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Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

reuters.com

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Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#31

Post by boredatoms »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #16
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #4

Do they not already have the equivalent of a US social security card? (For the employment eligibility, not the program benefits.) Is this something much different from that?

You aren't required to show your social security card to your employer. You aren't even required to have the physical card for almost all purposes. It specifically says on the card, and in other places that it is not to be used for identification. https://www.ssa.gov/ssnumber/assets/EN-05-10553.pdf

Its the I-9 thats required, the SSN card is just one way to satisfy that

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#32

Post by Nursie »

remarkEon wrote: post #21

>The proposals are the government's latest bid to tackle illegal immigration, with the new ID being a form of proof of a citizen's right to live and work in the UK. How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited…

I can think of several, which problem were you thinking of?

In lots of countries you need a specific right to work, and people who are on holiday visas or who are making asylum applications, or have simply entered the country without the right to do so, are not allowed to work.

Some consider these restrictions themselves to be a problem.

Currently, employers in the UK are legally required to check the right-to-work status of people they employ. This is usually done with a random assortment of ID documents and visa status checks. The proposal (I think) is to replace this and other functions with "Britcard", a digital ID system.

So another problem might be that government security schemes are usually pretty bad.

And a further one could be that there's little to stop (say) an asylum applicant from 'borrowing' someone else's britcard-enabled phone to sign on and work Uber Eats illegally, which is one of the issues that they are allegedly trying to tackle.

Beyond that ... sure there's massive privacy implications etc etc.

So yeah, which problem did you have in mind?

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#33

Post by throwawa14223 »

digianarchist wrote: post #9

If it's only applicable to citizens then how do they hope it will help on migration? Edit: The Times says this is to include all workers: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/digital-id-comp...

IDs don't help because the moment the ID is useful the government will find a way to hand them out to migrants.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#34

Post by userbinator »

Nursie wrote: post #27
isodev wrote: post #12

I’ve always lived in places where having an ID on you has been part of your “citizen responsibilities”. So reading the post my feeling was “oh cool, they’re getting a new eID-like system”. But I imagine it’s a huge step if folks could get by without an ID at all.

In the UK it has never been compulsory to carry ID, even when driving. At a traffic stop the police have the option to require you to present documents at a police station within seven days if they think something is fishy. And people do seem to exist quite happily without formal identification. As someone who has always had a passport and driving license it was a bit of an eye-opener to me, but if you don't drive an…

That is very surprising. In the US, you are legally required to carry your license when driving. If you are caught driving without one, expect to be arrested.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#35

Post by Nursie »

Insanity wrote: post #25
remarkEon wrote: post #21

>The proposals are the government's latest bid to tackle illegal immigration, with the new ID being a form of proof of a citizen's right to live and work in the UK. How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited…

In all fairness, the “immigration” story is likely just a convenient spin on a more realistic goal of state surveillance on it’s own citizens.

While there is almost guaranteed to be an aspect of this, the UK is going through a period where immigration is in the news constantly and the populist party "Reform UK" are on the rise.

The Labour government has realised that whatever their own feelings are about people coming to the UK by irregular means and claiming asylum, they need to be seen to recognise the popular narrative right now that the boats must be stopped, and be seen to be taking action.

So I don't think the immediate state goal right here is likely to be anything deeper than desperately trying to head off Nigel Farage, who is capturing a lot of public discourse about this 'crisis'.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#36

Post by wakawaka28 »

remarkEon wrote: post #21

>The proposals are the government's latest bid to tackle illegal immigration, with the new ID being a form of proof of a citizen's right to live and work in the UK. How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited…

It doesn't solve any immigration problem at all. It's just a dumb excuse for a bunch of bullshit.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#37

Post by digianarchist »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #28
digianarchist wrote: post #9

If it's only applicable to citizens then how do they hope it will help on migration? Edit: The Times says this is to include all workers: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/digital-id-comp...

The same way other things "help" migration. By making life very difficult for you if you aren't a proper citizen. I imagine the outcome for this would be to make it nearly impossible to do anything with the government or doing anything you might need an ID for, especially online. Some citizens will probably suffer too, but it is a price the government is willing to pay.

Wouldn't that push people into black markets for day to day living?

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#38

Post by mrtksn »

remarkEon wrote: post #21

>The proposals are the government's latest bid to tackle illegal immigration, with the new ID being a form of proof of a citizen's right to live and work in the UK. How does a digital ID solve an illegal immigration problem? I watched the video and the suggestion is that this makes it easier for employers to verify that someone is authorized to work. Is that actually true? I don't live in the UK and have not visited…

The banks and service providers can ask for your digital ID, the employers can ask for your digital ID and when that becomes the standart you will have very hard time to have a life in UK without having all the permissions.

Most of EU and many other countries have something like that, at least you have a citizenship or resident number that they can check against to see what's your situation.

In UK though, everything is run over proof of address and it's quite annoying for new immigrants(legal or not) because its circular. You can't have anything that can be used as proof of address without having proof of address already. At some point you manage to break circle by first having something that doesn't require proof of address but it is serious enough to be accepted as one, i.e. I know people who were riding the tube without tapping in so that when they are caught the government will send them a letter about their fine and they can use the letter to open a bank account.

The Turkish version is both great, annoying and terrible.Great because you can do all your government stuff and some other stuff like see your full medical history, make an appointment etc or managing your service subscription(water, electricity, cable. GSM etc) from the government portal. Annoying because whatever you buy beyond groceries now they are asking for your ID number and all purchases are becoming a chore. Terrible because these systems are regularly hacked and all your private data is online for sale and some even run an API to access your govt stuff live.

It works fine to manage legal immigration, you give the immigrants the ID so the can have their subscriptions etc. Once they are no longer wanted you know where to find them and make providers cut them off. It doesn't work for illegal immigrants because since they can't register to anything they end up just asking a friend to start them a subscription or pay extra to have some employee start them a subscription that in the records look like its for the employee.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#39

Post by steve_taylor »

throwawaydjdu wrote: post #11

Reminder that the UK arrests 12000/year for online posts, by far the most in the West. The UK already has government issued ID, the proof of age card. This is about tying your identity to your online behaviour.

My prediction is that it will soon be a requirement for all websites and apps with user-generated content to require authentication with the UK government's Digital ID OAuth provider and that requirement will include linking the user's username to their Digital ID. It won't require websites and apps to pay a third-party provider to check users' identity, so the UK government can argue that it doesn't place a disproportionately burdensome cost on smaller websites and apps.

After the UK implements this, other western countries will follow. For example, here in Australia, it's a simple solution to the under-16 social media ban which is about to come into effect. The bill was given deliberately weak verification requirements so it didn't seem too big-brother, but I'd bet real money that there's already an amendment in the works to tie it to digital ID after they discover what everyone already knows (i.e. that it'll be easily bypassed), followed by another amendment to tie the digital ID to site/app ID, for online safety reasons of course.

In time, websites/apps may offer your government's digital ID as an alternative to their in-house identity provider. If this becomes globally ubiquitous, many of them will stop maintaining their own authentication and rely solely on government ID providers. The identity provider you use will depend on where you are, so VPNs will become useless.

This was all inevitable from the day the internet opened up to everyone. Governments have an insatiable desire for power and limitless paranoia about threats to their power.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#40

Post by kimixa »

userbinator wrote: post #34
Nursie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK it has never been compulsory to carry ID, even when driving. At a traffic stop the police have the option to require you to present documents at a police station within seven days if they think something is fishy. And people do seem to exist quite happily without formal identification. As someone who has always had a passport and driving license it was a bit of an eye-opener to me, but if you don't drive an…

That is very surprising. In the US, you are legally required to carry your license when driving. If you are caught driving without one, expect to be arrested.

Also the US reserves the right to demand ID if you're within 100 miles of a border - which is effectively 2/3 of the population. And detain you until your status can be "verified", however long that could take.

That should only be for non-citizens, but I have no idea how you could prove that without documentation in the first place.

So for the vast majority of Americans, you probably have to be carrying ID at all times anyway, else you risk someone deciding you "might" not actually be a citizen.

If this same rule was enacted in the UK, there would be no place on the British Isles that would be excluded, as nowhere is more than 100 miles from the coast.

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