Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

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> Most European countries have them and they are as uncontroversial as passports.

> Countries without national ID cards are not especially more privacy minded

Two interesting things here: They are uncontroversial because people are so used to them and, yes, the UK is much more privacy minded than, e.g., France in that regards.

In France everyone is used to carry their ID card with them (ID cards include the person's address and finger print is taken when ID card is used to anyone older than 13). Police have the right to ask for proof of ID without cause, and failure give them the right to detain the person until ID can be assertained (which means being driven to the police station). The history od ID cards in France is indeed one of state surveillance and control, and, tellingly ID cards became mandatory under the Vichy government in 1940 and although they have no longer been so in law since 1955, they de facto still are in daily life.

In the UK people are free to go about their lives with no ID and the police have no right to stop and ask someone to identify themselves (or any other questions) without cause. There is a big resistance against creating ID cards.

I read other comments that in the UK driving licences are de facto ID cards but I think this misses the point above. Of course they are situations in daily life when one needs to prove their ID (banks, etc). But the point is protection against the state/authorities and against being forced to identify yourself for no imperative reason.

>In the UK people are free to go about their lives with no ID

That's because the surveillance creeps in sideways. I believe it was Lee Kuan Yew who once stated that a 'vertical' strong government where duties between citizens and the state are explicit and clearly defined is much more rights preserving than a weak, 'horizontal' government, where you don't have to show your id but then the police goes and buys all your private information from the gray market private sector a la ClearView AI and sends it two the fifteen three letter agencies. It's no accident that the US, UK, AUS etc. are some of the leaders in this gray zone, intelligence, mission creep.

I'm French and live in the UK, so feel qualified to compare. A few examples off the top of my head :

The UK census and most NHS health records include ethnicity and religion data. In France it's forbidden by law for any entity to collect this information.

Any idiot in the UK (including direct marketing firms) can purchase the electoral register which has a wealth of personal data. You can opt out of one version, but not from the one that political parties, election officials or private credit agencies (!) have full unfettered access to.

Credit agencies, by the way, don't exist at all in France.

I think this qualifies the UK as "not especially more privacy minded", for at least some definitions of privacy.

As it happens I am also French and living in the UK.

The ban on ethnic/racial data in France is a byproduct of the idealistic French republican view that the only thing that matters is whether people are citizens or foreigners and that citizens are all identical. This is not about "privacy".

But, pragmatically for a census, the British questions make much more sense and give a better snapshot of the country. In fact, in general the UK is more pragmatic than France and that has worked for the better historically.

In the UK the electoral register is a public record for good reasons (who can vote should be transparent), and as such it is available to anyone.

Credit agencies are a pragmatic (again) and private (emphasised) tool to protect against credit risk (I believe the GDPR express this as "legitimate interest"). The UK is much more trade and business oriented than France. Again that has worked rather well for them historically.

None of that counters my point about protection from the state.

In fact this is historically a very key difference between the UK and France: the power of the state/king was limited early in England (Magna Carta and all that) while France has had an absolutist streak (Louis XIV, French Revolution, Voltaire in exile in England, even Napoleon). To this day the role and power of the state is much stronger in France than in the UK.

I find this is a contradiction of French culture: on the one hand this disobedient and 'revolutionary' streak but, on the other hand a very strong state with people tending to call on the state for help about everything and anything. Or maybe these are the two sides of the same coin.

>n the UK people are free to go about their lives with no ID and the police have no right to stop and ask someone to identify themselves (or any other questions) without cause.

Anyone who has watch police auditors in the uk knows how true that "no right to stop" actually is. They'll invoke Section 43 in 5 minutes top and detain you. They'll find something suspicious and detain you; they'll lie and forget to mention you don't have to id yourself.

Only people that haven't interacted with the police think that because there are no explicit laws requiring ID then the police can't actually ID them. Especially in the authoritarian UK.

practically impossible to do anything financially in the UK today without photo id (passport, driving license). this is supposed to prevent money laundering, but i suspect general control freakery.

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