Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers
reuters.com
reuters.com
- Snoopers’ Charter (Investigatory Powers Act 2016): ISPs must keep a year’s worth of records of which websites you visit. More than 40 agencies—from MI5 to the Welsh Ambulance Service—can request it. MI5 has already broken the rules and kept data it shouldn’t have.
- Encryption backdoors: Ministers can issue “Technical Capability Notices” to force tech firms to weaken or bypass end-to-end encryption.
- Online Safety Act: Expands content-scanning powers that experts warn could undermine privacy for everyone.
- Palantir deals: The government has given £1.5 billion+ in contracts to a US surveillance firm that builds predictive-policing tools and runs the NHS’s new Federated Data Platform. Many of those deals are secret.
- Wall-to-wall cameras: Millions of CCTV cameras already make the UK one of the most surveilled countries in the world.
A universal digital ID would plug straight into this ecosystem, creating an always-on, uniquely identified record of where you go and what you do. Even if paper or card options exist on paper, smartphone-based systems will dominate in practice, leaving those without phones excluded or coerced.
I’m not against digital identity in principle. But until the UK government proves it can protect basic privacy—by rolling back mass data retention, ending encryption backdoor demands, and enforcing genuine oversight—any national digital ID is a surveillance power-grab waiting to happen.
I'm certain it's worked well in other countries, but I have zero trust in the UK government to handle this responsibility.
> I'm certain it's worked well in other countries
It has! In the Netherlands for example, it's just an incredibly convenient system, and if there's anything dodgy going on I'm not aware of it.
So what makes the UK so different to the Netherlands? Genuine question, because I really don't know. My only guess is that the people of the Netherlands hold their politicians to account, whereas nothing ever seems to happen to UK politicians whose corruption is so severe that they're sometimes literally criminal.
While the UK have some level of representativeness, each circuit has a winner takes it all structure, making change quite hard to achieve on a larger scale.
The alternative is a decision that most people don't agree with.
That and ensuring a bidirectional feedback mechanism between the executive and legislative branch, so that laws that aren't enforced by an administration fall off the books, and presidents that don't enforce the laws lose their job. Right now, the legal corpus of the U.S. is a constantly-accreting body, which means that no matter what the President wants to do, they can find some law somewhere to justify it, and then anything they don't want to do, they just say "We don't have the resources to enforce this". This gives the President all the power. They should be a servant to the law, not its arbiter.
I'm not saying that that makes the system worse, mind you. I'm not even saying you're wrong that it's a better system. I just think anyone who thinks any one system is the easy, obvious fix to fair and just representational government is either shortsighted, or has different priorities than I do.
If it's important enough or dysfunctional enough a quick decision will be taken. There's clearly deadlock in first past post too, look at the US, if neither party advocates for it at all, it gets nowhere.
Deals and bargaining all happen AFTER a party takes power and completely hidden until a government can't pass their own bills like the Labour attempt to reform welfare.
With proportional representation the deals are made in order to form a government, BEFORE it has power, and are between separate political parties.
Sure there may be agreements that are not all made public, but these are much harder to keep in the "backroom".
2015 we voted for Cameron, ended up with May then Johnson 2019 we voted for Johnson, ended up with Truss(!!) then Sunak(!)
PMs don't drive the agenda. The UK is one of the most corrupt developed countries in the world. The people driving the agenda are billionaire and multi-millionaire donors.
PM is a sales job, not a strategy job, and increasingly ridiculous PMs have been selected because the donors have had enough of liberal democracy as a concept. If it stops working - which it pretty much has - there's going to be less resistance to removing it altogether.
Which is why there's resistance to Digital ID. There's widespread distrust - with reason - of the political establishment right across the divide.
The point really was about parties themselves being coalitions in all but name.
Construct better systems, by all means, but don't just ignore the system that exists.
It would be ignorant not to fear the ID at this point with all the other mechanisms described by OP.
The ID in itself can be a good thing. There is no evil in itself. The context however is very worrisome as it may become a tool of evil.
Classic human.
Id say it’s not a difference in the politicians but the citizens. Pessimism and paranoia are rampant in the UK. We already went through this ID card debate 20 years ago and the fear-mongering won. So the idea just reignites that debate with a lot of baggage.
The UK has various systems in place to ensure people are legally allowed to work, rent, etc but in reality they inconvenience people without actually catching “the bad guys”. This system would make life more convenient and make the chance of catching the bad guys higher.
In truth though the problem is dodgy employers on a large scale. Take Deliveroo or Uber Eats. The accounts are rented out to illegal workers. You could literally catch one for every order you make. But for some reason the government isn’t actually going after the obvious hanging fruit.
Which begs the question - if that's not the purpose of this law, then what is?
The UK has an idiosyncratic relationship with freedom. Technically you have little because (formally limited) monarchy. In practice there’s this aversion to IDs, things like freedom to roam which gives a lot of access to private property, and the ability to get citizenship elsewhere and keep UK, which republics like the US and India won’t allow.
And yet there’s massive camera surveillance from the recent nanny state. And libel laws mean you have to be careful what you print about people. Odd place. Maybe the weather inspires it.
What does it buy you?
Major corruption, abuse and misconduct still happens. Being able to criticise your government doesn't seem to matter in the social media age. Look at the state of politics in the US right now.
Seems like it's slightly redundant these days – a bit anachronistic?
Kind of odd the obsession with it.
(p.s.: All the social media companies being from the US, of course – thanks for all the misinformation, disinformation and hate speech platforms along with all that 'free speech'!).
Well, for one thing, it's not a transactional question of what it "buys". It's a matter of principle and defense against future repression or manipulation by politicians on a power trip.
For example, given Trump's current and blatant attempts to crush free expression against his own policies and bullshit, or even those who constantly insult and criticize him (whining about it like a little kid actually) imagine how much easier he'd have had it if there were no U.S 1st amendment to use against him.
There's an example of its value. It's just one of many.
If you think being able to protect free expression and the ability to speak out freely against power and its abuse is anachronistic, then I don't know what else to say except that you're a naive or dishonest fool, and possibly part of the very problem in places where péople just don't seem to care that under pretext X or Y, they can be stifled at any time.
Yes, the social media companies produce, or facilitate the production of, vast amounts of misinformation, disinformation and even hate speech, but guess what? All that shit gets produced en masse anyhow by repressive authoritarian regimes with narratives to construct and agendas to maintain. Free speech certainly isn't at fault for its existence, given that such things have existed since there's been propaganda or a perceived need for it.
At least, in a place like the U.S, where free speech remains protected (for now at least), any misinformation, disinformation or whatever speech by those in power or outside of it who create it, can be countered by others trying to speak more truthfully.
Try doing the same against misinformation and disinformation by government in Russia, or many other countries where "anachronistic" free speech is curtailed right to hell.
In essence, when governments can legally censor speech they decide is misinformation, disinformation or "hate speech", they can create all sorts of um, interesting, rubrics for deciding what fits under these labels, and then oops, by coincidence it can be anything that goes against their agendas. Going back to the Trump example, just pause for a moment to think about all the uncomfortable facts and opinions he loves to label as "fake news" or "misinformation" or even as hate speech. Now imagine him having the legal authority to sweep them away.
Nothing in any state guarantees against a future leadership with similar authoritarian proclivities from forming to use anti-free speech laws in similar ways.
There, my good faith response to your completely absurd line of rhetorical questioning.
> Well, for one thing, it's not a transactional question of what it "buys"
Let's not play semantics. It's just a phrase
> defense against future repression or manipulation by politicians on a power trip.
Why hasn't it defended against current or past ones? It's not a new amendment, is it?
> For example, given Trump's current and blatant attempts to crush free expression against his own policies and bullshit, or even those who constantly insult and criticize him (whining about it like a little kid actually) imagine how much easier he'd have had it if there were no U.S 1st amendment to use against him.
What has all that criticism gotten you? He's still President right? And there is a worrying number of people talking about a '3rd' term
> when governments can legally censor speech they decide is misinformation, disinformation or "hate speech"
Your government via its plethora of agencies absolutely does this
> At least, in a place like the U.S, where free speech remains protected (for now at least), any misinformation, disinformation or whatever speech by those in power or outside of it who create it, can be countered by others trying to speak more truthfully.
How's that working out?
> There, my good faith response to your completely absurd line of rhetorical questioning.
Wow, Americans really think they are protected from criticism like 'civis Romanus' were protected from harm.
I think your opinions are exactly those I was questioning. Maybe it isn't as useful as you think it is
* another phrase, not to be interpreted literally
Secondly, your logic is well off. I never said the 1st or any similar sort of legal protection for free speech is a guaranteed tool against bad government, repression and censorship. Instead it's ONE tool against these things, and better than its complete absence.
Other efforts still matter and in the U.S, we'll just have to see how they pan out, or not. That still doesn't mean that the 1st or any equivalent to it is irrelevant.
By your apparent reasoning, it's worthless because it doesn't guarantee results and that's sort of like having a fireman throw away their fire axe because it's not a sure fix against a house burning down.
>U.S. law does not require a U.S. citizen to choose between U.S. citizenship and another (foreign) nationality (or nationalities). A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to their U.S. citizenship.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
Furthermore, the former empire was built so that all of the telegraph and telephone lines went to London. If you wanted to make a call from one African colony to the next, London would be in on the man in the middle.
As well as this vast international capability, there is also the domestic front. During the Miners Strike in the 1980s the secret services were tasked with spying, notably on the leader of the miners, Arthur Scargill. Allegedly he used to pick up the phone and just give them a few words, either to misguide them or to tease them.
This spying continued with Northern Ireland being a 'training ground' during 'The Troubles'. There was also considerable opposition to cruise missiles in the UK during the Thatcher years and all of the people active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were under surveillance. This was not the end of it though. Eco-activism was also of interest along with a few high profile problem people.
As well as the secret services, there is also Scotland Yard. They infiltrate every anti-government single issue pressure group as a matter of course, placing people in deep cover. Two Guardian Journalists brought this to light in 2012 or so.
Then, on top of that, there are the capabilities of the big companies such as British Aerospace. They have their spies too.
Hence, on the domestic front, surveillance is vital to cut anyone down to size if they might challenge the establishment at a later date. Everything just gets nipped in the bud.
The 'Special Relationship' is the spying arrangement at the heart of 'Five Eyes'. In the USA, surveillance of the population is not allowed, so the workaround is to get the Brits to do it for them. This is how it works and has been working for decades.
If the UK secret services want to spy on someone in the UK then they will have the manpower to do it without getting caught. They will be able to get school reports, attendance at political demonstrations and much else regarding a person of interest.
There is nothing new that I have said here, Snowden and The Guardian brought all of this to light, in broad strokes. Both HUMINT and SIGINT is world leading. Compare with the USA where they have the dragnet but are not so capable when it comes to the HUMINT needed for monitoring a small group of individuals such as the leadership of a trade union.
It is for these reasons that spying has to be made easy for them, for instance by banning Huawei 5g routers on the pretence that China is using Huawei backdoors to spy on the UK. The problem was not that, it was different. With the likes of Cisco et al, the secret services can specify their own back doors, however, that is not so easy with Chinese owned companies.
There is much in the way of law that has gone along with this, for example the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 and the Terrorism Act 2000. The latter was definitely to target eco-activists, not anyone else. At the time there were eco-activist groups such as Reclaim The Streets that organised things such as rioting in the City of London with no identifiable leaders. They also did not book their protests with the police or organise security for the day, hence they needed to terminated.
9/11 brought new challenges and that brings us on to where we are today. I personally do not think this digital ID is a big deal. Any British citizen can already be easily identified even if they don't know their National Insurance number, and even if they have no photo ID in the form of a passport or a driving license. Name, date of birth and hospital of birth are the three bits of information needed. As well as the police, the NHS can work with that. As for employers and their needs to hire only people legally permitted to work in the UK, this is just for due diligence reasons from their part. If you speak with an accent that can only be British then you can meet the employer's checkbox requirements easily, with no photo ID. Just a bank statement should do.
So, where is this coming from? What plausible reason could there be for a fresh attempt at identity cards, for the umpteenth time?
Brexit...
As you know, Brexit happened and it was ugly. Due to the way that 'The Troubles' ended with the Good Friday Agreement, the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland (The Irish Republic is just 'Ireland', not any other name) has to be kept open.
What this means is that the EU is not a complete fortress, there is this imaginary border in the Irish Sea that can't be closed.
Immigration post-Brexit
A major selling point of Brexit was an end to immigration. However, due to the open border with Ireland, immigration has become a problem to the authorities, not least because working class people despise losing their jobs or getting paid less because there is a constant stream of people that will undercut them in the employment market.
What happens is that some country ends up being regime changed, as per the goals of The War Against Terror. Syria was particularly notable for the refugee situation. However, there is also Afghanistan, Iraq and everything in between up until Ukraine. What happens is very sad. People walk, hitch or smuggle themselves into Europe to arrive in one country such as Greece. Here they are looked after but they are unable to work or escape the refugee camps to buy a house, start a family and all those good things.
So they escape the cage of the EU country they first entered to try somewhere else. Maybe they get to Germany. However, in Germany, they will be asked where they came from, for example Greece, and get sent back to Greece. Maybe they try another EU country, to get sent back again. And so it goes, until someone advises them to go to Ireland, where they can walk over the border to the UK, as in Northern Ireland.
Since the UK is not in the EU, they get a fresh start at claiming asylum. This gets granted and the local authority is then likely to put them up in temporary accommodation.
Next they get 'dispersed'. What this means is that they get sent to another British town or city. Here they get temporary accommodation and a ridiculously small amount of money to live on. This money does not meet their basic needs. The asylum process leads to refugee status, which is not citizenship, however, they are permitted to work, legally. At a guess it takes two years to get to this second hoop. To get past refugee status takes even longer, if successful.
During this time the asylum seeker is not allowed their passport, the government keeps that. They can get a travel permit, however, if they return to their home country then they get banned and are not allowed back.
So that is the general process. To say immigration is out of control is an understatement to some and 'fascist' to others. It is a topic best not talked about, and the practicalities of it are not well understood. A boat crossing the English Channel full of asylum seekers are going to make the headlines of the gutter press, but this Brexit loophole situation is not something that the journalists appreciate fully, particularly if they voted for Brexit, then they are just not wanting to know.
Plausibly, the compulsory digital ID checks for work can be used to make the UK unattractive to asylum seekers that know the deal in the EU.
Currently the biggest threat to the main political parties is Farage and his Reform party. In recent polls, Reform (or whatever they are called) would sweep the board, taking seats from both the Conservatives and Labour. Due to how it works with no proportional representation, the exact outcome of this does not necessarily mean Reform would have a majority, however, it would be the end of the Conservative Party.
Hence, compulsory digital IDs would provide convenience for everyone, when dealing with the government, whilst giving the spies the primary keys they always wanted. However, for reasons of holding on to power, due to the threat of the Reform Party, there may be extra urgency.
This is absurd. The problem is the exact opposite, nearly all IPAs in Ireland come from the UK via the common travel area. Ireland is not in Schengen and is not reachable from the continent by small boat, so there is negligible migrant flow in the opposite direction.
Notoriously, the national identity system was used during World War II as a system for discovering and eliminating the Jewish community[1]. The lessons learned from that are a frequent topic of discussion in civil liberties groups, and the Dutch experience is often cited, both global conversations and within the Netherlands -- e.g. On Liberation Day 2015, Bits of Freedom held its annual Godwin Lecture on the risks of prioritising ID efficiency over civil liberties[2].
It may be that special protections were coded into the current system to prevent this from happening again, I don't know the details.
Certainly, the reputation for how obligatory papers have been (mis)used in mainland Europe since Napoleonic times have fed into the anglo world's suspicion around introducing similar regulations[3]. There are several recurring memes around how compulsory documents are a sign of an authoritarian environment.
[1] - https://jck.nl/en/agenda/identity-cards-and-forgeries
[2] - https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2015/04/30/during-world-war-ii-...
I might trust this government not to do that, but I don't trust a future government (because I don't know who that will be).
Without looking, I honestly don't know if the passport and driving licence lists this information. But the census certainly does.
Ireland is not Britain, and people from Northern Ireland can chose to identify as British, Irish or Both by birthright.
A "Brit Card" is not something a significant portion of people would want.
I personally am more disgusted by the nationalistic naming, but I also don't like the idea of needing a smartphone or my walle when walking.
If these aren't true details then the messaging has been poor, per form, and needs to be addressed, quickly.
It also seems it'll actually be called Digital ID by the government, this is more a marketing tool, BritCard.
(Just clarifying if it helps, I see some misinformation out there).
Imagine it was called IrishID or similar, help you to have empathy for how half of NI residents might feel about Brit-anything?
I get your point about IrishID, but be realistic, none of this is surprising considering the current state of things. I could make some controversial statements in this regard but I'll avoid the flames (I sympathise with you before you place me in the wrong box).
The civil liberties concerns, particularly in N.I. (historically speaking), are also important to consider. There is quite a high capacity for discriminatory practices in the region from all angles.
On the other side. The British government are lowering themselves to the position of "just another app on my phone". A system riddled with viruses, cyber attacks, etc. Further, what is to stop groups simply setting up and alternative ID system running on btc or something in the future...if this becomes the norm? At first it would be useless and a farce. Later a complete separate system.
Anyway, horrible idea all round. They clearly have not thought this through. Paper ids and loose associations are things I am a fan of in the anglophone world.
The government also decides how many non-family members can register at an address, so in Amsterdam it is common for people to remain registered at there parents while subletting a room in an apartment.
You also get a DigiD which very convenient but also terrifying, especially when I walk around my neighborhood and see plaque’s in the ground for the victims of the holocaust who lived here.
My Dutch girlfriend does not believe me when I tell here that you don’t have to register where you live with the government in the anglophone world. It’s just so engrained in the society that anything else seems absurd.
I believe in New Zealand other government agencies aren't allowed to access your data without your consent though.
Everything accelerates when it becomes digital, for the better or for the worse. One thing that an ID does not do is preventing crime and allowing only legal jobs. People find a lot of ways to circumvent the rules as long as there are money to earn.
Frankly, you’re just being paranoid. It’s possible that mandatory digital ID could be abused, but officials haven’t yet announced their intentions to abuse it. So why are you so worried? You’re already tracked everywhere you go, and many countries already have this system. It seems to work well there for keeping people in line. Do you have something to hide? Seems a little suspicious, no?
(Did I miss any talking points?)
This one is my favorite. I don't know if it's just unthinkable naivety or a misunderstanding of how bad actors work, but it boggles my mind that this type of reasoning is often one of the top arguments I hear.
Silently pointing out to the whole world that does this already and nothing scary happened that can't happen otherwise.
The only reason we have ids is the borders and codified inequality anyway. I can't go to certain places with one id and can go there with the other. In some specific places I can go in, but would not be able to get out.
Somehow I haven't seen a lot of intersection between people who believe we should not have borders and people who believe we should not have ids.
That one is perfect lol. It speaks to the baffling immense amount of trust people still have in institutions.
I mean, people are still outright alarmed that the BBC resort to clickbait or quietly change articles after publication. I mean, it's been a good 10-15 years - stop trusting them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interactive_zero-knowledge...
(Repost from 2021: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560821>)
The digital ID is presumably (this is my pulling a guess from my rear end, but if I had to implement it, I'd use the existing system) an extension to cover citizens too. In fact, in principle of that's how it works, it will marginally improve privacy because current status quo is basically that citizens provide their passport to the employer to demonstrate right to work via citizenship.
I also assume that the universal use of a single system means that spot-checking any workers status becomes easier. Currently if police, say, to use a common example, stop a food delivery rider and ask for their right to work they can say they're a citizen and just don't have ID on them. The UK has long derided the idea of everyone being expected to have ID with them with phrases like "papieren bitte", but it does mean that the authorities basically cannot check working statuses unless there's a physical workplace they can raid. Which is a weakness app-platforms and many people without the right to work have figured out.
A cynic might think that that kind of problem sounds a lot like a problem the government could already have solved in several other ways, but by letting it fester might finally garner public acceptance for the universal ID system they've always wanted.
but... why? the agency that gives out benefits has to mint this credential and has to assess your dossier. Or they can assess your dossier, write you a snail mail with a result and wire the money.
What's the use of this fancy crypto other that finding a but in this token-minting service and getting those benefits without actually being entitled?
Is it? Nobody knows if it’s going to be an app, or a virtual card, or a real card. So speculation and rumours are flying.
Whoever does comms for the government must be asleep.
But I fully agree if you mean it hasn't been adequately explained to the public [3].
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identi...
[2] https://enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-id-scheme...
It literally contradicts itself at one point:
“It will also be stored directly on your own device - just like contactless payment cards or the NHS App today.”
An app has totally different capabilities from a card in a wallet.
The Digital ID scheme isn't new. The only change is from it being optional to mandatory.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identi...
If you want a technical explanation of how they work, you will need to loose elsewhere.
1. The contract to build the thing will go to the lowest bidder, who is all but guaranteed not to do any of it correctly (cf. the UK Post Office scandal and Fujitsu's role in it).
2. The public has no guarantee that it is implemented in the cryptographically secure way, or that is is ONLY implemented in the cryptographically secure way (e.g., either by accident or through malice the system leaks info it shouldn't).
3. The overwhelming majority of the public are not trained in nearly enough computer science to understand "no actually this system isn't a total privacy nightmare" (assuming that it's actually implemented securely).
The UK's proposal makes the "digital ID" a pointer to an entry in a centralized database. This database is the definitive record of what you are allowed to do or not do (like reside and work). Which can be changed or deleted at the stroke of a key, through human error or malice. Then what?
When (not if) the database becomes an attribute store across a wider scope, the implications are scary. The "digital ID" as set out today can't work for its ostensible purpose. Therefore its actual purpose isn't being declared. Not hard to connect the dots.
I guess, depending on how it's implemented, maybe an ID could be cloned and still appear valid, but that seems like a possibility for the UK's approach as well (the clone would just point to the same database entry).
But considering that they've been retiring things like biometric residence cards in favour of web-based systems, it's possible there will be no physical component.
Now they want to make it illegal for employers to illegally give a job to people it was already illegal to give a job to by making them have a new ID, when it was already illegal to give someone a job without getting proof of their right to work in the UK!
You are 100% right
We have this is NSW in Australia: the Services NSW app provides a digital drivers license which is guaranteed to be accepted by authorities as legitimate.
Really? If anything it would make them easier. Hackers routinely break into government databases to exfiltrate information. An ID attribute databases would be no exception, for exfiltration, or simply modification of data. Ie: creating a fake ID.
This is not true. Government agencies generally look up your ID as necessary to check if it's still valid.
Stopped for speeding? The cop is going to look up your driver's license.
Leaving the country? They're running your passport number.
Starting a job? They're checking the status of your SSN.
The physical ID is good enough for low-stakes stuff like renting a car with a driver's license, or proving your age to get into a bar. But it's already not trusted on its own for any of the serious stuff you're talking about, like where you can reside and work.
In reality I've never been asked for the code when renting cars (outside the UK), the physical card seems to generally be sufficient for the hire companies.
Not really. It's part of identity management or whatever it's called to have an ability to recall ids, because they get lost, stolen and people to who they are issued die.
>When (not if) the database becomes an attribute store across a wider scope, the implications are scary.
What are the scary implication really? Most of the EU and beyond has some kind of login to the government capability. And?
What's the threat model really? The government will revoke your fancy thing to report taxes digitally for no reason and bankrupt you? They can do so without such roundabout ways.
Penury and deportation are quite a bit of scope already! Maybe they'll put an "arrest" bit in there. Warrants are already a thing. I don't see the UK going in for murder just yet. What's left?
In fact, if British Digital ID is based on PKI, then CRL will come out of the box
Very similar to the "EU settlement scheme" which would gave EU citizens which had work and settled in the UK pre-Brexit after a very lengthy and non-deterministic application process the right to stay without any paper document to prove that they actually got that right. Just a database entry on a government computer. Too bad if an extreme right-wing goverment came to power and something happened to that database.
In effect the State is no longer a State and is in fact entirely dysfunctional.
Freedom is incompatible with the UK.
No state can ever be trusted with this amount of data. Governments change. Someday, there will be a government in charge that you will disagree with.
This commenter may sound like a paranoid person (and may very well be, I don't know them) but read about the way the UK government handled an IT error in post office accounting software. Someone living there has good reason to not trust the powers that be.
Also, is the data secure? Who else has access to that data? Will I be protected if I am in this system?
If they were open about the system, it would be one thing, but they never are. It is funny how this has cropped up gain after the recent pow wow with the yanks and the tech companies.
NO government can be trusted with data and with too much power (which go hand in hand). This has always been the case and will always be the case.
A digital ID requires essentially a digital signature running on a secure device (for example, a smart card).
Thus it implements public key cryptocraphy. Which makes confidentiality and integrity of computing two inseparable sides of the same medal.
You simply cannot break confidentiality of communication without practically breaking integrity of digital signatures at the same time. (Otherwise, a user, for example could generate a fresh random public key, sign it with their digital id, and send it to any communications partner).
Breaking this in turn means that the government can sign on behalf of you, without your knowledge.
Human communication is based on symbols and whatever the means are to transport these symbols, cannot work without trust.
It gives me no pleasure to be right on this.
I mean if you have a passport then you already have an 'ID card', but I certainly don't want to take that out with me to prove my age.
Edit: btw this proposal already has something which can be criticised: ID on mobile phones… so probably they’d lock everybody into a duopoly.
Or, proposal B: don't build the nuke.
The stated reason is to stop illegals working.
Unfortunately we have an ID for working, called a national insurance number. We literally can't get legally paid without it.
So a National ID card ... Is irrelevant. You still need this number for benefits, etc.
I've got an NI number, a driving license and a passport. Not to mention a NHS number.
I don't need another form of identification to link together everything about me so my government can leak everywhere.
The ID for working system is https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work , with its digital ID "share code" https://www.gov.uk/view-right-to-work
(what does the digital ID scheme add to this again?)
The prove right to work is a slightly newer thing thats additional
Previously you could use proof of British nationality or a physical biometric residence card - but they've been replaced by the digital share code system (which tbh hasn't been too bad)
> Could you explain what is so distasteful about ID cards?"
which is roughly how humans say "ID cards are okay" (P0)
> I mean if you have a passport then you already have an 'ID card', but I certainly don't want to take that out with me to prove my age.
which is roughly how humans say "We already collect information that would be on an ID card and store it against a passport" (P1) provided only for completeness because it is not used later
> "Could you please give me your real name "celticninja", your phone number, your address, your NI number -- oh, and you'll need to install this app on your phone which I promise will never be used to monitor your location, purchases, friends. Then I'll explain."
which is roughly how humans say "If (ID cards are okay) (P0 again) then (there should be no problem sharing that information with me, a stranger) (P2). But (there should be no problem sharing the information with me, a stranger) (P2 again) - is absurd"
Therefore, if all of these were logical, then indeed this is a valid proof that ID cards are not okay by reductio ad absurdum, a valid proof technique.
I suppose the gap in the argument is in the logical statement P0 => P2. If some chain of argument could provide P0 => P2 then this would indeed be a valid proof of the falsehood of P0 by reductio ad absurdum to P2 an absurd conclusion. Of course I wrote it out to illustrate, but it was obvious it was reductio ad absurdum.
It just strikes me as curious that someone would point that out. A bit like saying "syllogism" when someone makes a one-step logical conclusion, which is not something that humans usually post on web forums. Then again, if you say "Knowledge is power" someone will inevitably say "France is bacon" ;) so there's a bit of an ability to prompt things out of human beings that only has phatic purpose. Perhaps Latin, in particular, draws this out of someone but I'd think it odd if people went around saying "quod erat demonstrandum" in replies to someone who proved something.
The police can and will request this information from you, digital ID or not. If you have actual beef with digital ID, present it.
The government is pushing Digital IDs on rubbish claims (obviously won't do anything about illegal immigration). Everyone can see that.
So what does this mean about their actual aims?
They'll invoke one of the more ambiguous sections, it's usually the anti-terrorism one, but sometimes is the anti-drugs one (i can't remember the numbers), and they'll detain then arrest you and haul you to the police station.
You can complain later, and maybe get some pounds out of it, but make no mistake: if the uk police wants you identified, they will identify you.
Many countries have had ID cards for decades, yet don't have any digital ID system whatsoever.
My own personal thinking has evolved on the subject since I campaigned against ID cards under Blair ("no2id"). It is a question of trust and purpose. Things like the Estonian digital identity scheme do not seem to be bad in practice. The problem comes from identity checkpoints, which serve as an opportunity for inconvenience, surveillance, and negligence by the authorities.
Remember the "computer is never wrong" Fujitsu scandal? The Windrush fiasco (itself a story of identity and records)?
And anything born of an immigration crackdown is coming out of the gate with a declared intention to be paranoid and authoritarian.
For anyone outside the UK who doesn't know this reference, the UK Post Office (originally the state postal system, privatised by this time) paid Fujitsu to build a computer system. It had bugs which made it look like money was going missing. The bugs were reported, and ignored. The Post Office prosecuted employees for theft and fraud over sixteen years, ruining hundreds of lives and reputations, sending hundreds of people to prison, and causing some suicides.
It eventually came out as an investigative journalism story that the system was at fault, the people were innocent, and the Post Office knew about the bugs right from the start and had been hiding them from the police/courts. "In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history" that's almost 10 years after it ended and 25 years after it started, rather too late to undo all the harm.
It won't.
The US border is now locked down far tighter than it ever was when I was a kid, and the cries for locking it down even more and violently apprehending suspected violators are at a fever pitch. The UK too - like many countries in the recent rightward lurch - has gone from a country where I can just show up to visit to one when were I need to request permission beforehand.
It sure seems like the "concerns about immigration" in the UK mirror those in the US, which in my analysis is a reaction towards the loss of white privilege combined with the loss of economic power. Putting stricter id checks may assuage abstract xenophobia, but the concrete details don't fundamentally change the concrete details.
It's not like Brexit fixed those concerns about immigration.
If anything, Brexit has exacerbated control over immigration as we can no longer access shared information with e.g. France.
'Opinion polls found that Leave voters believed leaving the EU was "more likely to bring about a better immigration system, improved border controls, a fairer welfare system, better quality of life, and the ability to control our own laws"'
Doesn't seem to have helped, has it?
So a justification based on a premise of alleviating some concerns about immigration has a long historical trail of failures behind it, as I'm sure the Windrush generation can share. The US and Canadian citizens along what was once pridefully called the world's longest unprotected border have also their misgivings.
As I read here, the UK passed the law that required employers to check employee eligibility. I'm sure that was meant to alleviate xenophobic concerns. Why wasn't that enough?
https://archive.org/details/onrecordsurveill0000camp/page/88...
It's an interesting museum piece.
> Through this new network, much personal information which the individual has to provide, for example to claim a benefit, or to an employer - will be routed through successive computers to wind up on a ‘central index’. Even if no new law is passed, the effect of the system will be to create a national population register which each individual is obliged to inform of changes of name and address (and often a great deal more). Moreover, by the same time, the majority of adults (on present plans) will have been issued with a National Insurance (NI) ‘Numbercard’, laying an easy basis for the future introduction of a national identity-card system.
> Since the start of 1984, a NI Numbercard - resembling a standard plastic credit card, complete with signature space and a magnetic strip encoding the bearer’s name and number — has been issued to everyone reaching the age of 16, and to anyone else registering in the NI system for the first time or applying for a new card.
> Eventually, the cards could be used in automatic readers, similar to the present automatic telling machines (ATMs, or cash dispensers) installed by most banks.
> Despite government claims to the contrary, the Lindop committee concluded that the British NI number was already close to being used as a personal identity system. Although no further government proposals have been made for the use of the NI Numbercard, it is fairly certain that - for benefit claimants at least - its carrying will become obligatory. It did not take long for suggestions about compulsory carrying of NI cards to creep into public discussion. In August 1984, in what NCCL called the ‘thin end of a nasty wedge’, the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons suggested that casual workers should be issued with the new Numbercards and required to produce their cards when being paid - so that information about payments made to them could be collated successfully by the Inland Revenue.
Here's also a picture of the thing in an advert in Smash Hits:
https://archive.org/details/smash-hits-5-18-june-1985/page/n...
I think they got rid of the magnetic strip at some point, and it never became mandatory to carry them or show them.
If you want to prove your age, there are a host of *voluntary* forms of identity you can carry if you wish to do so. Please tell me how a new *compulsory* scheme (with privacy invading overreach) is going to help you.
So why do we need this digital ID then?
To add to this - there is very rarely in my mind a need for someone to actually identify themselves - there are plenty of examples where it's useful for *audit* purposes to have a record, or to have a role-based credential to be able to do a thing, but *identity*?
> A new digital ID scheme will help combat illegal working
If you are an immigrant you already have to prove your right to work with a share code:
https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-onli...
And if you claim to be a citizen you must show a passport or birth certificate:
https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work
So how exactly will this new digital ID help "stop those with no right to be here from being able to find work"?
This is where you get certified copies should you ever need that for interfacing with foreign governments that want them (the European country I live in very much wants a copy of my birth certificate).
It's not an identity check by any means but a legitimate birth certificate ought to be findable here.
But yes birth cert + utility bill is a very, very weak binding to identity.
The worst part is that we no longer have any power to do something about it. Eventually, after it goes through the testing phase in the UK and Greece (and a few other countries where it's being implemented), this will probably roll out on a global scale, making privacy impossibly. I'm starting to get this feeling that in the next decade, we'll be living in 1984...
anyway, privacy is dead - longer conversation, but even if you don't carry your cell, there's cameras everywhere with face/gate recognition.
That's not true. If a large enough mob of citizens went to the capital, burned down the government building and harassed MPs on the street (and followed them to their homes), as recently happened in Nepal and before that in Bangladesh, things would change very quickly.
Why would I imagine that? There are privacy implications, but a unique ID doesn't mean everyone has access to all your data at any time for any reason.
Imagine someone steals your driver's license. No biggie.
Now imagine they steal your identity which is linked to everything you ever do.
Card = one person, limited use.
But most importantly: a Hitler rises to power = opposition is screwed.
If a Hitler rises to power you will be screwed with or without an ID card, so please don't use such a silly argument.
Consider the Australian Access and Assistance bill. Among other things, it permits ministers to issue TCN's verbally. As far as we know (theres no oversight) this hasnt been done. But its concerning that the government can verbally require a corporation to (open endedly) change app functionality.
It would be better if Jim Hitler, had to fight the existing democracy to erode our freedoms, rather than just having to ask a minister to make it so.
Its absolutely better to assume the worst case than the best.
Which is why you have completely separate account to pay the same government for crossing one specific brige in East London than you do for vehicle tax.
Most government websites do use the same frontend toolkit (a rare win for UK governmental IT) but front completely separate systems.
No they don't. If they breach the health system, they don't have access to tax returns.
Just because people are identified by a single ID number doesn't mean all their data is being stored on the same server. And for purely organizational reasons, that's incredibly unlikely to happen.
And I don't know what you mean by "steal your identity". People's names are date of birth are generally a pretty unique identifier already. It doesn't really matter if systems use that or a single ID number to identify you, or if hackers look you up by your name.
Has cybercrime been rendered obsolete with a government credential? Why is this master account immune to theft? On the contrary, it appears to be a credential that once stolen, could be more impactful than having your primary email account and phone compromised.
It's reasonable to be concerned even just from an infosec perspective.
I'm trying to understand if it is speculative or if we have a base-rate for occurrence.
The subject was a system being breached.
And the account you set up for a driver's license is generally different from the one for your health care. If you're reusing the same password for both it doesn't matter if they're linked by the same digital ID number or the same email address or just the same name and birthday.
A digital ID number isn't changing anything here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-digital-id-scheme-to-...
> Digital credentials will be stored directly on people’s own device
This is a credential you show. It's visual. It's not a login password.
Perhaps it is time for the Greek to dust off their guillotines.
The cows are long since out of the barn on "don't collect a giant database of everyone's personal information"
b) Many people are extremely angry about immigration. They very much want the government to control "where and with whom [certain other people] work, live, play"
American companies, whilst pulling off some seriously unpleasant capatalistic practices, haven't committed genocide at least!
How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited in several years. If the idea is that a digital ID authorizes employment ... well I hope people can see the problem, here.
The Labour government has realised that whatever their own feelings are about people coming to the UK by irregular means and claiming asylum, they need to be seen to recognise the popular narrative right now that the boats must be stopped, and be seen to be taking action.
So I don't think the immediate state goal right here is likely to be anything deeper than desperately trying to head off Nigel Farage, who is capturing a lot of public discourse about this 'crisis'.
The ‘small boats’ narrative is ludicrously over-reported here. It’s such a clear case of those with most of the resources scapegoating those with none of the resources as the cause of everyone else’s problems.
> unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters
Farage is polling ahead of both major parties at the moment. That support came from somewhere. To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue. Why have they turned to someone like that? Most likely they feel their own lives and prospects getting worse and in their dissatisfaction have turned to an easy answer, someone who promises to change everything and blame the outsider. To put it starkly, reductively even, you don't get nazis when everyone feels like their life is on the up and up. Well not many anyway.
The mainstream of UK politics needs to get to grips with (perceived?) worsening standards of living and failing services, and actually take action that makes people's lives better. Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air. It's not really a wonder to me that a sizeable minority are looking outside of that, or are getting frustrated that they can't get a doctor's appointment or the roads are falling apart. It's all too easy for Fartrage to say - look over there!
Speaking from the other side of the pond, we can say quite confidently that the solution is not electing someone who will make reckless, bold moves. The brain trust here voted against “ambitionless, measured improvements” and for that, we got a chaotic circus.
I think this is part of why Brexit got through as well, some people felt it was a way to shake up a crusty, unresponsive establishment. That didn’t go so great!
"Freeze Non-Essential Immigration. Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception" - Reform manifesto page 5.
The main thing Farage supporters are voting for is to see fewer Muslims and brown people and Pakistanis and Africans, and the main thing Farage is doing is stirring up is racist hate and division; Reform's own manifesto tells their supporters that they will still be seeing an awful lot of foreigners under a Reform government.
If their lives were looking good, if government services weren’t a mess, and if they perceived the government was actually changing things for the better, reform would have a hard time finding suckers to vote for them.
The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled. But beyond that, reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline.
It has to be tackled even though it won't fix the things the supporters want fixed, because they're doing a surface level reaction. Your earlier comment opened with "To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue"; "blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers" is the populist bastardry, it's not a surface take to say what people are actually doing.
If you'd tried to argue that people are liking Reform's plans to scrap thousands of EU laws, cancel HS2, roll back labour protection laws, cancel ULEZ zones and give more kids asthsma, scrap 20mph zones except "where safety is critical" (because some pedestrian deaths are less important than car drivers driving everywhere they like as fast as they like), encourage smaller landlords (because housing will be better when the wealthy own more houses), etc. then you could say voting for Reform wasn't a surface take. How many Reform supporters are switching because of their pledge to bring in "online delivery tax at 4% for large, multinational enterprises"? Who thinks "Cut A&E waiting times with a campaign of ‘Pharmacy First, GP Second, A&E Last’" will put the Hope back into Land of Hope and Glory? And how many are acting along the lines of "Nigel hates the people we hate! he will hurt the right people!"?
> "reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline."
So far in this government, that's feeling very a very remote and unlikely future.
Yep, because it has become a public embarassment, it's very present in all the news coverage, and the government have promised to get a handle on the situation but haven't. If they don't get it in hand the press and opposition will continue to use it as a club to beat them with. Like as not this is now a large political issue in the UK. Yougov polls suggest that around 70% of the UK public now have negative views of people crossing in small boats -
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WTZfT/3/
But look beyond that (and the generic "people coming to work illegally" category). The support for 'populist bastardry' against the wider category of immigrants drops off substantially. So yes, a government wanting to stay in power in the UK is probably going to have to do something to reduce at least the perception that people are entering the UK this way, but they won't need to follow through and go 'full Farage' to placate a lot of the public.
> because they're doing a surface level reaction
Yes? Have I claimed anywhere that the reactions of the general public in this matter are rational, sensible, moral, or really anything other than misplaced and misdirected anger about the decline of their own circumstances? I think you'll find I even called them "suckers".
Don't mistake me for someone that thinks anything about Reform is reasonable or a good plan. It's fucking shocking.
> it's not a surface take to say what people are actually doing.
That's pretty much the definition of 'surface take' I'd go for. To be other than surface you need to look at motivations and beyond that the actual causes of the behaviour.
The poster I replied to and accused of having a surface take was saying Labour won't win many Farage supporters by tackling the small boats because the supporters are only interested in populist bastardry. Firstly, the figures above show us it's far from only Farage supporters who have views on this specific issue. Secondly, that's not all that Farage supporters are interested in.
For example look at this info on what reform supporters believe - https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49887-what-do-reform-...
Yes, there is a lot of populist bastardy of the "bring back hanging!" variety in there, including literally that. But there are also signs of wider disaffection and some quite left-wing views -
"Rich people in the UK are able to get around the law or get off more easily than poorer people"
"Big businesses in the UK take advantage of ordinary people"
"Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation's wealth"
"Utilities like energy, water and railways should be run in the public sector"
"Rich people in the UK should be taxed more than average earners"
> If you'd tried to argue that people are liking Reform's plans...
I would be very surprised if most Reform supporters had the first clue what the party's actual plans are, beyond the headline of deporting immigrants.
> So far in this government, that's feeling very a very remote and unlikely future.
I very much agree, which is why I'm coming to the sad conclusion that Farage is quite likely to be the next PM.
tl;dr - Reform support is a symptom of mass disaffection and perceived decline in living standards. But Labour are backed into a corner and have to stop the boats regardless.
For example, Denmark created the highly criticized "Smykkelov" in 2016 which lets us confiscate any values asylum seekers have over 10.000 DKK (e.g. jewelry as the name says, but never actually used for jewelry just cash) in 2016. It has been hardly used (10 times in the first 3 years), but it had enormous press coverage. The largest left party (and the party of current PM) voted for it.
The previously largest nationalist party (DF) have never been in power, despite existing for 30 years and getting 20+% of the vote in 2015 -- at most they were a support party to the right-wing government.
What's Labour's plan when the boats are stopped and Reform progresses to "round up and deport all the brown people"? They are never going to out-anti-immigrant the anti-immigrants, all they will achieve is losing the left-wing vote.
I'm not sure if they end that route that they would need to out-anti-immigrant the anti-immigrants any further, but in the current climate they will need to be able to make the case that the country can decide who comes in, and that migration is to the benefit of everyone, migrant or not.
Again, it doesn't really matter if it's an actual problem, it is an important enough perceived problem that they need to be able to show they have a grip on it and are running the show in the interests of the average Brit on the street.
Then to really put the issue to bed, they'll need to do something about the failing services and general feeling of decline in the UK. As I said in response to a sister comment - you don't get many nazis when people feel their lives are going well. It's not so concerning if some out group is getting a slice of the cake if you feel you're getting yours too. It's when your slice seems to get a little smaller every day that you start looking for scapegoats.
Of course the other question is - will they actually lose the left wing vote? Or would they win it back?
Opinion polls in UK politics (from what I've heard on the radio) put the politics of 'Reform' voters left of centre - they're keen on renationalising rail, water and electricity for a start. All solid left-wing ideas outside of immigration policy, that you'd usually expect to hear from Labour supporters.
Worst I knew for sure of a specific country which had no databases of who was currently imprisoned, with inmates just walking out. Yes, it is that bad.
At the end it can just be viewed as an IT problem, the same way most corporations have multiple CRM and have been working on "a 360 view of their customers" for decades. Even most licensed, audited banks have those types of error margins if you really asked them to provide a clean list of their clients.
So all we hear about Digital IDs is a marketing term for the new version of that database they are working on.
A lot of countries were already collecting fingerprints when issuing IDs decades ago. But those projects fails like most CRMs.
So now the UK and others are arresting people for Facebook posts because it is actually a good database. Probably way better than their actual fingerprints or criminals databases.
I am not sure if you should be terrified or just not care about those announcements.
In lots of countries you need a specific right to work, and people who are on holiday visas or who are making asylum applications, or have simply entered the country without the right to do so, are not allowed to work.
Some consider these restrictions themselves to be a problem.
Currently, employers in the UK are legally required to check the right-to-work status of people they employ. This is usually done with a random assortment of ID documents and visa status checks. The proposal (I think) is to replace this and other functions with "Britcard", a digital ID system.
So another problem might be that government security schemes are usually pretty bad.
And a further one could be that there's little to stop (say) an asylum applicant from 'borrowing' someone else's britcard-enabled phone to sign on and work Uber Eats illegally, which is one of the issues that they are allegedly trying to tackle.
Beyond that ... sure there's massive privacy implications etc etc.
So yeah, which problem did you have in mind?
Most of EU and many other countries have something like that, at least you have a citizenship or resident number that they can check against to see what's your situation.
In UK though, everything is run over proof of address and it's quite annoying for new immigrants(legal or not) because its circular. You can't have anything that can be used as proof of address without having proof of address already. At some point you manage to break circle by first having something that doesn't require proof of address but it is serious enough to be accepted as one, i.e. I know people who were riding the tube without tapping in so that when they are caught the government will send them a letter about their fine and they can use the letter to open a bank account.
The Turkish version is both great, annoying and terrible.Great because you can do all your government stuff and some other stuff like see your full medical history, make an appointment etc or managing your service subscription(water, electricity, cable. GSM etc) from the government portal. Annoying because whatever you buy beyond groceries now they are asking for your ID number and all purchases are becoming a chore. Terrible because these systems are regularly hacked and all your private data is online for sale and some even run an API to access your govt stuff live.
It works fine to manage legal immigration, you give the immigrants the ID so the can have their subscriptions etc. Once they are no longer wanted you know where to find them and make providers cut them off. It doesn't work for illegal immigrants because since they can't register to anything they end up just asking a friend to start them a subscription or pay extra to have some employee start them a subscription that in the records look like its for the employee.
The circular issue is quite similar to Spain. Where in order to obtain residency you need an address. But for being able to rent, most likely you’ll need a bank account and ideally a Spanish identification number. But for having a local bank account you need an address.
Similar to the above. This needs to be broken in order to get residency.
My experience in a few European countries was also circular, the only thing that helped was that I could use the work contract and a letter from HR to break the cycle, however this naturally only works when the job is already secure before coming into the country.
But many services and people might ask you to show physical NIE. And also without address you’ll be able to open a foreigner bank account which is different than local.
Bunq solved this issue for quite a few Western European countries, thankfully.
And no EU country has any illegal immigration thanks to the ID card
/s
So it's unclear how a digital ID solves anything in regarding the proof of address.
They already ask you for a "share code" which they then verify on the Home Office website. What does the Digital ID add to that?
"Once we chewed them up we spit them out"
It's presumably harder to forge a cryptographic signature than paper documents? Not saying it's a good tradeoff. But executed competently, it makes sense in theory.
So currently at least, a good forged passport will work everywhere except on e-gates. Although on the other hand actually procuring for example a decent forged polycarbonate passport (which most new EU passports are) is next to impossible, the printing techniques used require such expensive machinery that criminals simply don't have access to them.
I've held probably thousands of forged passports, never seen a decent polycarbonate one. Perfect EU id cards you can find everywhere, a lot of them still printed on Teslin.
Unless there is both serious pressure from the state and the population at large supports a massive increase in checking and being checked I struggle to see this working.
During the pandemic various countries experimented with mandating showing of QR codes to do stuff to "prove" compliance ... yet looking back on that, all it seems to have done is accelerate the erosion of trust in politicians and systems of government :/
Someone who is prepared to pay people smugglers to help them cross a border illegally may not choose to restrict themselves to working in "the formal economy".
"Illegal working and streams of taxis - BBC gains rare access inside asylum hotels"
For criminals it is already essentially impossible to forge new polycarbonate documents. Acquiring them by defrauding the application processes remains easy however.
Of course, if the person checking doesn't know what the real document feels like in their hand, whether it's real polycarbonate or a shit laminated TESLIN fake makes little difference.
Proper border checks prevent illegal immigration.
The digital ids are introduced for other reasons - this is something Tony Blair has been pushing for a long time.
IDs (along with verification laws) discourage employers from hiring unauthorized immigrants, and without access to gainful employment, many will opt to return to their country of origin, or choose not to come in the first place.
And frankly, if you believe this is actually about immigration then I’m embarrassed for you. Everyone can see that they’re just using the current crisis an excuse to ram through the unpopular thing that they've wanted for decades.
It won’t stop the boats.
Whether or not these laws are actually enforced is another matter. [Insert obligatory reference to Turkish barbershops]. But I've been asked to show ID at every job I've ever had, so companies obviously care about it even if the risk is low.
[0] source: https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/expert-comme...
Is the implied assertion that the majority of Turkish traders are operating illegally?
They're certainly suspicious: all across the country, high street retailers are going bust, and yet somehow all these barbershops, nail salons, takeaway joints etc are staying in business, able to afford prime commercial real estate even though you never see anyone in there getting their hair cut or their nails done.
I don't know why the Turks in particular are being singled out, but that's the meme. The "American Candy Stores" in London are another famous example.
There's an old saying where I'm from that the barbershop is the safest line of work because everyone needs their hair cut.
Where I am, admittedly in the Netherlands but I grew up in the UK and haven't noticed a huge difference, nail salons are always quite full when I pass, and I see food delivery drivers almost every time I look out the window. Similarly the barbers always seem to have clients. Could be the time of day you look?
Just going to throw it out there that it's a bit disconcerting to see these kind of criminal stereotypes associated with a certain people on HN.
A big source of illegal immigration is visa overstay (https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/un...), which ID can solve by tracking the visa status.
There are benefits to UK citizens, such as being easier to open a bank account and to comply with Voter ID laws.
Then they come up with even more papers for us, and the argument for it is that it's now a benefit that we can more easily comply with Voter ID laws.
Bugger off with that. Don't talk to me about any "benefit" in relation to voter ID that isn't abolishing it.
I don’t disagree at all, however we are where we are. The laws were introduced by a different government in a failed bid to maintain power by disenfranchising voters less likely to have ID.
That being said, we are where we are and having government-provided ID is a benefit in that context.
Yes. The rules are complex, and currently the government essentially deputizes employers and banks to enforce them; anyone running e.g. a restaurant is having to essentially guess whether a potential employee is in the UK legally or not, on pain of criminal charges if they get it wrong in one direction and discrimination lawsuits if they get it wrong in the other.
I hate the UK surveillance state as much as anyone, but one-stop ID verification managed by the government is honestly less bad than the current patchwork. The banks are already "voluntarily" sharing everyone's identity information with the government, without any of the legal checks and balances that would apply to an official system.
> If the idea is that a digital ID authorizes employment ... well I hope people can see the problem, here.
Stop vagueposting. If you have something to say, say it.
I don't get this. Is there nothing like some sort of number to register any tax withholding or the like? I imagine that tax authorities and immigration authorities don't actually cooperate together (and for good reason!) but my impression for places like the US is that you really do have to provide some sort of number provided by the government for most kinds of employment.
Unless of course you're just not trying to pay payroll taxes I guess?
There are countries where each citizen has one unique identifier (Sweden's "personnummer", Denmark's CPR).
The UK is definitely not one of those! [yet]
Instead there are many different identifiers, each for a different purpose, and stored in different systems which almost certainly don't talk to each other.
Just for starters: NHS number for healthcare, National Insurance number for social security and pensions, Unique Taxpayer Reference for tax, Passport (with a number that changes when you renew your passport), Driving licence (with a "number"[alphanumeric] which stays constant even when you renew)...
Multiple overlapping identifiers... and I may have missed some :)
Here’s what employers need to do currently: https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work
There is, but it's not tied to any strong identity verification process, and so there's a thriving fraud where unemployed citizens will rent out their numbers to working illegals. It's not something that the tax office has ever really worried about, since if anything it tends to increase the amount of tax paid (if several people are sharing the same tax ID they'll pay a higher tax rate), and while they might bat an eye at someone with 5 different salaried jobs it's not particularly suspicious when it's gig economy work.
The wrinkle is that it doesn't seem to be tied well to identity. Someone working illegally can provide an NI number that's legit but not theirs. Their work accrues to someone else's NI record, but the person getting the extra years probably never notices and the person working under their NI number doesn't care because they aren't entitled to a state pension anyway, they just want to work now.
No idea how that would solve anything illegal though and realistically, I don't think they do either.
But anyway, you can just get utilies and pay with foreign account. This gets you an utility bill.
It does not. That is not what this is for. It is just how they are selling it to the public. Just like with age verification for porn sites to supposedly protect the children or how they limit your cache and financial transactions to supposedly fight money laundering and financing terrorism(what a joke).
It's all about monitoring and controlling citizens offline and online to gain full control over their lives. Yes, it sounds Orwellian and no, it is not a joke.
Digital wallets and money comes next. This way the government will be able to actually control your behavior.
Why do they do that? Why not. It makes their lives easier as they do not have to be accountable to the people that voted for these public servants to manage the country and instead can push unpopular agendas by their puppeteers whom have private agendas of their own that usually, essentially always, goes against the well being of the population and nation itself.
Politics has not changed since we first discovered fire. This is nothing new. We just have better technology.
You know, coincidentally.
(Oh, hold on I guess it helps with immigration numbers because people won’t want to put up with this bullshit.)
If your new hire is a British or Irish citizen, you ask for their passport on their first day and retain a photo/scan. In most cases this means that a layperson has to verify that the (possibly foreign) document is genuine, but I don’t think fake passports are a statistically meaningful problem.
If they have a visa or, probably most likely in recent years, EU right to remain, they will have a share code for online verification. That takes you to a page with their details and a passport-style photo that you can download as PDF for your records.
Identifying whether someone has the right to work has never been a problem. If somebody is working illegally, it’s because the employer is either knowingly employing them illegally, or doesn’t care/bother to check (or even know that they’re legally required to do so – a perennial problem with early stage startups in London, in my experience).
That says if you don't you need a birth certificate and an official letter showing a national insurance number. I guess the new thing would substitute for that?
No but if you don't have it then you can't show it.
Remember that the "problem" is that it can be used as a political tool by outside parties like Reform. It helps this problem by allowing the Prime Minister and others to appear on TV pointing to strong measures they're implementing. The efficacy of the measures is beyond the attention span of someone watching the headlines.
It doesn't. The kind of employer who would employ an illegal immigrant is certainly not going to ask to see ID of any kind. They would surely be especially wary of any electronic ID because that would make it easier to associate them with the immigrant. ID cards are only of any use to legal workers and honest employers.
If the UK wants the benefits of a solid ID it should look to Scandinavia. In Norway everyone has a unique number in the population register and this ID is your user ID for all state services. Employers can ask for this number and look you up. Of course it still doesn't prevent people working on the black for cash in hand but neither will an ID card or ID app.
There is no appetite for ID cards in Norway either, yet successive governments keep pushing the idea despite there being no compelling reason to believe that any problems will be solved by them.
If you root your phone and install apps, your apps can do anything and spy all they want.
So the comment still makes zero sense.
OP was arguing that unrooted phones are somehow less safe, which is absurd.
A National Insurance Card (needed to get a job), drivers license and passport, one of latter is also needed (in practice) to get a job.
Why would a brit card help us reduce the number of people working illegally?
The only notable 'employers' of illegal workers in the UK are American tech firms Uber and deliveroo (doordash) because they allow driver substitution without verifying that the substitute is legit. That should be made illegal and then fine them into the ground for anyone who slips through. Brit card doesn't help and is a distraction.
Edit - I mean, just play it back in your head. The PM is probably watching small boat arrivals and reform polling numbers like a hawk. And here's his idea to fix both problems, and you're saying, actually no, the PM is just doing this to get data on where I go to work, even though they already have my PAYE details
I beleive that Labour see this new ID system as the solution to all the age verification questions now required by the Online Safety Act. e.g. access to things like Reddit, BlueSky messaging, Spotify.
With that in mind I think new data you're talking about will be enhanced tracking and monitoring on everyday online activity of UK citizens.
I honestly understand the problem with immigration, but at the same time, I think this way of approaching the problem is just to create "the enemy" from 1984.
It seems that immigrants right now move something between 4B-10B a month in UK which is not a small number. Considering the costs elsewhere altogether, it seems quite small win for the risk.
This ignores the fact that most of Europe and Asia already have national IDs
At the same time, I wonder how will they deal with people wearing burkas, masks, balaclavas etc
Ok maybe you deliver by push bike.. but if you arrived here legally you will have a passport? If you didn't you ergo don't have the right to work here?
Welcome to your future.
Thankfully, although not even close to EU data protection there is some and this was deemed irregular for now.
Attention for the word "irregular". They will take maybe few more years to turn it onto regular. It is not illegal which is bonkers.
A NI number is not ID, it's a reporting number.
Lastly, a national ID is a tried and tested scheme in many, many countries and brings a lot of positives. The only "negatives" are slippery slope make-believe scenarios not based in reality.
I don't really understand why I need a Fourth (or Fifth)! National ID?
I don't really get the point on reporting number, true, but it's also a UID linked to a passport or birth certificate.
Your NI card literally says it's not identification. A NI number is not linked to a passport as it's not mandatory to have a passport, so that would not work for many people. It is just a number used for tax accounting.
That's not true either. You're sent your NI number just before 16 years old without providing anything.
Also, an NI number is just a number. There is no photo. How can you look at it and say it belongs to the person presenting it? And no you can't look up a passport or something in another system based on the NI number, because those other IDs aren't mandatory so the person might not have them.
The only way to really ID someone is to have mandatory photo ID, whether that be digital or not.
I think it would be simpler to repeal the ID requirement for voting. I don't believe there is any evidence of widespread voting fraud, so it adds unnecessary cost. I certainly wouldn't try to sell the ID as preventing illegal work, which is obviously ludicrous.
This policy would absolutely sail through, with no controversy at all, if it had just been "free passports for all" reusing all the existing rules, existing IT and existing bureaucracy; and "Optional digital passport on your phone" for those who want that.
Why they're doing this in the most expensive, unpopular way possible - I have no idea.
Anchoring proof of citizenship is going to become a very obnoxious problem going forward if there is not a population register or universal ID system introduced, as you'll have to go back however many generations it takes to reach birth before 1983.
I think the UK and Ireland are the only countries in the entire world that have non-birthright citizenship and no citizenship register, which is a less than ideal combination.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
I don't exactly know what you mean by citizenship register but I can't imagine it's hard to workout who is a citizen and who isn't.
It’s therefore a lot harder to prove citizenship for an initial passport application in certain circumstances than you might expect. You need to prove that you have an unbroken link of people born in the UK to someone born before 1983, and as time goes on that will mean even more generations. Right now you typically need to provide your birth certificate, up to 2x parents birth certificate, and up to 4x grandparents birth certificates.
In many other countries the birth certificate will have the person numbers of the parents, which will mean there’s essentially guaranteed to be a record of the citizenship of the parents that the state can check. Alternatively there’s a national ID scheme that helps bootstrap this information early in life.
This is an exaggeration. There are countless examples of how this has played out in the past, a quick google search will yield many of them[1][2][3].
The point is that any kind of data collection by a government can and will (eventually) be misused and abused. The UK government is currently abusing its powers to access Facebook and Whatsapp private messaging to arrest regular people for words (i.e not CSAM)[4].
This particular national ID introduction has about as much to do with illegal workers as the Online Safety Act has to do with protecting children.
1. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/rearvision/the-dark-s...
2. http://www.preventgenocide.org/edu/pastgenocides/rwanda/inda...
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/04/24/s...
4. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
You don't need the card itself in order to get a job, just the number. In this respect it's rather like an American social security card. (I know some US employers will ask to see the card, but that's not a legal requirement: https://www.ssa.gov/employer/SSNcard.htm)
If it's the former, then it means it's now mandatory for all British citizens to become customers of the Google/Apple duopoly LOL
Furthermore, a constitution is generally more difficult to change than a law. The Human Rights Act can be repealed by a simple majority of MPs voting to repeal it.
– July 2024
"Asked about the possibility of introducing digital ID cards, Mr Reynolds [then Secretary of State for Business and Trade, now Chief Whip] told Times Radio: "We can rule that out, that's not something that's part of our plans.""
– July 2024
I also don't trust them not to make a complete hash of all this, removing all potential utility while simultaneously increasing the chances of my ID being stolen.
sigh
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/support-for-th...
IMO this is a gimmick and probably won't have much effect either for good or bad. I would vote against it given the chance. But there aren't that many British people who feel especially strongly about this.
Unfortunately the British people are rarely given a chance to vote and even more rarely listened to.
But being critical of your leaders isn't the worst thing in the world. It's fairly bipartisan too; most of the people who voted for our current PM just a year ago now disapprove of him. A high level of public scrutiny on one's leaders' is probably quite effective at preventing totalitarianism. Whatever can be (often justifiably) said about our ineffective leadership, what we do have is a good track record for stability.
However, sometimes it's really just cynicism for cynicism's sake.
So it's mandatory for everyone except old people and the unemployed. It will almost certainly also be mandatory for renting, which has the same check. Then it will gradually seep into everything else: benefits and pensions, to cover the categories not initially covered. Then police spot checks and ICE sweeps.
Sorry old boy, but what have the *UK* Institute of Civil Engineers got to do with this?
We have the border force, and they aren't allowed to cover their faces, yet.
But to your point, its required to have some sort of ID for renting, job or voting _already_ the difference here is there is a digital version of it.
The other thing is that driving licenses are also ID, that carry a £10k fine for not keeping your address up to date.
It's strange how last time I campaigned against ID cards 25 years ago, none of those requirements were in place. Voter ID in particular is a very recent idea imported from the US (and of course doesn't apply to postal votes, where there are actually real concerns about security and diversion).
Just like nearly everybody's medical privacy has been given away in the UK.
Like nearly everybody's rights are unenforceable because they can't pay the enormous costs of a court action.
British freedom is great if you can afford it.
Surely it will be possible to also store it on some government-issued, GCHQ-vetted digital device, and not rely on foreign companies (Google/Apple) and their locked-down mobile platforms?
I will be very surprised if the app does much more than dish up a pre-signed chunk of ID data, much like an e-passport does now. It won't actually need a secure device.
(Which isn't to say they will support anything except android and iphone.)
Requiring me to spend another $100 or so on a phone seems like pretty small potatoes, compared to what they intend to use the device for. I'm not saying I'd like it, but it's a detail, not the main issue.
That's only because you have those tens of thousands to give it. The same will not generally be true for people who have nothing.
Whenever you hear someone say, "everyone has a phone these days", you must push back against that. It might seem like it to them but it's just not true. I've always chosen to point out that it isn't true because I was worried that one day, it would be become a legal requirement to own one. It seems that day has arrived, in the UK at least.
I'm a little in disbelief that I will soon be legally required to own one of these things.
It's backed by gov.uk one login, which is already a database that contains a fair chunk of the populations' details.
To me, it feels like the digital id is more a case of joining existing things together than creating something brand new from scratch.
Also, seems to be intended to be mandatory and require a smartphone. Hows that going to work?
Also, what happens when the database is inevitably stolen?
They could stop them in a week if they actually wanted to.
Australia did exactly this (in the face of howling opposition) and it worked: illegal boat arrivals dropped from ~20,000 per year to almost zero. Thousands of people used to drown attempting the crossing, now no-one drowns. There's your moral case.
Legally, Parliament is sovereign. If the current legal framework doesn't allow it, change the law. Except they won't, because they don't want to solve the problem and they use the law as an excuse as if they aren't the fucking government.
What would you do if an individual can't be deported because no country will accept them? Or if their country of origin is likely to kill or torture them? Or if no commercial carrier is willing to risk operating to that country? Would you be willing to deport unaccompanied children with no guarantee that they'd be cared for?
There is a village A dragon comes to the village every year. In exchange for 2% of the children, it spares the rest and promises its “magical” protection from unseen enemies. This arrangement has lasted 2,000 years. Most villagers worship it, even though the custom has left their village far worse off than others in the land.
Some villagers move away. Not all of them are dragon-worshippers, but some are and they still try to summon the dragon.
Now the dragon free villagers face a choice:
Keep them out. But that means some innocent children among them will die.
Let them in. Risk the cult spreading again inside the walls and possibly bringing the dragon back.
Go kill the dragon themselves. Accept substantial casualties including innocent dragon worshippers and some of their own people.
Killing the dragon would mean temporarily brutal treatment of the worshippers and the destruction of their culture, but it would spare future generations from an unbounded amount of suffering.
Otherwise, I can only assume the trade offs are too uncomfortable (cognitive dissonance, you're a gentle soul!) or it’s a bad-faith feint to shift the burden while posing as “too rational” to engage.
No analogy is perfect. The question is whether the trade off it illustrates applies. Engage with that.
The humane option is still available. It’s not too late to take it. But if you keep refusing it, don’t complain when you get something else.
They're the ones who make the laws?
I'm not saying it doesn't need addressing or isn't serious, but I think it's a convenient topic for politicians. It's a lot more media-friendly than the arrivals queue at Luton Airport. And the illegal immigrants aren't the ones putting pressure on NHS, housing market or train driver unions.
0.8m is like on the average a whole county in the UK, and such massive influx would destroy the housing- and job market. Not to mention pressure on schools and healthcare.
I am an immigrant myself but I start to think that such policies are short-sighted. The end result is often fragmentation of the society, because immigrants rarely truly integrate, and at some point they become the majority, and then you're effectively a minority in your own country. It takes at least two generations for newcomers to become fully integrated, and that assumes things going right.
The 37k small boats migration is very small in comparison. Plus there's illegal immigration not via small boats - overstayed visas etc.
Hence my point that the overfocus on small boats crossings seems misplaced to me.
Even then, what fraction of all asylum seekers comes via small boats, vs other means? I believe the UK is entirely within its right to send small boats asylum seekers back to France, since it is a safe country. International conventions on asylum seekers state this - you are not entitled to drive thru the whole of Europe then demand asylum specifically in the UK.
I don't want to come across as uncaring, I'm sure there are tragedies that drive people to doing this, that doesn't mean the UK has to also mismanage the process on its side.
Looking forward though, about 90% of those arriving in small boat crossings are currently going on to seek asylum and the average annual cost of supporting an asylum seeker during their claim has risen to an estimated £41k, so for ~30k arrivals this year, the financial cost of not processing these claims promptly could increase that overall annual bill further still.
Also, in the first year of processing, costs may be drawn from the overseas aid budget (which was recently shrunk). This results in possibly 1/5 of the overseas aid budget being used for costs associated with processing asylum claims, which perhaps doesn't match most people's expectations as to what overseas aid should be used for.
I think that's why even though the number of people involved in these crossings is small compared to net migration, it has a big financial impact.
If only someone could come up with a brilliant idea which might allow them to make a long-term contribution to the economy far in excess of the cost of processing their asylum applications...
But the new form of ID makes work place checks real easy and fast.
Add a real hefty fine for the owner and possibly ban from conducting any form business for a few years, that will have undoubtedly have effect.
This is a proposal at a party conference, not law. Previous initiatives along these lines have not come to pass, and this is unlikely to as well.
Expect universal rejection by the tories, lib dems and reform in parliament, purely because it’s a Labour initiative, and expect plenty of Labour MPs to disobey the whip.
From the BBC this morning:
“Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch calls it a "desperate gimmick", while the Lib Dems fear it would force people to turn over their private data”
If it does somehow get beyond the commons, expect lords to quash it.
I give this about a 20% chance of actually coming to pass.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/digital-id-ca...
No, it won't be mandatory in all situations all at once, for every facet of life (I did not specify employment).
Or are those things somehow related? I would be crazily scared to know that immigrant care workers will leave NHS as most hospitals relies on them. The government already made clear they won't pay people more nor will give more benefits for NHS workers and I am quite sure not Brits will take those spots when Tesco express pays more for less hours of work with more benefits.
This minimises the problem. The UK voters have consistently voted for reduced immigration, with polls showing the preferred number to be somewhere between 0-100,000. Those elected have consistently ignored them which has raised tensions.
In the last few years, the UK had around 1 million people net per year. 1 million people is bigger than most cities in the UK for comparison, so imagine a new city of people, every single year. The infrastructure could not, or did not keep up and has contributed to worse living standards through overly-subscribed national services, increased living costs, etc.
>for example the lack of funding of the NHS or the hyper funding of other initiatives such as war in Ukraine.
The NHS is already the single biggest expenditure of the UK's taxes. I remember it being more than 25% of the total budget. How much should be spent on the NHS? 50%? 90%?
The cost of defending democracy and freedom from a tyrannical Russia is also barely a drop in the bucket, while having huge meaning for many. Only 2% of the budget for the entire Armed forces, let alone just some support for Ukraine, compared to the 25+% on NHS. It's nothing.
Those figures relate to general immigration, which wouldn't be affected by ID schemes since people are given approval by the government to arrive and work in the UK. If the government wanted to reduce regular immigration, it could just decide to award less visas.
The ID scheme would only affect irregular immigration which is much lower (approx 50,000 a year by the governments stats, obviously hard to know how accurate that is, but much lower than 1 million[0]).
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-...
I must say I am not doubting nor being pedantic. I am indeed trying to have a conversation based on the facts and people I know. I would happily change my mind if I find reasons for that. At the same time, I would like to share my views which might give some perspective on my opinions.
Based on government figures I've saw, the annual economic contribution from skilled workers alone is estimated to range from 4 billion to gbp. Moreover, it's important to note that these skilled workers generally don't receive government benefits. Literally. They pay double on nurseries, they pay for NHS in advance, they do not have any financial government assistance at all, contrary to what people believe.
I do not understand what kind of problems they cause. Would you mind explain it to me? I am not being pedantic nor ironic. I want to understand what is the complaint?
I agree about drug dealers, rape gangs and etc, but they in the UK before and they will remain independently of the political changes regarding immigration.
Ten years and no settlement will only put away skilled workers as they will not be able to retire on time, nor have any financial safety as the UK only provides 8 weeks for them to leave after the contract termination.It also means spending more on health, education, and living, which is already a struggle.
Refugees receive £50 per week, which isn't enough for groceries and rent. The system is broken, but attacking another unrelated group does not seem to be the answer.
While I acknowledge that some individuals are abusing the system, I maintain that the overall impact is likely positive, especially when considering the near-zero population growth among native populations.
Who will pay for pensions 10 years from now? The money you pay now goes towards current pensions, and the government does not save taxes for future generations.
So 1 million people per year was the supposed peak, right? The actual numbers are definitely far lower than 5 million, I think.
More than that, NHS workers in hospitals are immigrants because no British person is insane to work for it under current conditions.
At the same time, no Brit wants to increase taxes even more to cover the costs of paying more for health.
A short-sighted solution will be another blow to the UK economy as the Brexit was. Well, they are being orchestrated by exactly the same folks.
This also bothers me because there's a clear conflict of interest. Trice is married to an editorial lead at The Telegraph and receives funding from Lloyds.
Not sure about Sky News and others, but I would not be surprised that some digging would lead to the same people.
There is a clear financial cost related to the war in Ukraine. Whether it is a fair cost or not is a moral and ethical point, which I think is an individual opinion. But there is a cost regardless. Money spent in war is money that will never ever come back at any proportion to its society.
I think saying "the NHS is underfunded" all day is just ignoring the other major issue: even when the NHS has funds, they squander most of them.
I don't think solving just one of them will solve the whole problem, but maybe solving the blatant corruption at the NHS's administrative level might improve their financial situation by virtue of the money not lining the pockets of the rich.
Cutting those places will put UK in even a worse place then after Brexit.
For sure there are sick people. Over any population there is a sample which is sick, but how much is it according to you or your sources?
I don't think, nor I have proof, but seems logical, that there will be many more healthcare workers than sick people.
The real mess is not about immigrants, I cannot blame them for the lack of investiment, training and planning over 20 years or more. If anything, I am grateful that if I go to a hospital they can admit me because there is AT LEAST enough people. It seem lack of character to change policies after asking people to come.
I lived in South London at the time and sent a letter to my MP to protest about the creation of a database state and increased surveillance, fundamentally changing the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the state.
About two months later I got a form response that started "Don't worry, it's not just an ID card, there will be a huge database behind it!"
Thanks. Way to show you didn't even read what I wrote.
I think in the intervening years that relationship has already fundamentally changed though. Privacy from government in most western countries seems to be something of a fading memory, it would be hard to make those same arguments in 2025.
Presumably the form for applying for benefits has a reasonably high bar for identifying the fact that you are in fact legally present in the country? Or how else do you imagine people living at "taxpayer's expense"? Just begging on the streets?
It's not actually particularly nice to live illegally.
> Isn't a larger issue the number of immigrants who are NOT contributing to the economy, living at taxpayers' expense
No one has yet mentioned illegal immigrants except you.
In any case it doesn't matter, since GP was specifically replying to:
> In my experience, immigrants have low paying jobs and regularly use cash to avoid paying taxes. Most have no sense whatsoever of cohesion with the country they live in and instead make groups of similar culture that don't really try to fit in.
They were simply giving their own opposite experience on the subject of immigrant wages and taxation, which is equally as valid.
If this thread was actually about illegal immigrants, both comments would be equally off topic. I find it interesting which one you decided to respond to.
What is the link between rape and immigration?
There is also a recent video of a girl wielding an ax and knife to protect her and her sister in Scotland [3]. She has been charged with brandishing weapons. Interestingly, the BBC has issued an article [4] claiming that it was a "Bulgarian couple" that the girls approached, and to not "spread misinformation." I am a researcher of Slavic languages, so I can tell you from watching the video in [3] that the accents featured in this video are not Bulgarian. I am not willing to stake a claim in what they actually are (someone else is welcome to comment).
Actually, I'm quite alarmed that the BBC is claiming this, as I generally consider the BBC reputable.
1 – https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd2rld9mj2o
2 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
Assuming statista is a legit data source.
If we wanted we could stop illegal immigration extremely fast – as you say we are an island so it's relatively easy to stop people arriving. We don't need drones. At the moment after the French have given life-jackets to the illegal migrants and their boats have set off into the British channel, the people smugglers will call the British coast guard and ask them to go pick up the migrants they're smuggling into the country. The UK coast guard then picks them up and escorts them safely to shore. From here the police will be waiting, not to arrest them, but to take them to their hotel and give them a hot meal. Shortly after this charities in the UK will give them phones (typically iPhones), clothes and bikes to get around. The government will also give them some spending money to spend in our towns and cities.
We obviously don't have to do any of this and ID cards wouldn't stop any of this. We choose to do this and this is why they come.
However between the various reports of migrant hotel stabbings, thefts, sexual assaults, and rapes of children, it's been discovered that some migrants have been working in the UK – primarily in the gig economy. All of the things I've said to this point are not deemed issues and the government has no intention in changing them, but the fact that a small percentage of the migrants coming here are working has caught the eye of our politicians who have stated very strongly that they would prefer the migrants coming here don't work. The digital ID cards will hypothetically help with this "problem"
It's hard to explain to people outside the UK how strange this place is. Most countries want a controlled immigration system and treat border security as a national security priority, and when they do allow immigrants into the country they almost always want them to work and pay their own way. The UK basically does the inverse of this. The explanation varies between some combination of letting hundreds of thousands of Afghans into the country is the right thing to do, to it's the law so there's nothing we can do about it.
Legal note:
This is not an anti-migration post. I am pro-migration.
Why shouldn't France give life jackets and boats to people who want to leave France?
British politician could try to strike a deal with the French to stop them helping individual who try to enter the UK illegally, but obviously it would only make sense for them to do that if the British were also trying to stop people entering the country illegally. Like you say, we can't expect the French to defend UK borders.
In regards to leaving the EU this wouldn't change the situation meaningfully, it would just allow for more cooperation in how illegal migrants are distributed across Europe. Like the UK, EU countries are also legally not allowed to deport Afghans. It's not as if the EU doesn't face similar problems.
The bigger issue is people not contributing to the economy. Let’s not peg laziness as an immigration problem because British people are equally lazy.
> The other complaint I often see is immigrants' failure to assimilate to British norms, language, and culture.
If we forced people to conform to British norms then we wouldn’t enjoy the variety of takeaways that Brits have enjoyed for decades. Which is ironic because a kebab is now considered a British norm for post drinking meals.
Plus it’s not as if British people are particularly good at integrating with other cultures. Most Brits can’t even speak a second language and don’t even attempt to learn the customs and language of any other countries they visit.
> People who complain about these things seem to often run into the UK's limitations on freedom of speech.
I think the opposite is the problem. People have been far too vocal about the mythical problems that immigrants bring and anyone who attempts to present actual facts gets shot down as “woke” or “leftard” etc.
We need to stop blaming other people for our own problems.
There's nothing wrong with a culture adapting over time without losing their identity, like your example of Brits deciding to add the kebab. But a small country can't preserve their identity when they are overloaded by so many immigrants coming in at once who FORCE their ways on their new home. Think of it as Push vs Pull, there's a difference.
Every country having a unique culture makes the world more interesting. Imagine how boring it would be if you saved up for a trip to Japan/Kenya/Chile/etc, only to find that almost everyone there was a white English-speaking American living the exact same lifestyle you have at home? Leftists would in that case be empathetic toward the remaining indigenous minority who feel their historic way of life was killed off against their will. Why should it be any different if you swap the country and nationalities in this example to what is happening in the UK?
I am an immigrant myself, and a fairly liberal one at that. But I made the effort to come to my new home legally and assimilate to the best of my ability. I'm not sure why I should hold others to a lower standard.
No. I’m arguing that people who say “people change their personalities to suit mine” are hypocrites.
> But a small country can't preserve their identity when they are overloaded by so many immigrants coming in at once who FORCE their ways on their new home. Think of it as Push vs Pull, there's a difference.
Citation required — for literally every part of that sentence.
> Every country having a unique culture makes the world more interesting.
Exactly my point as well.
> Leftists would in that case be empathetic toward the remaining indigenous minority who feel their historic way of life was killed off against their will. Why should it be any different if you swap the country and nationalities in this example to what is happening in the UK?
If you think a fraction of a percentage of people coming to the UK is suddenly going to change the identity of the entire country then you need to get out and explore more of the UK yourself.
> I am an immigrant myself, and a fairly liberal one at that. But I made the effort to come to my new home legally and assimilate to the best of my ability. I'm not sure why I should hold others to a lower standard.
The problem isn’t the suggestion. The problem is the entitlement.
I do think it’s courteous for people to make an effort to integrate. But it should also be their decision, not ours.
And that’s the crux of the problem.
Most of the time, the complains about immigration are unfounded scapegoating of people who are different. It’s got fuck all to do with facts. It’s just people who the government have failed, or people who feel entitled, being fearful of other people who are different. It’s literally just an unchecked primal instinct. And we need to grow past that as a species.
If I choose not to integrate, and to instead practice particularly illiberal approaches to women, for example, is that still my decision? If my culture uses rape and acid to control women, may I continue?
I'm picking on a particularly onerous difference between Western and MENA peoples that's been a flashpoint in the UK, from what I can see.
If immigration was purely unfounded scapegoating, and we all could simply talk about our heritage and share new foods in these borderless economic zones that used to be countries, why would there be articles like these popping up:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/05/disputed-or-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvnnj301l3o
Another debate probably reduced to a single bit of information between participants. Class based analyses on immigration are probably more telling, but there doesn't seem to be much available.
You’re now conflating culture with crime.
And are you honestly suggesting that other cultures have literally nothing to offer asides violent sexual offences?!
Ridiculous.
> If immigration was purely unfounded scapegoating, and we all could simply talk about our heritage and share new foods in these borderless economic zones that used to be countries, why would there be articles like these popping up
The first article is debunking headline claims about immigration. Ostensibly supporting my claims.
The second article is just a commentary of the government’s plans to deport.
Neither of them defend your position.
Assimilating doesn't mean changing one's personality. I'm still the same person I was before I came to the USA, but I respect that some things are customary and others are considered offensive. I know I'm expected to tip for services that in other countries would be considered insulting. Yet if enough immigrants refused to tip, it would become a stereotype that would create negative sentiment towards said immigrants because workers rely on that income.
> If you think a fraction of a percentage of people coming to the UK is suddenly going to change the identity of the entire country then you need to get out and explore more of the UK yourself.
I roadtripped across the UK earlier this year actually, spending time in 2 major cities and 4 small towns. The demographic shift over the last decade is immediately noticeable. It is multiple orders of magnitude more than you're making it out to be.
> I do think it’s courteous for people to make an effort to integrate. But it should also be their decision, not ours.
That's a matter of opinion, and perhaps not up to either you or me to decide whether it is right, but up to the % of citizens who will vote against immigration at the next election. Unchecked immigration is the top reason that western populations are shifting rightward. And this trend has evidently scared the Labour Party enough that they're finally preteneding to do something about it.
But let's say it is up to an immigrant to decide whether to integrate. What if their values are incompatible with the country's? If you move to the UK and take great offense over how people dress or their type of humor or their freedom of religion or their pub culture or whatever, why did you even move there? And if you then expect this entire sovereign nation (who is already doing you a favor by allowing you in) to change their ways to accommodate your beliefs, that is a hell of a lot more entitled than the other way around (the country expecting an individual to integrate as part of the terms of being let in).
There never has been unchecked immigration despite what various hard-right publications might say.
> to change their ways to accommodate your beliefs
Literally no one is advocating that the UK should change its culture to suit any beliefs of immigrants.
Being inclusive doesn’t mean we have to change our own culture. Unless, that is, you consider xenophobia a “cultural” problem. And if you do, then I don’t think changing people’s attitudes there is an unfair ask.
The real reason society is shifting rightwards isn’t directly due to immigration. That’s actually a symptom of the shift, not the cause.
The real reason is poverty and greed. The wealth gap is grown, the rich have gotten more greedy and the working class have gotten poorer. So people want change. The right promises change by scapegoating people who are different. And then the the poor vote for that change, without realising that they’re just voting for the institution that screwed them over to begin with. As evidenced by the fact that the wealthy largely also vote for the right.
You see this cycle over and over again in history throughout the world. Unfortunately it’s usually followed by war.
I do get your point, as an Indian who migrated to Canada, it’s one of my pet peeves where some of my relatives live in their enclave only, i.e. surround themselves with like minded Indians, but this is pretty ironic when it is coming from Brits.
No, this is not supported by any real evidence.
They could create a polite British form of ICE
I can think of few things the UK should do less than ape American attitudes to immigration currently.
You don't really need that - you can stand on the beach and watch.
The issue is more with the laws - we have human rights laws where you can claim asylum and a very slow and expensive legal system where almost no one actually gets send back. What the government should do is change the laws to something that agrees more with common sense.
Like it or not, our high-trust society is devolving into a low-trust society as the world opens up. Our defences must evolve -- and the current free-for-all needs to end.
Or must we absolutely must accept eg every Nigerian, Pakistani, Syrian, Afghan, Indian etc who has a fleeting desire emigrate, else our society will collapse?
Some of the digital ID proposal documents published by UK gov even bear the "Labour Together" stamp - Labour Together being the Israel-aligned "think tank" that McSweeney used for the illegal funds!
Wow straight out of the Tory playbook (see eg Rhys-Mogg "lying [down] in Parliament" to poison search results for lying to parliament). They are so incredibly similar
Having something like that is imo. a cornerstone for building out top notch digital governmental services, and I don't fault the UK for trying to get this in place.
That being said, I'm not convinced it will be that much of a blocker for illegal workers. I'm sure they will find a way around it.
Starmer has been ambivalent on ID cards (at least compared to Blair, who must think Xmas has come twice this year). Really the only reason this is being introduced is because it lets Labour look like they’re trying to tackle illegal immigration/employment/benefits-claiming.
Reform (led by Trump’s mini-me) is making political progress hand over fist by casting immigration as the root of all evil. I’m pretty certain this is Labour’s response. They don’t want the populist (otherwise known as “batshit insane”) policies Reform are proposing (“end all immigration, send all immigrants back home”) - but a more-moderate “you need to prove you’re entitled to work/live here/claim benefits” seems on-message to me.
So for once it might just be ok to take a politicians word at face value. This doesn’t preclude nefarious use later on, of course…
There is a real issue with immigration in the UK.
People want actual action on immigration, not gimmicks, not lies. The Conservatives were annihilated because their voters caught up with the fact that they were lying (talking tough while actually pushing immigration higher).
Those Digital IDs would do nothing against illegal immigration considering existing right to work and right to rent legal checks. It is clear and people see it, so see previous point. "you need to prove you’re entitled to work/live here/claim benefits" is already the case and has always been the case. He is copying the disastrous Conservative strategy to talk tough while doing nothing and in fact actually keeping immigration up.
There have been previous attempts to introduce ID cards. People have always been generaly against them and the most against them are probably those already supporting Reform UK or the libertarians on both sides. So he's only eroding the little support he has left (progressist liberals) while strengthening the opinion of those already against him. I was looking at the readers' comments on The Guardian and there are overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal. So if even them turn against Starmer he is well and truly toast.
Let’s see how it plays out…
This smells a lot of "think of the children" [0].
Govt surveillance? I'm much more worried by the ever increasing number of cameras in the streets rather than something similar to having a passport to prove who you really are.
At a traffic stop the police have the option to require you to present documents at a police station within seven days if they think something is fishy.
And people do seem to exist quite happily without formal identification. As someone who has always had a passport and driving license it was a bit of an eye-opener to me, but if you don't drive and don't travel, some folks just get by without.
So if there is a requirement to have a Britcard, and to present your 'Britcard' when stopped for any reason, then it is definitely a change.
That should only be for non-citizens, but I have no idea how you could prove that without documentation in the first place.
So for the vast majority of Americans, you probably have to be carrying ID at all times anyway, else you risk someone deciding you "might" not actually be a citizen.
If this same rule was enacted in the UK, there would be no place on the British Isles that would be excluded, as nowhere is more than 100 miles from the coast.
I thought it was also required to collect any type of government benefit too.
As an ex-Brit I am also used to carrying an ID and a drivers license, and I’ve always found it quite weird that you can’t get an ID card of any kind that isn’t a full-fledged passport or a drivers license.
I also don't live in the UK any more, still a brit and not yet Australian, but I have had to adjust to it being necessary to carry your license here when driving. It means I can't really leave home without my wallet, which is odd. We're getting electronic licenses before long though, hopefully.
I just have a magnetic wallet on the back of my iPhone with the two cards and my travel card, so I always have them. I don’t carry a physical payment card or cash so don’t need a wallet otherwise
Others like nsw are carry always
But I’m not 100% sure so I’m making sure I’m carrying just in case.
Source: I live there
Have also driven there for 15+ years and never been asked for my license.
Well, maybe the app will keep working and you can update it from Aurora Store. Pretty vague so far.
"In 2024, a significant portion of the UK adult population, approximately 8.5 million people (1 in 6), struggles with reading and writing at a basic level, according to The Reading Agency's 2024 report"
Maybe they'll have an exception for people who are more migratory in nature. In that event, I think we'll get to see a nice real-world example of a cyberpunk-style dystopia. "High tech, low life". The upstanding citizens will be surveilled, preyed upon by corruption, and will be running on a social credit score treadmill designed to work them to death. Meanwhile, a plucky band of rebel farm workers, who are free to work outside the system, will bring down the establishment and bring freedom to all. Roll credits.
Yet.
There's a lot of resistance to this because people can see this is the big pill they want you to swallow. Then smaller ones can follow.
You might need digital ID recorded to buy a house. Then a car. Then eventually pretty much anything.
Any legislation allowing the State to link systems via digital ID would be unremarkable and not newsworthy, but the end result could be the Panopticon we are all dreading, or perhaps a toolkit for more hardline governments in the future.
For now, you can sign a Petition [1] against the introduction of Digital ID. In the future, you may need to submit digital ID before signing such a petition (rather than the current email address validation). Imagine what a tool that could be for identifying dissenters and undesirables.
Possibilities get realised such as regular remote checks (ie selfie to prove you are the id owner holder, address proof, etc, flagging odd id holder behaviour or employer, etc). Currently, you cannot do this, no visibility into who works where and where that person even resembles the person meant to be working for [insert gig company].
The government absolutely knows where I work, are you joking? That's what NI numbers are for. You seriously think there isn't a join table in a government database with my NI number and passport number?
Who exactly are we solving for?
Simple. Overstaying or/and expired passport will lead to that. Valid status is not a fixed binary state. It is better described as a function of personal id, rights docs and current time. Currently, the checks are more akin to updating a Boolean column on rare occasions. Digital id countries do checks more like function calls that you can perform easily and quickly
When the driver signs up, check their passport or driving license in the normal manner, and take a matching portrait you keep on file. Any time you want to, compare a selfie to the portrait on file.
Reason they don't do this is it's profitable to hire people who can't legally work in the UK, if they can get away with it - and the government lets them get away with it.
A passport is the universal identity document. It's way too valuable to carry around and expediting a new passport is costly and slow. Checks need to be done in person and the passport holder needs to be told in advance about the check (so impromptu checks don't work and expired passports get through, also catching fake passports and the like is hard).
A digital ID as its name says is digital, checks can be done remotely (as often as you want) in a secure environment with physical checks possible in addition to that. Regular and unscheduled checks are possible with a digital id after the initial check both presential and remote. Online checks especially can cover for things like the same id being used in multiple places, it also means employers cannot fudge it as the actual repository of truth lies online. None of this is possible with a passport.
Citizen IDs and more recently digital IDs have been used in Europe for decades now. Having a redundant piece of ID is incredibly valuable.
What impromptu checks would you need this ID for? The use cases I've seen for it are to make sure you are legal to work, and when renting a house, both of which are circumstances that you can be told about beforehand
Think: the ability to verify that the id owner's face resembles the face of the id holder. The ability to check that the id owner address matches that of the id holder. The ability to flag employers containing id owner employees regularly failing those checks. The ability to do this regularly without previous notice to the id owner at national scale remotely or in person is a level of compliance you will never get even halfway with just using a passport number.
In times of war, civil liberties get curtailed. And in 2025 when Russian and Chinese bots are interfering in our democracy at an industrial scale to destroy our countries from within, the idea of identity being overlooked for all aspects of public life is looking increasingly untenable.
Or are you saying this electronic ID card will be linked to people's twitter accounts, to better police speech online?
This means when you want to implement things like the Online Safety Act you basically have to implement alternatives to ID verification like age estimators which isn't ideal (for the government anyway).
With a digital ID anonymous age estimators will no longer be required, so when someone is trying to watch porn or view footage of a political protest they'll have to identify who they are instead of using a fake AI face.
They don't have any real benefit over passports expect for the fact that a passport is a selectively issued document which not everyone living and working in the UK has access to or has applied for, but with digital IDs everyone will have one so there will no excuse to not identify yourself any time the government wants you to.
>How we will ensure it is available to everyone > > Millions of people in the UK lack access to traditional proofs of identity like passports. It is estimated that 10% of UK citizens have never had a passport, while 93% of adults own a smart phone. > > This means it can be difficult to prove your eligibility for services such as opening a bank account and claiming benefits. Digital ID will give you free, secure identity verification.
I get it, you're the government so double-speak is part of the deal, but it's like you're not even trying to make it sound convincing any more, and that scares me.
Putting aside the fact that the reason why some people don't have a passport is _not because it's difficult to get a passport ordered_, it still doesn't explain why having 2% more people who don't have a passport makes it easier to have this new solution -- let alone address the fact that some people do not have a smartphone!
^1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-id-scheme...
One thing is showing a passport to enter the gay bar, another thing is tap a phone and have time, person ID and bar ID recorded. Much faster. Also the mobile application can collect other data from the phone without distracting a user. So much more convenient.
Is this just going to be a cheeky kickback to Palantir given the investment last week: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-strategic-partnership...
My point: even if this was a good idea, it is easy to get the software wrong in a way that is a complete disaster.
Today it's immigrants, tomorrow it could be dissidents.
In East Germany a common strategy the government used was to not put dissidents in prison, but make life hard for them in many ways including by denying them employment.
Of course none of this stops under the table work - which those engaging in illegal work are probably already doing.
Do you see the flaw here!
> In designing the digital ID scheme, the government will ensure that it works for those who aren’t able to use a smartphone, with inclusion at the heart of its design.
They are considering enabling its use for more than just work, so what happens when my grandma forgets to charge her phone before her doctors' appointment?
What happens if you want to give teenagers a dumb phone because you as a parent decide a smartphone isn't appropriate, but they need the ID for the NHS too?
It's not just the elderly and homeless as mentioned on the page, but also those with religious objections, members of the digital disconnection movement, those concerned about electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and so on.
Should there a right to an offline life for the simple reason that you want live offline? A right which is protected in a few other places in Europe, at least to some extent when it concerns government services.
Which can be used to get everything else, thanks to ridiculous privacy laws in Sweden.
The government steps in solely to manage token issuance. New use cases appear as emergent properties. DebbiesDrawings.com lets you use your tokens to sign eCards. HMRC.gov.uk lets you use then to sign tax returns. RonsRentals.co.uk lets you use it to sign a new lease.
In a pessimistic world, without watching the hyenas closely we end up with Capita or Accenture or Concentrica or Syntegrico (I made the last two up) syphoning off £8bn to create proprietary tokens that can only be used with sanctioned government JavaBeans webcrap. It would also be fundamentally flawed and won’t launch until 2037.
With care, something really cool could happen.
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...
"Hackers obtained the details of tens of millions of British voters in a “complex cyber attack” on the Electoral Commission that went undetected for more than a year, the elections watchdog admitted on Tuesday. The body said “hostile actors” first breached its network in August 2021, gaining access to its file-sharing and email systems and obtaining copies of the electoral register, but “suspicious activity” was not identified until October 2022."
Of course such a thing will never happen in relation to Digital ID Cards, will it?
They'll roll them out gradually. You won't need one at first. You'll still show your passport, driving license etc, until one day you give up because the digital version is convenient and you "might as well". What's your problem? Why do you care? Have you got something to hide?
Then they'll attack the easiest target: porn. We already have age-verification laws, implemented through dodgy third-party providers. But now everyone has digital government ID: we "might as well" unify things so all the porn sites check your age using the centralised government system. What's your problem? Why do you care? Won't you THINK OF THE CHILDREN??? You want to let CHILDREN watch PORN???
Then comes online retail. After all, the Southport killer bought his knife from Amazon — that was the front page headline on every paper, remember how organic and uncoordinated that was? It could all have been avoided with better age verification. And hey, we already have a way to verify age with our digital IDs. We "might as well". What's your problem? Why do you care? You want to let CHILDREN buy KNIVES?
And what about social media? Kids shouldn't use Facebook, it's bad for them. Australia already bans under 16s from social media. We already have age verification for other things. We "might as well". WHY DO YOU CARE????? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
Oh, that's handy, everyone's social media accounts are now tied to their real identities. That'll come in handy when people say nasty things that the government doesn't like. After all, those riots only happened because of "misinformation". Why do you need to stay anonymous anyway? What's the problem? Why do you care? Got something to hide? You're in favour of HATE SPEECH??
The slippery slope has never been more lubricated.
>Article 1 (vi), commonly referred to as the birthright provisions, states that both governments, "Recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish, or British, or both
He'll have to live with the consequences as will the rest of us.
A harsh lesson in believing the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Though mostly in the UK it's usually just apathetic "well time for the other party to have go" (due to 14 years of the last lot) more than anything more educated
But yeah, this abandonment of the issues they traditionally represented to try and attract the soft centre right voters might not cause their traditional base to vote for the Tories. But it might send their centrists to the Lib Dems, their lefties to the Greens/SNP/etc and their "I just want change, any change" supporters to Reform. Along with increasing apathy and reducing turnout on their former core. Polling certainly seems to indicate that this is happening.
Is the implication here that it will become a legal requirement for me to own a modern phone (will it have to be a google/apple blessed phone?) in order to get a job in the UK?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/britain-to-introduce-c...
Text-only:
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1Nmgi0...
https://www.gov.uk/using-your-gov-uk-one-login
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/25/keir-starme...
It is really grim what is happening to the UK. For the most part no one gives a shit. And if you do, you are automatically branded as "right wing".
And given the torrent of inauthentic "right wing" commentators nudging public opinion on the BBC's Have Your Say, the Daily Mail and Reddit, I'm not entirely sure this will be a bad thing.
Recall that Iran cut off the internet for university exams, and the volume of posting by Scottish pro-independence accounts on Twitter/X dropped 98%. Food for thought.
Reddit is the most left-wing moderated, fedora-tipping regime it's possible to get.
This moment is the test for the edifice that the privacy advocates have built in all that time. We should all be watching closely.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44723418
You use the ID to create an IRL identify anchor certificate, then use other certificates with varying privacy profiles that are then cryptographically linked to your identity but in a privacy preserving manner.
When starting a job you already have to give enough ID to do the home offices job for them, this adds absolutely nothing.
“Please employ me.”
“OK, fill out this form with your name, D.O.B. and national insurance number, and if it matches against the government database then you can have the job.”
What am I missing here? I suppose they could use someone else’s details, but then HMRC should be able to easily see that the NI account seems to have multiple taxpayers.
Edit: The Times says this is to include all workers:
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/digital-id-comp...
"Tourism in the United Kingdom is a major industry and contributor to the U.K. economy, which is the world's 10th biggest tourist destination, with over 40.1 million visiting in 2019, contributing a total of £234 billion to the GDP"
>Provide "solution"
A story as old as time.
Unless of course this new system is for some other unclear purpose.
Once you let go of God (worship of truth and love) the government or other totalitarian force will try to control people top down. The logical way is to identify them.
You go from a system of free will and distributed cognition to one of enforcement top down. New things can always be added to it as you don't control it. All the "problems" of the states will tag along.
Making it digital is way worse than anything before because it allow to control you without having to pay a cost in enforcement, you control the flow of money, of exchange, you let the computer control people allowing a system so top down the Nazi and communist couldn't even imagine.
Worse part, it's already there for sure but in shadow form, they have all the info about the people, it's just not tied to financial transactions and out there in the public.
The US tried that back when Social Security Numbers were introduced. It specifically said it was for tax-purposes (a context where it might've been adequately-secure) and not to be used for anything else.
Yet without any actual penalties against "other places", it got misused everywhere by companies trying to save a buck on primary-key choice and authenticating people.
Orwell is turning over in his coffin
1) I don't like centralised ID, its ripe for abuse.
2) I don't like the idea of crapita/accenture/G4S/some other dipshit company designing and running this.
However
if its an extension of the government gateway, then actually the only "innovation" here is the presumable fine for not keeping it up to date. (that and the smartphone integration, which I suspect is largely symbolic)
So long as its GDS rolling it out, and its properly designed (two big ifs) then in principle it could be a useful as the original GDS scheme to make government services "digital"
But, the problems of authoritarianism are not to be ignored. starmer doesn't have the bollocks to be a dictator, but jenrick and farage do. Our constitution has no guards against authoritarian capture, its just "good men" doing "good deeds". That was easily overridden with Boris. A decent majority in the House of commons gives you alomst unlimited power of the state.
Something similar to Estonia would be much less controversial.
After splitting from the Soviet Union, Estonia were basically starting from scratch with their telecoms system. Finland offered them their old stock to get started, but the Estonians decided to instead treat it as a greenfield project and deploy the most modern infrastructure available at the time. Compare to the UK, where most of our infrastructure is literally crumbling as it passes its 50-year predicted lifespan and we spent almost a decade of time and tens of billions of pounds on a vapourware railway line. So the technical inheritance (or lack thereof) favoured Estonia.
I don't know much about how the Estonian system was initially built, but I would imagine a post-Soviet state likely retained enough state capacity to do it mostly in-house (and perhaps they received outside funding too, as the '90s were a period of largesse). Compare to the UK, where state capacity is effectively nil and the project would invariably be outsourced to the same contractors and consulting firms that have taken on every other aspect of government, with concomitant price and time overruns (see also: train).
A crucial element of the Estonian system is that data is private by default (see https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/e-services-regi... ) If I recall correctly, any government agency can request access to specified data for a state purpose, but each request must be reviewed and approved by the data subject. All access requests are logged so a subject can audit who has been accessing what (which suggests maybe it's possible to bulk approve access in advance, or grant persistent rights to someone like one's own doctor). In comparison, the Snoopers' Charter granted unfettered access to Brits' Internet connection records to a huge number of agencies, from the security services to the Food & Agriculture Agency (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#... ).
Estonia is also recognised as a global leader in IT security, following massive investment after Russia-attributed cyberattacks in 2007; they host the NATO Centre of Excellence and the eu-LISA HQ. As far as keeping one's data away from prying outside eyes, they're probably a pretty safe bet. As for the UK… (Eyes passim ad nauseam).
Lastly, I believe Estonians generally report greater levels of trust in their government than Brits. 2023 figures suggest the gap may have narrowed from when I last looked (I can't say I've been following Estonian politics, so I couldn't suggest why) but still some 37.8% of Estonians say they trust their national government as compared to 26.7% of Brits (see https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-trsic/tru... ). And there are certain sizeable constituencies in the UK where, in light of historic abuses, they are even less likely to ever trust the government: Scousers; northerners; women & ethnic minorities (specifically for the police, doubly specifically for the Met); environmental activists (see the spycops scandal); and people of Irish descent. I'm sure there's some skeletons in the Estonian government's closets, but there's a limit to how much damage you can do when your state is 35 years old rather than a centuries-old former world-spanning imperial hegemon.
Those stated trust figures also predate the UK government's support for the genocide in Gaza, which has doubtless had a significant impact on that figure; even people who wouldn't have considered themselves particularly political a couple years earlier are appalled at the regular arrests of protesting pensioners outside Parliament (see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/09/palestine-acti... ). The incredibly unpopular incumbent government is only the latest in a long line of increasingly authoritarian regimes of both the political right and (allegedly) left (see https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/09/labour-needs-arrest-uks-... ), meaning everybody in the country of any political persuasion can think of recent examples of why they might not want to invite increased government surveillance. Plus, with the recent passage of the Online Safety Act, most people are now primed to associate a new digital ID with the government wanting to know their porn habits, and we're a famously prudish nation.
So, in short:
· the Estonian government had the ideal circumstances, made all the right choices, prioritised privacy and security and are reasonably trusted by their citizens
· the UK government has doddery old infrastructure to work with, no money left, an addiction to outsourcing in spite of repeat disasters, a track record of authoritarian disregard for privacy and have little to no legitimacy amongst the populace
And, as others have pointed out, there's just no obvious constituency in the country that would be interested in this sort of thing (outside of Tony Blair and his mates) and no obvious problems that it provides a solution for; it seems like a hard sell, whether on ideological or practical grounds.
Not from the UK so i don't know how much more they're asking for
The issue I have is that it provides a convenient way for people to hassle me for my identity. Being able to identify myself is not a problem I've ever had and I don't like the idea of being forced to buy a smartphone just to remain an employed citizen in the UK.
Works ok
But some don't, and they get away with it
So what will change?
"In the UK ... we have got a right-wing proposition that we have not had in this country before ... so the battle of our times is between patriotic national renewal ... versus something which is turning into a toxic divide."
Your card literally says, "THIS IS NOT IDENTIFICATION"
Anyway, according to some news stories, they don't need to work, since they get everything for free anyway.
This is widely unpopular because the idea of ID cards is unpopular in general in the UK and the people also clearly understand that the argument that this would combat illegal immigration is total rubbish. Even the comments on The Guardian's website are overwhelmingly negative, which should really tell the government something.
The proposal is also drastic because it would be de facto mandatory for all residents. It's hilarious and pathetic to see the government argue that it wouldn't be mandatory, just only needed to get a job (which probably means also mandatory to rent and to study)...
An unpopular government trying to out-do itself.
https://bsky.app/profile/samfr.bsky.social/post/3lzq2w3ovgk2...
I lived in countries that have mandatory unique IDs, and countries that don't. Typically the countries that do not are more a pain in the ass to deal with, because institutions will proxy to the next best thing in the absense of an actual ID, typically documents that are not mandatory and not supposed to be used as ID, but end up being used like that anyway.
- is it a good idea to tie various public records together under a unique ID
- is it a good idea to issue voluntary ID for those situations where people need to prove it
and the big, third one:
- where is this going to be made mandatory and under what circumstances will it be used against people?
Generally, yes. It simplifies dealing with government bureaucracy. Proving your identity is generally something you will have to do anyway, this is will just remove a bunch of hoops you have to go through.
> - is it a good idea to issue voluntary ID for those situations where people need to prove it
One of the countries I lived in had a system similar to this one. It worked fine - typically you only needed this ID when opening a bank account or registered for work. Originally it was a tax registration ID (which is why it was related to banking and working), but it was secure enough that it was later repurposed as the actual unique ID. Nowadays I think they issue one to every registered person (e.g. newborns).
> - where is this going to be made mandatory and under what circumstances will it be used against people?
We are talking about the government here, who has the monopoly of force. If you live in an authoritarian country where the government fucks over citizens, they will do it to you irrespective of you having a mandatory ID or not.
My actual main concern is the level of access private corporations have to the records tied to this unique ID. I am highly suspicious of corporations (e.g.: banks, healthcare providers, etc).
This community, more than most, should understand in its bones that security and convenience are the ends of a see-saw. Convenience is five-character passwords, security is 2FA. Convenience is contactless payments, security is cash. Etc etc.
When you argue from convenience, I find it almost axiomatic that my security is going to take a beating.
So how can a convenient way to establish a digital identity also be secure? To run with the see-saw analogy, what element would of that process would make the process both more convenient and more secure? (make the see-saw rise at both ends).
Counter example - the usage of a password manager so that you have strong passwords on every service. It is extremely convenient (I don't have to remember passwords anymore, just the one for the password manager). It is also inherently more secure, as I can now use a different strong password for every service.
If the password manager is cloud backed, you're at risk of a LastPass-style data breach. If it's local only, you're at risk of someone confiscating your device also removing your access to all your online tools.
(I think I'm edging towards "measuring secureness is really hard", which isn't where either of us came in).
Alternatively, you could have a local password manager that syncs the encrypted passwords database to a private remote server, for example.
At the time of writing, 1,017,754 British people have already signed the official petition opposing them; a petition that has only been running a matter of hours.
The UK already has government issued ID, the proof of age card. This is about tying your identity to your online behaviour.
After the UK implements this, other western countries will follow. For example, here in Australia, it's a simple solution to the under-16 social media ban which is about to come into effect. The bill was given deliberately weak verification requirements so it didn't seem too big-brother, but I'd bet real money that there's already an amendment in the works to tie it to digital ID after they discover what everyone already knows (i.e. that it'll be easily bypassed), followed by another amendment to tie the digital ID to site/app ID, for online safety reasons of course.
In time, websites/apps may offer your government's digital ID as an alternative to their in-house identity provider. If this becomes globally ubiquitous, many of them will stop maintaining their own authentication and rely solely on government ID providers. The identity provider you use will depend on where you are, so VPNs will become useless.
This was all inevitable from the day the internet opened up to everyone. Governments have an insatiable desire for power and limitless paranoia about threats to their power.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...
Yeah, not really online posts though is it.
In a nutshell itd give identities the same level of technological protection that crypto currencies have.
The biggest risk is from a data breach and this information being accessed by unauthorized parties, but that is something all online services are at risk from. The absolute worst way to implement this will be to contract it out to a third party. If it is built and maintained by civil servant developers who have already proved their mettle with a variety of govuk services then I would have confidence in it. If it is farmed out to Fujitsu or some other 3rd party then it will be an shithshow and an expensive one at that.
The potential for BritCard to be used for surveillance outweighs the benefits of convenience tenfold... Privacy is not something we should compromise for easier access to services- what starts as a way to "streamline services" can quickly turn into a horrible mechanism for tracking citizens under the guise of security..
For reference:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-strategic-partnership...
If you're not from Britain, you must present evidence of your right to work or other documentation. This is already the law.
Any company that does not follow this is violating the law.
In reality, most illegal workers are engaged in cash-in-hand jobs that never require ID. A digital ID alone will not solve this problem.
Adding a digital ID won't make any difference.
We've also seen similar issues with the UK's attempt to censor adult content "to protect children." It sounds reasonable on the surface (no child should have open access to the internet!). Still, the law was written so broadly that even community clubs involving children with no relation to adult content were caught in its provisions.
Threatened by fines and bureaucratic red tape, many closed their doors. International sites that had no idea what to do - now block the UK. And did this stop access to explicit content? No. Anyone can use a VPN, or an anonymity-oriented browser like Brave and use a Tor tab to bypass the blocks completely. For the non-technical, how long before these Age ID check services, which the government wants everyone to use (private companies owned mainly by adult companies), are hacked and everyone's viewing habits are released?
How long before we're required to use our Digital ID to log on to the internet, enabling monitoring of everything we browse?
A more innovative approach would be for ISPs to by default integrated parental controls on residential connections, something that has been technically possible for decades. In fact, any mobile phone contract in the UK operates similarly. Why not home internet? This isn't about new legislation; it's about education.
Parents already understand why they shouldn't give alcohol or tobacco to their children; why not teach them how to protect their children online?
The new NHS app and driving licence app are expected to be available by the end of 2025. How long before they're integrated into a single system where the government maintains one massive database containing every individual's driving information, medical records, browsing history, banking and tax details? It's not far-fetched to imagine such overreach occurring.
Also as of this week, HMRC (our UK tax office) also now has the right to raid any UK bank account for taxes owed (leaving only £5,000 in the account). This applies to both individuals and companies. Consider a company that becomes insolvent days before paying salaries how will they pay their workers? Some companies have already become insolvent after paying wages while still owing taxes and National Insurance. Just HMRC now get their money and the employees won’t.
I realise there are several loosely connected points above, but that's precisely the problem: all these developments have emerged over the past 18 months.
So when the UK government claims these measures are "for the people," the argument falls flat.
It's difficult to believe that policymakers don't recognise these fundamental flaws.
This raises the question: what's the real motivation? To me, it seems less about protection and more about monitoring and control, implemented by people too afraid to speak against their superiors.
At nearly 50, I see a UK very different from the one I was born into. One thing I know for sure: once this process begins, it will only worsen, and a new government will maintain these systems and extend them further. We left Europe - but kept every single law! As a nation, we just allow all of this to happen. It’s the British way!
Then they demand that native citizens accept digital ID to solve that manufactured problem.
But truly their evil genius lies in the fact that a hefty part of natives will dismiss and mock everyone who tells them this as a conspiracy theorist.
>digital id will be made mandatory for all adults in an effort to tackle small boats
WTF? It's obvious when a small boat of Africans turns up they are not Brits and making Brits carry ID will make zero difference there.
Labour has sold British citizens to corporations.
This would in turn enable citizen-operated checkpoints to verify the Britishness of food delivery drivers, mosque worshipers, suspected pedos, anyone who smells a bit too much like curry or garlic, or blokes what look funny like they aint from round ere.
Marvellous! /s
They would have allowed EU travel without a passport, but sadly didn't take off. Initially they would have incorporated driving licenses too - lots of people already carry a driver's license.
Ironically I've of the reasons for not having them, back in the noughties, was because it would target minorities.
Now, the right wing are beying for blood over immigration, national IDs do seems like they would reduce the ability of illegal immigrants to work/collect benefits. Tories left a massive immigration problem, exacerbated by Brexit.
* I have half a dozen different ID numbers for various things like NI, NHS, drivers license, tax etc
* I also have a dozen different GOV.UK logins for various services.
* When need to provide strong proof of identity to AWS to reset a root password, I have to go to a notary and pay £200 for a signature and stamp and then scan the paperwork into an email.
The antis, as always, are clutching at straws. At what point does this stop being acceptable because of libertarian vibes and scaremongering about 'Big Brother' -- especially when most of the rest of the world has had ID cards for decades?
This effectively blocks development of mobile Linux as an alternative in the UK. It is already enough of a challenge to get people to try Linux phones without support for their favorite apps, and now it’s a requirement to own a US big tech pocket spy device? Absolutely absurd and Orwellian, and from the birthplace of Orwell no less.
Since being forced into globalisation and the concept of a border being essentially abolished (of course unless you talk about Ukraine, in which case billions can be spent on enforcing it), everything is flipped on its head. The terrorism act means that you have no right to silence, no right to legal representation and you are compelled to provide your passwords. The government now gets further and further involved with private matters, such as what content you engage with online (online safety act) and have plans to force ID to be linked to social media.
In my area, you cannot walk into a GP and request an appointment, they tell you to go away. You have to install an app, link it to your details, provide evidence of who you are, go on video, wait a few days, and then you are allowed to request an appointment (in a few weeks time). Bare in mind that healthcare is denied to nobody in the UK.
This year the Legal Aid Agency had a large cyber security breach [1]. People's names, financial information, and the fact that they apply for legal aid was breached. One of the few reasons you can get Legal Aid is being a domestic abuse victim.
> This data may have included contact details and addresses of applicants, their dates of birth, national ID numbers, criminal history, employment status and financial data such as contribution amounts, debts and payments. In some instances, information about the partners of legal aid applicants may be included in the compromised data.
This same government wants to collect and centralise the private details of all citizens in the UK. It makes me sick.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-aid-agency-data-bre...
You mean the time when the UK concquered the whole world and formed "The empire on which the sun never sets"? Yeees... UK was forced into globalization xD
Alas, any country where "doing anything unless it's forbidden" results in a clusterf* that the USA is today, and it has nothing to do with trust or being "civilized"
As for breaches - you are aware that the civilized society can have national IDs - plastic one, issued by the state that are used for... well... IDentification that don't require uber-surviliance and centralizing data worse than in China? Just because UK does something stupid (and it's on a record roll past decades) doesn't mean that the concept of ID is wrong... For example in Poland and in Spain you can easily get doctors appointment just by showing up and waving your ID…
One thing I never understand: if people want to come to your country, that is a vote for the idea that you are doing something right. So, why not use for good? Why not designate a area of the country for the immigrants to initially settle in, using your laws and structures to provide them a better way to live? They are usually very hungry to work. Or, why not band up with other countries to establish refuge cities where the immigrants can initially settle and build new lives?
You never hear of the US etc investing in infrastructure in African countries, for e.g., it is always about a militarization effort to contain supposed terrorists.
Keeping people out betrays that your "success" is built on the back of exfiltrating resources from around the world and concentrating it in your countries, thus keeping the rest of the world poor.
If you barely speak the language, it's not easy. Unfortunately many countries have made immigration so hard, in an effort to combat it, that they've done the opposite - people immigrate illegally because it has a higher success rate than doing it legally.
If I apply for X, Y, and Z and I'm denied, I'm fucked. But if I just move... And then figure it out later... That might work better.
And that's how we got into this mess. A lot of this anti-immigration legislation actually increases the incentives for illegal immigration.
Yes, that's the part that needs to be fixed.
In all countries there are posh, elite, nice areas, and yet you don't see everybody moving into those areas until there is no standing room. There is a natural equilibrium that is effective.
So overly tough immigration policies actually exacerbate the problem of illegal immigration in this way as well.
I, a software engineer with decades of experience, and now an entrepreneur having a small startup, with funds to live for years without burdening the public purse anywhere, specking virtually native level English, and having previously lived in the US for years, would still have a _very_ hard time immigrating to any western country right now, partly because I'm from the global south (I'm Ghanaian).
If you know of any western country where moving there, even temporarily, is as simple as applying with my information, let me know.