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

bigbrotherwatch.org.uk

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

#131

Post by admissionsguy »

tokai wrote: post #31
willvarfar wrote: post #3

Digital ID works great in the nordic countries and doubtless elsewhere.

It works. No need to call it great. Just the other month 35.000 danes lost access to their digital id because their phones are running too old android. There are edge cases where people get locked out of the system without access to public services, and why it is resolvable it can result in missed benefits and inturn missed rent payments. I myself have experienced being between housing, and wasn't able to access my d…

It can also be very difficult to get one if you are non-citizen.

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

#132

Post by cbeach »

cbeach wrote: post #45

In the UK we already have population-wide tracking of internet usage, no warrant required. Once we have a citizen id number, it's probable the UK government will mandate that it is bound to our internet access. The UK government has form for arresting people (about 30 per day at the moment) for online speech under vague laws criminalising messages that cause ‘annoyance’, ‘inconvenience’ or ‘anxiety’ [1] This is widel…

Everyone on the establishment-friendly Left ought to bear in mind that a Reform government is nearly guaranteed in 2029 (or earlier)

https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...

You might feel less bullish about state tracking and control of the public when Nigel Farage is in charge of the state.

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

#133

Post by crimsoneer »

kolektiv wrote: post #99

For me the objections in the UK is not really about the principle (although there are always going to be some privacy/liberty/etc. concerns in that sense), but about the likely implementation. If we could be assured that whatever was put in place was genuinely privacy/security focused, had open and transparent governance, and wasn't susceptible to capture by corporations/other powerful actors, I suspect many people w…

The COVID NHS APP was open source, secure and excellent?

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

#134

Post by notahacker »

OJFord wrote: post #56
martinald wrote: post #15

The UK already has (various) digital IDs but this is the 'new' one https://www.gov.uk/using-your-gov-uk-one-login . So what's going to be different? Just making it mandatory? I can see some justification (sorta) for not making it mandatory, but saying it won't improve citizens lives is complete rubbish. Having one login for all government services would massively improve the efficiency, especially if other department…

Government website login isn't really a 'digital ID' is it? I've never thought of it like that anyway - could be used as one, maybe, but it isn't currently. E.g. you say this would help the NHS - well gov.uk login isn't any different from NHS app login is it? So the NHS already has 'digital ID' too. (Don't expect this to solve multi-computer-system NHS though, ha! That's been tried and failed how many times, for how…

Yeah, gov.uk is a thing. But the Zeitgeist-y think seems to be blocking adult content and avoiding saying naughty things on social media, and no Keir, I'd rather not link my gov.uk login for permission to use those parts of the internet, thank you very much

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

#135

Post by rightbyte »

somelamer567 wrote: post #23

My wife who is from a large mainland European country, has an ID card. Everyone has one and they're mandatory. It makes it trivial to prove your bona fides and is good for air travel within the Schengen area. Her ID even has a chip which can be used to create digital signatures for situations where rock-solid proof of identity is required. Amazingly, they've always had ID cards and the world hasn't ended. These count…

> And we'll eventually get digital strong ID, unless the boot-leather connoisseurs amongst us win this argument.

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

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

SoftTalker wrote: post #114
octo888 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had any organisation insist on a paper copy of a bill/statement for probably 10 years now

Nor have I ever had to prove my identity to a utility company to initiate service, so I'm not sure why a bill or statement with a name on it is proof of anything. And when my father died, the water and electric service stayed on in his name for another decade at the house. Nobody really seems to care as long as the bills get paid.

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by mytailorisrich »

gambiting wrote: post #118
physicsguy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are paid cash in hand if they're working illegally realistically. I'm not sure that would change. But in enforcement it might since you could theoretically make it a legal requirement to produce the ID, that's the norm in many other countries.

Honestly the biggest problem is that government requires companies to verify identity of their employees but doesn't give them any means to do so. There was a recent case where a fish and chip shop owner was fined £40k for employing someone without a legal right to work in the UK, and the owner said the guy literally showed him his British passport, turns out it was a fake - but how was he(the business owner) suppose…

Articles in this case all say that the illegal worker only provided a photocopy of his alleged British passport.

I.e. the employer did not properly and seriously carry out the checks as he didn't ask for the original, hence the heavy fine.

"The business did not see the original copy of the man’s passport, which its owner, Mark Sullivan, said was a “clerical error”" [1]

As I commented previously it is hard to counterfeit a modern British passport in a way that looks genuine and obviously any checks require sight of the original passport...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/22/surrey-chipp...

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

#138

Post by nmeofthestate »

somelamer567 wrote: post #77
nmeofthestate wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I think it raises peoples' hackles because it is "not something we do here" - English-speaking countries seem to not go with mandatory ID in the same way as continental Europe. Maybe a Napoleonic/Common-Law thing? (Personally, I don't object to the idea).

This seems to be a pub bore talking point... the usual seemingly-clever street-level arguments that don't stand up to serious scrutiny. If people think that if they get ID card, the government is coming to take their precious bodily fluids, then the country has bigger cultural, political problems than a mere public safety measure.

Pub bores might make that argument but it doesn't mean it's not what motivates most of the objectors, who may indeed be boring about it in the pub.

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

#139

Post by KaiserPro »

sega_sai wrote: post #116
KaiserPro wrote: post #32

So there are a number of digital IDs, but the problem is they are not really joined up or all that useful. In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments. In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a…

If this is an argument > In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a passport and oauth2, and it'll fail hard and be horribly insecure. then we'll never do anything in the UK and we should all just give up on changing anything. Also, btw the passport renewal is done without government gateway ID.

> btw the passport renewal is done without government gateway ID.

Fuck its driving license isnt it?

Side note, driving license is an ID that carries a £10k fine if you don't update your address in time.

Thats the frustrating thing, GDS could have done "digital ID", and were kind of doing that already. When I came to renew my passport, I could use the photo I had on file from my driver license(or it was the other way around). Absolutely wild.

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

#140

Post by KaiserPro »

username332211 wrote: post #108
KaiserPro wrote: post #32

So there are a number of digital IDs, but the problem is they are not really joined up or all that useful. In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments. In practice, what they'll do is hire accenture or some other dipshit company, spend _billions_ re-inventing a cross between a…

> In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments. It depends. Here's a nice example for you - A while ago the BBC ran a series on council house investigators and their cases. It was very clear for it, that councils don't routinely check whether a prospective council tenant (who'd…

> No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.

I'd have to look it up, but some level of background checks are explicitly banned by the RIP act. It was put in place to allow local councils to "snoop" but only in defined situation. (for example if you have noise complaint, the council can't make a recording, but they can accept a recording you make.) but on the other hand they sometimes can inspect your bins to make sure you are not mixing waste streams.

> Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps,

The UK constitution is pretty vulnerable to this. However, even a strong written constitution isn't going to stop that if it becomes socially acceptable.

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