Rights groups urge UK PM Starmer to abandon plans for mandatory digital ID

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.

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...

(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.)

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

> 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'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...

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...

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.

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.

https://institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/to...

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Using "boot licker" as some sort of insult on moderates is getting really old. I appreciate the alternative term though.

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.

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 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.