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UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

petition.parliament.uk

141–150 of 373 posts

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#141
post #132

I don't trust the UK government either. But I'm both British and Australian and I see the need for a centralised identity service. Because the alternative is that we provide our passport to every online service that 'needs' to verify our identity. Then – lo, would you believe it! – they get hacked, and now all of our data is in the wild again . I'd much rather the government, who already know everything about me beca…

Your mistake is assuming good faith on behalf of the government who arrests thousands of people for social media posts. Beyond faith, they are incredibly incompetent and this data will be stolen.

You miss GP’s point. They’re not assuming good faith, they’re pointing out that the government already knows identity credentials and can, encrypted or not, quite easily correlate digital activity with those credentials.

The question isn’t whether the government can/will identify and track you. They do, in good faith or bad. This is unfortunate and attempts to allow them to decrypt or acquire additional data about citizens’ activities (like chat control) should be opposed, but identity/activity tracking is omnipresent and irreversible.

The question is whether identity credentials should be available which reduce the risk of additonal credential theft or bad-faith action (e.g. by other entities stealing non-secure-for-digital-use credentials like passports).

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#142
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really rough part is that while the Democratic Party in the US is a weak slightly-left-of-center party, the Labour Party in the UK is basically a right-of-center party with decreasing amounts of daylight between them and the Tories. In particular, there is no major political party in the UK that supports trans rights, which is devastating to that community there. (On the plus side, so far as I can tell, with the…

The Liberal Democrats seem (from a quick read of just this article) to have thrown out a proposal to water down an existing trans rights policy. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0vvle9w7zo

[flagged]

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#143
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Digital ID will make it so that there’s no excuse for not connecting your identity to everything you do.

The conservatives didnt need digital id to make id a requirement for voting, labour didnt need digital id to introduce the online safety act. Im not convinced that lack of digital id will deter authoritarian tendencies in uk govs…

FYI, the conservatives introduced the Online Safety Act. Its provisions came into force under a labour government.

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#144

After seeing NUMEROUS video of UK police showing up at doorsteps like the gestapo, arresting or citing or intimidating people who are simply practicing free speech, I don’t think anyone should support the government with a pathway to de-anonymize the web. Even if you support the current government, such powers will be used against you at some point.

AIUI "practicing free speech" is mainly a US thing that doesn't map cleanly to other countries.

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#145
post #24

The thing that frustrates me the most about digital ID cards is not themselves on merit but rather modern Labour's political abilities. Like, the UK economy is stagnant, there is a cost-of-living crisis, and Labour needs to present the public with an alternative to Farage. And the answer is... digital ID cards?

If you want to improve the capacity of the state to deliver services and improve the lives of citizens, being able to easily tell who is who across a range of government departments is a pretty good place to start.

I wonder how we survived for a hundred years before that

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#146

Is there a technological way to make an ID that's anonymous and irrevocable (since arguably people should never lose citizenship)? Because digital, national ID has major benefits (prevents fraud, reduces paperwork), but yeah, those are IMO larger drawbacks.

"ID" and "anonymous" are exact opposites.

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#147
post #71
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really rough part is that while the Democratic Party in the US is a weak slightly-left-of-center party, the Labour Party in the UK is basically a right-of-center party with decreasing amounts of daylight between them and the Tories. In particular, there is no major political party in the UK that supports trans rights, which is devastating to that community there. (On the plus side, so far as I can tell, with the…

There are (almost) no fascists in reform. You think the fascists will join a party whose second in command is "Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf"? They're all in Homeland or other serious nationalist parties if at all. Reform are basically a joke amongst the "real" right (by which I don't mean neo-nazis but anyone with any actual beliefs)

[deleted]

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#148
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public Order Act 1986 "insulting words or behavior that cause distress to others" Malicious Communications Act 1988 (Section 1): "Outlaws sending messages, electronic or otherwise, with the intent to cause distress, or anxiety" Communications Act 2003, Online Safety Act 2023, hate speech, terrorist legislation all made these many orders of magnitude worse in many ways.

You cannot be arrested for sending “any message online that anyone could find insulting or offensive”. That’s not what the law says. You can be arrested for spreading hate speech, inciting violence, sending illegal media or harassment online. All of the arrests mentioned in this thread in relation to these acts have been campaigns of intimidation, harassment and calls to violence, not simply saying something “insulti…

>In the UK political expression of free speech is protected by the ECHR, which overrides both those acts

This is categorically untrue. Not only is the ECHR worded specifically to allow individual countries to curtail free speech ("any law, deemed by the local democratically elected government as ; necessary in a democratic society, and for a legitimate aim"), but parliament always had sovereignty to pass into law exemptions to the ECHR, which we have done on multiple occasions.

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#149
post #3

As well as the Estonia eID system works (aside from that time it got hacked[0] and that other time they leaked all the photos[1]) and how well a digital (non-government) system works in Scandinavia… I have to say… As a Dual British/Swedish Citizen, I really do not trust the UK government. They have proven over and over and over, that at every opportunity presented they will increase their own authority. I don’t belie…

>I don’t believe I have personally witnessed any other advanced economy that so ardently marches towards authoritarianism.

The UK is largely in conversation with Australia and Canada on this stuff. Australia test benched a lot of the laws the UK later adopted, even cribbing the terminology directly.

Not surprisingly we have our own Digital ID in formation, and we have an Internet ID system in the pipeline mirroring the one in the UK.

I think the take away should be that you cant really engineer a system where theres a single country with "Freedom", as Freedom is considered relative to other countries. A declining tide drops all boats.

Re: UK Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards

#150
post #3

As well as the Estonia eID system works (aside from that time it got hacked[0] and that other time they leaked all the photos[1]) and how well a digital (non-government) system works in Scandinavia… I have to say… As a Dual British/Swedish Citizen, I really do not trust the UK government. They have proven over and over and over, that at every opportunity presented they will increase their own authority. I don’t belie…

Our system in Estonia works well. I don't get the resistance to a digital/national id in other countries. To us it is quite bizarre. Some have explained it with a lack of trust between citizens and the country. But without such digital id it is impossible to have such digital government services as we have here. The government services need to verify and autheticate the citizen, so they only access their own data and…

I'm somewhat indifferent to the concept of a Digital ID. The problem is that the UK government's reason for introducing it doesn't make sense - to 'solve' illegal workers, when the UK already has a (digital) system for proving right to work https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-onli...
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