The inability of the government to know everything about its citizens is an important check that prevents it from slipping towards illiberal, even if prosperous, system, like that in mainland China, or Singapore.
- easier access to the services - remember this is supposed to be STRICTLY digital only, so presumably on par with government gateway ID? - control of illegal immigration - with scale of the problem wildly blow out of proportion - presumably by helping control the border? how? And ostensibly by making impossible to work without right - which is a check mandatory already based on the existing digital-only online check -- once again fake non-solution
Certainly after experiencing multiple problems with the existing eVisa (Digital only) and reading multiple horror stories of faults and errors it proves to me the government is NOT taking ANY of the best practices into consideration while unfairly using parallel to the (like Estonian ID)
The only thing it would do is to cut the fraud a bit, but the impact would once again be limited because it would be a physical document (which, I must repeat from the abundance of caution, might bear a certificate or a chip that makes it incredibly hard to make a fake version of it).
I'm sorry but the government made it a fight for the souls of the rightwing voters once again, it didn't show the awesome project. It showed the stick it want to introduce to conduct the same checks it runs already :)
Just VERIFY and examine their claims. It's been discussed so many times, not only on HN.
It's Russia level. They're prosecuting people for holding up signs protesting a genocide.
Source?
For holding rhe sign.
The famously authoritarian police threatening arrest for an attempt to hold an EMPTY placard.
Or arresting for a shirt with "Plasticine Action".
Or locking in a prison for several years for zoom call in which they planned nonviolent protest (blocking the motorway).
We could do it for months.
A man wearing the "Plasticine Action" T-shirt was indeed arrested [2]. That was extra absurd because the protest was against AI-generated animation, not about a political cause.
All in all, quite bad :(
[1]: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/police-arrest-blank-paper...
[2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-action...