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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

#31

Post by tokai »

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 digital ID without an address, which I could only get if I could access my e-banking and pay deposit for my new place, but I needed digital ID to access the bank. It got resolved. But its a completely avoidable chaos that mainly is an issue for those with the least resources.

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

#32

Post by KaiserPro »

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 passport and oauth2, and it'll fail hard and be horribly insecure.

The better option is to tie everything to your government gateway ID (the thing that lets you renew passports, talk to the HMRC online, and a bunch of other services)

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

#33

Post by gambiting »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #30
gambiting wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a foreigner on a visa(or an EU settled status resident), yes. If you are a British person(or pretending to be one) then you just need to show your employer your British passport(or one of several other acceptable documents), and obviously faking a picture of a passport is pretty trivial. And since employers generally don't have access to the system that can verify passports they take your word on the docume…

As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all... I think it is much, much, much more common to have dodgy employers/landlords who do not carry out the checks at all because they are fine exploiting illegal immigrants, and no type of ID card would solve that...

>>As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...

A lot of employers just want a photo/scan of a passport. I'm not saying making a whole fake passport is easy, it's obviously not - but modifying a picture of a passport is not exactly rocket science.

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

#34

Post by stringsandchars »

OTOH - partly playing devil's advocate here - I'm dealing with several bank and inheritance-related issues in the UK from my home in Sweden now, and needing to do pretty much ANYTHING with an authority in the UK feels like stepping back into the 17th century.

There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)

These then need to be 'notarized' by a legal person - with seals and embossed stamps before they can be used to identify me. It's medieval.

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

#35

Post by flumpcakes »

Can anyone explain why this is a bad thing? All I hear about this is conspiracy theories or anti-government rhetoric but never a clear reason to why this is bad. I can't see a reason considering all of the benefits it can bring, and similar things have been rolled out across Nordic countries.

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

#36

Post by rainingmonkey »

nemomarx wrote: post #2

Why is the UK politics scene so focused on digital ID? Blair first proposed it and I feel like I've heard about it continually since with no progress. Different justifications every time too

The Tony Blair Institute still wields a lot of power in UK politics, and they're still pushing for ID cards.

https://institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/to...

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

#37

Post by lyu07282 »

arethuza wrote: post #24
tomaytotomato wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just cherry picked two examples which are not issues in other countries with ID cards. ID cards can prove who is an illegal immigrant or not, and with the current atmosphere. I want to know and be confident that we can check people's status efficiently and correctly who's here. Sure there might be some small process mishaps but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it.

"but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it" That's a pretty chilling phrase.

UK politics is very simple: People have a lot of economic grievances and they are frustrated. People are made to believe that the source of their problems are immigrants/non-white people. So for a lot of people in the UK, anything against immigrants, even more drastic measures, are worth it and it makes the government appear to do something about their problems. Nothing ever really gets better of course, but they have no way to think about it any other way.

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

#38

Post by worldsayshi »

stringsandchars wrote: post #34

OTOH - partly playing devil's advocate here - I'm dealing with several bank and inheritance-related issues in the UK from my home in Sweden now, and needing to do pretty much ANYTHING with an authority in the UK feels like stepping back into the 17th century. There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "uti…

Swede here. I would not want to go back to days without BankID and related tools. That being said, the implementation has some less than desirable features. It's privately owned by some kind of joint venture by the banks. It only supports the major OS:s. So you're pretty much forced to own a Android or IPhone to function. Also, I haven't had the need to do this myself but taking care of somebody else's legal dealings (like an old parent or children) I understand is quite cumbersome. I think that kids are kind of forced to get BankID when they are quite young.

There are alternative implementations but I'm not aware of anyone that uses them.

It's more like we've slipped into this solution out of pure convenience than having made a deliberate choice.

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

#39

Post by physicsguy »

stringsandchars wrote: post #34

OTOH - partly playing devil's advocate here - I'm dealing with several bank and inheritance-related issues in the UK from my home in Sweden now, and needing to do pretty much ANYTHING with an authority in the UK feels like stepping back into the 17th century. There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "uti…

> There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)

These are always digital in the UK too. When I did my mortgage application I had to go to my bank, ask them to print me out a statement and then stamp it to 'verify' that it was real.

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

#40

Post by pessimizer »

If you work really really hard, and come up with a really good media campaign, and there's not a riot or a genocide that your country is supporting that will allow digital ID to be rammed through, you'll be able to put it off for the 4 years until new Prime Minister Nigel Farage (or Zarah Sultana, or whoever) announces it as the government's first priority.
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