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Comment by selimthegrim | Hacker News Reader

Where the hell are all these Brexit loons when you need them? ID card protests for window dressing only - as long as it's Her Majesty's surveillance state instead of the EUSSR Bob's your uncle?

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I was a campaigner against ID cards back then, and this is basically spot on: even back then, the people on the street who supported ID cards mentioned immigration. What happened? The biometric residence permits. ID cards are mandatory if you're a non-EU immigrant. The rest of the "hostile environment" made proof of immigration status mandatory for employment and renting a house. We got all the pieces of a surveillance state except the ID cards - because that's what the public wanted.

All of the Windrush fiasco and other Home Office outrages show that the UK is pretty comfortable with bureaucratic authoritarianism so long as they think it only applies to immigrants.

Excuse me if I have a simplistic view of this, but wouldn't an ID card have helped Windrush citizens prove their citizenship?

Indeed it would have. I think the worst kinds of surveillance mechanisms are the ones that can cause a lot of suspicion and false positives, but don't allow those affected to refute any allegations. Identity documents are not like that at all. On the contrary.

Perhaps - assuming they could get one in the first place. Alternatively the application process could have simply accelerated their deportation. Things might have gone better under the Blair government, but the whole point of ID cards is to impose the state's view on everyone's status.

Because the one thing that old people fear more than Brussels is the teenagers down the block. If you truly believe that you are "good" and that only other people are "bad" then things like picture ID seem warm and friendly.

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