The UK's online ID plans: expensive, intrusive, unnecessary

> Good grief I have no idea why these debates always descend into alarmism and philosophizing. Virtually every democratic country on this planet has national id cards. Switzerland, a bastion of democracy does, Israel does, South Korea does, Germany, does, if you emigrate from the UK to Switzerland, does anyone feel they've now entered a fundamentally new relationship with the state because of an ID card?

What is your argument here? A lot of countries do it, therefore it's okay?

> If you buy booze online in Germany on Amazon you can type in your ID and your age is verified within a minute, and the standard actually demands that those requests are ephemeral. Can anyone tell me why that's worse than some patchwork of private verification industries who leak your data every two months or sell them to god knows who?

Can you tell me why this is preferable to having someone look at an ID and verify it with their eyeballs?

> Does anyone seriously think not having an ID card stops the government from unifying data?

Absolutely.

>National identity needs to be tracked in any country, regardless whether you have an ID card, and all the systems the UK has in place prove that point, the card doesn't change anything other than actually guaranteeing some standards and safety and consistency and providing some utility.

There are advantages in making it harder to request id. Imagine a world where any website or app can validate your identity by tapping your national id on your phone/tablet/computer (via NFC). I would think every website is going to start asking for your national id for account creation or login, for "security" and "anti-fraud" purposes of course. We already see this with phone validation for major services (eg. google, outlook, twitter). At least with phone validation it's not directly linked to your real life identity, and you can get burner phones.

If you think surveillance and/or governmental action as a whole is unethical, then it only follows that you'd be against any streamlining or increasing efficiency of said systems. If a government does evil things -- and governments do evil things pretty often -- then the rational conclusion is to muddle the bureaucracy and make it as ineffective as possible.

> Virtually every democratic country on this planet has national id cards. Switzerland, a bastion of democracy does, Israel does, South Korea does, Germany, does

Virtually (or maybe absolutely) every undemocratic country on this planet has national ID cards. China, a bastion of repression does, Syria does, North Korea does, Russia does.

> If you buy booze online in Germany on Amazon you can type in your ID and your age is verified within a minute

Versus the "substantial erosion of civil liberties" senior officials of the British state admit will occur from a national ID.

In the UK we already have sufficient identification for all purposes, we don't need more. I also have experience of the current identify systems and they do not unify identities as well as you think they do, and any attempt to do so has failed. This proposal is only to enrich American IT consultancies and we don't need any more of that thank you.

And you do not get any benefits either. UK could drive identity theft to effectively zero, reduce the pandemic by moving mundane transactions online, reduce carbon emissions by making electronic signature widespread etc. etc. Yes, this would allow for privacy infringements. No, this has not happened in countries where such things are commonplace. Quite the other way around: since identity is vague and fraud rampant, service providers hoover up data to manage their risk. Since lack of identity means no meaningful interoperability, hundreds of copies of your personal data float around waiting to be sold. How is all that giving people more privacy?

  >Good grief I have no idea why these debates always descend into alarmism and philosophizing...

I think it's similar in a way to the argument in the US about the right to bear arms.

In the UK there's a similar kind of "inalienable right" feeling that we [as citizens] are not the property of the state and therefore are under no obligation to carry a piece of paper which identifies us as if we were a piece of state property. Theoretically in the UK you do not even have to give your name if asked by the Police, unless you are under arrest.

There's also an association of ID cards being symbolic of totalitarian regimes, viz. the Nazis or Communist Russians of so much popular culture, grim-faced and eternally demanding "Your papers!"

You can argue that in the form of Driving Licenses / bank cards / work ID cards, most people here are already carrying ways to prove their ID when required and that an officially issued card wouldn't make much practical difference, but the stigma against a state issued ID card still remains.

Yes, the UK state has implemented far more egregious privacy violations than a national ID card.

> Times of crisis, like the current pandemic, are great opportunities for governments to push policies that will have long term negative effects.

Those times are great for pushing change by anyone. Don’t shoot the messenger.

You can only hope they would do build something like that. With their recent IT projects, I have severe doubts.

It's like we've gone backwards from the start of the digital transformation the UK was leading...

> Introduce a digital ID and instantly it’ll become a requirement to give your digital ID to do anything at all - register a mobile phone, a bank account, an online shop, a library, a pub ... anything

Sighs.

4/5 of these examples already require proof of identity in various circumstances.

The required identification often comes in the form of either one or a combination of a recent utility bill + driver's license and/or passport.

This can make moving house (as an example) a massive PITA -- now I need 3 documents instead of one.

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On data storage / privacy.

Pubs/bars/clubs have already trialled schemes where the provided Photo ID is stored for a certain amount of time. (I believe fabric had to do this under the terms of their new license). I've not heard of any breaches yet...?

I doubt a digital ID would be very useful in pubs as it can't be linked back to a biometric feature (your pretty face).

Online shops... Meh. Does it really matter if Tesco's knows that I prefer low fat mince to high fat?

Banks, well.... There's not much hope there. They'll use it and the game will change. C'est la vie. I'll either adapt so I can get a mortgage or I'll continue renting.

Edit: on a even deeper level, the reality is that nothing changes. Everyone has some form of UID for me (usually emails). Now it just becomes a standardised identifier across the board.

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I too have low confidence in the current government's ability to do something useful with it.

> Ignoring my main concern that any digital project led by the current government will no doubt fail and be used as another excuse to funnel billions to "friends" (not alarmist, but fact), as someone else comments:

> "It’s not just about government. Introduce a digital ID and instantly it’ll become a requirement to give your digital ID to do anything at all - register a mobile phone, a bank account, an online shop, a library, a pub ... anything. Thus, as the article says, your whole life can be linked together and surveilled, not only by government but by dozens of unaccountable corporations."

This is exactly what happened in India with its biometric resident ID number, where the executive coerced people to link it with phone numbers, bank accounts and many other institutions (including giving it in schools and colleges), until the lethargic Supreme Court reduced its validity to government funded schemes alone (despite it causing starvation deaths and exclusions of people from their entitlements). Not to be outdone, the government enacted new laws to help private companies use the number, and continues to push for it.

The whole series of events has been disastrous, and India does not even have any data privacy laws.