
Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/20/uk_palantir_defense_p...
204 points|rntn|4 days ago|134 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45313793
I learnt recently the head of Palantir's UK department is Oswald Mosley's grandson, that of course doesnt mean anything out right, but it's just interesting the way these things happen.
Has anybody bothered to specify what this will actually cover, and what it will be mandatory for? Does it imply an increase in "papers please" sweeps?
I'm really looking forward to a future where participating in society is completely dependant on agreeing to a legal document with either Google or Apple, and staying in their good books forever.
So there are a number of digital IDs, but the problem is they are not really joined up or all that useful.
In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments.
In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a passport and oauth2, and it'll fail hard and be horribly insecure.
The better option is to tie everything to your government gateway ID (the thing that lets you renew passports, talk to the HMRC online, and a bunch of other services)
> In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments.
It depends. Here's a nice example for you - A while ago the BBC ran a series on council house investigators and their cases. It was very clear for it, that councils don't routinely check whether a prospective council tenant (who'd eventually become a buyer) doesn't already own a property. No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.
Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps, I'm sure it won't be that big of an issue. But as of right now, this is enough to stop routine fraud prevention, which is likely an immediate threat to far more people.
> No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.
I'd have to look it up, but some level of background checks are explicitly banned by the RIP act. It was put in place to allow local councils to "snoop" but only in defined situation. (for example if you have noise complaint, the council can't make a recording, but they can accept a recording you make.) but on the other hand they sometimes can inspect your bins to make sure you are not mixing waste streams.
> Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps,
The UK constitution is pretty vulnerable to this. However, even a strong written constitution isn't going to stop that if it becomes socially acceptable.
If this is an argument > In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a passport and oauth2, and it'll fail hard and be horribly insecure.
then we'll never do anything in the UK and we should all just give up on changing anything.
Also, btw the passport renewal is done without government gateway ID.
> btw the passport renewal is done without government gateway ID.
Fuck its driving license isnt it?
Side note, driving license is an ID that carries a £10k fine if you don't update your address in time.
Thats the frustrating thing, GDS could have done "digital ID", and were kind of doing that already. When I came to renew my passport, I could use the photo I had on file from my driver license(or it was the other way around). Absolutely wild.
Can anyone explain why this is a bad thing? All I hear about this is conspiracy theories or anti-government rhetoric but never a clear reason to why this is bad. I can't see a reason considering all of the benefits it can bring, and similar things have been rolled out across Nordic countries.
I think its that some anonymity gives safety from the government.
IE during WW2 Holland kept such meticulous records on its citizens that it indirectly leads to the greatest numbers of imprisoned ethnic groups ( because the information was there , easily accessible by the invading forces.
I think thats a good example of how too much info results in vulnerability for citizens.
I dont have an opinion on this just sharing what I think is a good example.
> anonymity gives safety from the government
Drivers licenses are effectively already being used as state ID cards in all but name, so it's not as if the government doesn't already have that information.
I was about to moan at you, but you have an excellent point.
I have no idea then.
Only big tech should be allowed to have databases of people and all their preferences (or the other companies / governments they sell their databases to).
Well, for one thing, the project would be gifted to one of the usual gravy-train companies, Fujitsu/TCS/Cognizant/Accenture. They will spend untold tens of billions on a half-baked bag of crap, beg for yet more money to fix it (blaming gov in the process). Eventually it'll be rolled out several years late and many billions over budget. And of course, there'll be board positions for those in gov that play along.
You don't want Palantir to be able to buy list of Uber riders traveled to/from locations near MI6. A universal government backed ID cards on signup, or worse yet used as substitute for credit cards, makes that kind of things easy.
You can have such ID card system that can produce proof of authenticity of card itself, without any digitized card-face information included. I think that's how most existing systems are implemented.
> You don't want Palantir to be able to buy list of Uber riders traveled to/from locations near MI6. A universal government backed ID cards on signup, or worse yet used as substitute for credit cards, makes that kind of things easy.
If you can purchase Uber rider's data then you already have this - you need proof to work/ID to get a job in the UK. I don't see how 'digital id' would increase the risk here.
I don’t think it’s bad on its own, but from my experience, the rollout can be messy and lock people out. Aadhaar in India had long registration queues, biometric issues, and banks making it mandatory. Even in the UK, the digital residency permit switch caused issues at border control.
No. The onus isn't on anyone to explain why it's bad
Would you be willing to publish your browsing history with your real name attached? Why not list your real name in your HN bio?
That's not what is required for digital ID.
There are several reasons. I believe, many would acknowledge that it absolutely has good sides. But there are worrysome sides. As I life at the moment in Switzerland I know a little bit about the discussion there:
The implementation of an E-ID could just not good. In Switzerland people voted against E-ID already once and I believe now everyone agrees nowadays that it would have been an bad bad implementation back then (too much reliance on external companies). The same was true e.g. for Covid Certificates. The different implementations around Europe had different qualities and e.g. Switzerland ended up with one of the better (or maybe best) ones, where the identity of people were protected.
Let's just take the example of voting. It is already hard to explain to people that voting works as intended. Look e.g. at the US were I've the impression people do not trust regular voting anymore, despite having people from other countries checking if voting works correctly in the US. But overall it is a system almost everyone is able to understand. But the moment you bring cryptography into the game it's over. 99% will never ever understand why they should trust this. And honestly I feel with them. There are a lot of software people here and we all know how awful our whole industry cares about security overall and how critical software components depend sometimes on a few people. At least the whole implementation should be open source, everything else should not be tolerable.
What I have the impression most people fear, is not the E-ID itself, it is how it will be misused. Suddenly websites will now request verification for dubious reasons. While it is not the case with a regular ID, it will be trivial to do so in the future. The same with mass surveillance, it was not practical before internet, now it is, so governments do it. I think here comes one of the main arguments against it people would bring up, there is no simple instrument for people how they can fight back in case they dont like to identify with their E-ID.
To some degree there is mistrust in government (in Switzerland less then in Europe I believe) for very valid reasons. But still e.g. in Switzerland they had records of many people years ago. After the whole topic came to the surface it was a debacle and new laws were created to explicitly forbid this. E.g. in Switzerland it is not allowed by law to just store some information because are from the left-wing or right-wing (just regular left-wing/right-wing, not extremist), just as one example of something simple. Despite of this government still started to do again. Several newspaper requested this information, which now has to given out, and found it, despite being against the law, the government is doing it again. This kind of thing you can find for other European countries as well, and for the US I assume I don't even have to start.
Then what about people without Internet? At the 38C3 in germany last year was a presentation about this topic (Don't remember the full name, just that is is somehwere on https://media.ccc.de/c/38c3): that we always think it is just the old people, but this is not true.
Sure you could argue, that people give away they privacy willingly anyway, but I'm not sure if this a good reason to argue against all the suspicious some people have.
Here an article from a Online newspaper in Switzerland, tough its German: https://www.republik.ch/2025/08/29/ein-klares-jein-zur-e-id
At least in Switzerland I believe, if they just slightly would change the law it would benefit everyone. E.g. that in case an internet page expects an E-ID, that first it needs to through (a probably costly) evaluation what data is really, really needed, with many privacy experts at the table, to always reduce it to the absolut minimum (the E-ID has this feature to be even better than an ID regarding this). Additionally that there must be e.g. always a possibility to somehow call and have a possibility to do it without E-ID.
You can implement any of this without digital ID. Are there any real privacy concerns in Estonia after their digital citizenship? These arguments could be made against passports/driving licenses. It just doesn't seem like real legitimate concerns. Governments already have multiple databases on who you are. If digital ID unlocks more possibilities I am all for it - there is unbelievable amounts of missed opportunities in Government. One example - using a pen tablet to sign your name with the job centre to 'prove' who you are: utterly ridiculous!
I don’t want this, but I don’t really see a future where it isn’t a thing. One group of people are right to point out the scope for abuse and control of a population, and another are correct that we already have multiple forms of digital ID in the shape of driving licenses, national insurance numbers, and passports. At this point, I view it as a thing we have to navigate as a society and get to the other side of. If I have any energy at all to fight anything related to this, I’m saving it for after the implementation because, as I said at the start of this post, I view it as inevitable. Luckily for us, though, through total coincidence, we’re now going to have massive AI data centres to help us with this brave new digital identity.
I don’t find what either side is saying here very convincing.
Anti-ID “it will change our relationship with the state, cause irreversible damage to our civil liberties and fail to deter illegal immigration”. They say it will lead to “frequent identity checks as we navigate our daily lives”. That last part isn’t true, for sure. I’ve lived in a country with a digital ID and you had to verify your identity a few times a year at most - submitting taxes, opening bank accounts etc. They’re exaggerating here.
The pro-ID group is even less convincing, if that can be imagined. Tony Blair, former PM has been batting for this for ages - Digital ID is the Disruption the UK Desperately Needs (https://institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/to...). And it all sounds like snake oil to someone who is even a little tech inclined. He’s promising all kinds of things, like the UK will see dramatically higher growth. I’ve seen India before and after Aadhaar. It helped, but it didn’t fundamentally remake the economy. UPI did do that, but it’s not dependent on Aadhaar.
And the government wants to show they’re cracking down on illegal immigration so this is an easy win. But it will take more than 5 years to roll out and by then the PM would be out of a job. Even if it could be rolled out to 70 million people in 2 years (that’s 100k people per day), it wouldn’t have all these incredible benefits. As for illegal immigration, it would catch a few but not all.
The technical issue is that while you can issue everyone an ID, it would take much, much longer to make that ID the primary key in every database. The NHS ID has existed forever, and it is still not possible to query all the healthcare information associated with an ID. (This is why the NHS can’t estimate how much a patient costs). Adding a second ID doesn’t make that nearly unsolvable problem solvable.
Almost no one is being realistic or well informed. I just don’t know how you can have a political discussion when everyone is exaggerating like this.
If the UK rolled out a system like Aadhaar, it wouldn’t be earth shattering. It would take many years, it would have several hiccups along the way, take way longer than expected, but it would get over the line eventually. And it would make a few admin tasks smoother, certainly. It would reduce some kinds of fraud slightly. And that’s about it. No one’s civil liberties would be destroyed.
To end on a lighter note, the political comedy Yes Minister covered the idea of introducing a universal ID in the 1980s. Political suicide, the minister was advised. https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE. Thank god the UK is no longer in the EU, so Brussels can no longer force a compulsory ID on British people. Downing Street can take all the credit for this one.
Perhaps the recent Banquet of Oligarchs in the UK, the recent age verification (tracking) law, and the recent deals with Palantir, etc, suggest what this is really about.
Labour (and the Tories before them) seem to be pushing very hard to stop any anonymous internet usage in the UK with the justification that the government knows best and have a duty to track everything we do[1].
I really wish that they would instead at least consider strongly improving our rights because it's highly likely they will loose next general election and the incoming government will not be "good actors".
Sadly, instead we get Baroness[2] Thangam Debbonaire rolling her eyes on Newsnight at any critism of what they're doing.
Labour need to stop making these petty unforced errors that don't deliver but instead just piss people off.
1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68625232
2. She was made a Baroness to keep her in power after she was voted out as an MP at the last election because, again, the government knows best.
They might get away with calling it EuroClub Express.
In the UK we already have population-wide tracking of internet usage, no warrant required.
Once we have a citizen id number, it's probable the UK government will mandate that it is bound to our internet access.
The UK government has form for arresting people (about 30 per day at the moment) for online speech under vague laws criminalising messages that cause ‘annoyance’, ‘inconvenience’ or ‘anxiety’ [1]
This is widely criticised as politically-motivated (Google "two tier Kier" and you'll see what I mean). This phenomenon will only get worse once we have citizen id numbers and the cost of investigation trends toward zero.
Also the technical barriers to shutting down an individual's access to online and IRL services will be reduced.
As we saw during Covid, the UK government seized advantage of the situation to remove civil liberties, and it's likely to do so again, given the lack of apology for bad policy-making at the time.
Digital ID is bad news for the UK.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2025-0022...
Everyone on the establishment-friendly Left ought to bear in mind that a Reform government is nearly guaranteed in 2029 (or earlier)
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...
You might feel less bullish about state tracking and control of the public when Nigel Farage is in charge of the state.
It's BS. Having a single ID instead of having to show a gas bill to prove your address is the right approach. Most European countries have a single ID card, and that's perfectly fine. In fact anyone who drives in the UK already have an ID card -- driving license. Now it's just a question of one card everyone would have and you could use to ID yourself when using banks or government services.
This always felt weird to me in the UK. As a foreigner, I have to carry my passport anyway, but how do citizens who don't have driving licences identify themselves in day-to-day life? Say they get carded at a pub?
You don't have to carry any form of ID in the UK and there are no ID cards, anyway. That said, obviously most people have their driving licence on them.
As a foreigner you do not have to carry your passport.
No-one is going to ask for ID unless you are doing something specific at a bank or government office, for instance. Or, indeed if you are trying to buy alcohol or cigarettes anywhere and look very young... But young people can get provisional driving licences before they have passed their driving tests.
> That said, obviously most people have their driving licence on them.
Just to point out for the wider audience: you're not legally obliged to have your driving licence on you either when driving. You have 7 days to produce it a police station
I wouldn't say you need to look very young. I've been asked to show my ID when entering venues and buying alcohol[1], and I'm nearly 30. I might look under 25 if you're being generous. As a result, I usually carry my passport.
[1] Well, zero-alcohol beer, which is considered alcohol for this purpose.
They dont need to do anything. No matter what the UK govt does, the adoption of this stuff is a disaster anyway.
Unless its mandated by law, who cares.
Chiming in as a Brit: I m generally opposed to this.
I already have a passport and that is digitalised and universal. Why not just use that?
The UK has a bad habit of launching these programs and not being able to deliver on them.
We have had National Insurance numbers for a long time, these are used to track income tax payments and benefits. But that doesn’t work apparently. So I had to set up a Unique Tax Reference number. Just to do my tax return. This involved several letters back and forth. Actual paper sent in the post over several weeks. The government already have all the tax information they just need me to do 20h of work because they can’t keep their files straight.
They made a mess of that. So I now have an additional Unique Tax Reference number. 2 unique IDs…
And they are still getting my taxes wrong. And writing to me about other peoples taxes/benefits payments because they have similar names and live in the same municipality.
Also, I’ve never had any difficulty proving who I am online when I want to. And I should not need to do so anymore than I already chose to.
> Mandatory digital ID would fundamentally change the relationship between the population and the state by requiring frequent identity checks as we navigate our daily lives.
This seems like a dubious fear. We already have plenty of ad-hoc digital IDs (see physicsguy's comment) and none of these fears have come to pass.
My wife who is from a large mainland European country, has an ID card. Everyone has one and they're mandatory. It makes it trivial to prove your bona fides and is good for air travel within the Schengen area. Her ID even has a chip which can be used to create digital signatures for situations where rock-solid proof of identity is required.
Amazingly, they've always had ID cards and the world hasn't ended. These countries are in some ways freer and more democratic than the UK.
'Civil libertarianism' has become a self-licking ice cream cone, and their advocacy is not only shrill and counterproductive, but also enables common criminals and bad geopolitical actors, engaging in aggressive hybrid war against free countries.
One of the few ways we are going to be able to fight off the Russian and Chinese hybrid war aggression that is assailing the West online is to hold online commenters accountable by binding their online identities to real-world strong IDs.
The libertarians may not like it, but this is the direction the world is going. Strong ID is a common sense, tried-and-true approach to protecting ourselves against criminals and foreign aggressors. And we'll eventually get digital strong ID, unless the boot-leather connoisseurs amongst us win this argument.
Counterpoint...the UK government is already jailing people for voicing opinions they don't like. You are basically saying that this is OK by you. This can be abused very badly by bad actors in the government. It is also one of the things we criticize China for. Becoming like an authoritarian system isn't the solution for opposing authoritarian systems.
> And we'll eventually get digital strong ID, unless the boot-leather connoisseurs amongst us win this argument.
Using "boot licker" as some sort of insult on moderates is getting really old. I appreciate the alternative term though.
If you work really really hard, and come up with a really good media campaign, and there's not a riot or a genocide that your country is supporting that will allow digital ID to be rammed through, you'll be able to put it off for the 4 years until new Prime Minister Nigel Farage (or Zarah Sultana, or whoever) announces it as the government's first priority.