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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

This article is written from an anarcho-socialist perspective so it may not be that persuasive to many people.

In the US we don't have any official government digital ID but instead various data brokers are providing it... with no real oversight. If the people of the UK reject government digital ID they may get Palantir digital ID instead. It's not clear to me which is worse, the government playing by its own rules or private companies playing by essentially no rules. Europe may be better because at least they have GDPR.

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It's definitely clear to me which is worse, the private digital ID. At least we have some checks and balances for the government, however ineffective.

We're likely getting Oracle digital ID. The UK gov of course is going to contract it out

We don't they ask some European partners? Some have great ID systems. In The Netherlands we have DigiD, which was developed by a government organization and works very well. IIRC Estonia als has a digital identity system that works well.

It's verboten in UK politics to acknowledge that any EU country might be doing something well and to consider copying it. Only America can be used as a model.

Because the UK gov doesn't want a system like theirs.

You don't need to keep Europsplaining to Brits. We aren't all idiots. We know you have ID cards etc and we know about Estonia.

Also if we reject one your ideas, it's not always because we misunderstood it - we can understand it AND think it's a bad idea. I know that often hurts the egos of Germans, the French and the Dutch ;(!

It's funny because it's often Europeans not understanding British politics...the irony ;)

Don't feel like you are getting Eurosplained. I say the same thing when our government does something stupid where it could learn from any other country in the world (there is plenty of that).

we can understand it AND think it's a bad idea

Please explain why Oracle ID would be better than one of the existing governmental/nonprofit systems. Genuinely curious.

> Please explain why Oracle ID would be better than one of the existing governmental/nonprofit systems. Genuinely curious.

I would, if I held that position. I'm explaining my idiotic government's opinion, not mine. Though I totally didn't make that clear.

We've already given contracts for health data management to Palantir, it wouldn't surprise me if they got the contract for this Orwellian digital id too

'the government playing by its own rules' generally means they change the rules, often arbitrarily, when some new crisis demands a 'solution'.

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