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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

#631

Post by jodrellblank »

Nursie wrote: post #101
gmac wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… except that trying to out-Farage Farage (by being bastards to asylum seekers) will lose them many of their traditional supporters (who are not big on being bastards to asylum seekers) and seems unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters (why would they take some half-hearted populist bastardry when they can have the real deal?). The ‘small boats’ narrative is ludicrously over-reported here. It’s such a clear case…

I don't think any of that matters any more, the issue is so firmly in the public eye that Labour need to show that they've solved it whether it's a 'real' problem or not. > unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters Farage is polling ahead of both major parties at the moment. That support came from somewhere. To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface t…

Any ideas how leaving the european convention on human rights, deporting some barbers, takeaway owners and illegal construction workers, and stopping small boats in the English channel will reinvigorate Sunderland, fix South Wales after coal mining stopped, restart British Steel, bring life back to coastal holiday towns in the aftermath of cheap flights to warmer places, fire up the tired overworked Londoner on the crowded tube, bring European finance investment back into The City, tempt foreign industries to open factories in the UK, cause more doctors and nurses to be trained and paid better, and give little Sally and Timmy something to look forward to in life?

"Freeze Non-Essential Immigration. Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception" - Reform manifesto page 5.

The main thing Farage supporters are voting for is to see fewer Muslims and brown people and Pakistanis and Africans, and the main thing Farage is doing is stirring up is racist hate and division; Reform's own manifesto tells their supporters that they will still be seeing an awful lot of foreigners under a Reform government.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#632

Post by southernplaces7 »

philipallstar wrote: post #505
qazwsxedchac wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ID cards as realized in many other countries are comparatively benign, because they are a physical credential in the possession of the person concerned. The government cannot stop this credential from being used except by physically confiscating it or by waiting (years) for it to expire. Distributed storage in action. The UK's proposal makes the "digital ID" a pointer to an entry in a centralized database. This d…

I'm against the ID, but the more good faith reason for a database entry is it should eliminate fake IDs.

>but the more good faith reason for a database entry is it should eliminate fake IDs.

Really? If anything it would make them easier. Hackers routinely break into government databases to exfiltrate information. An ID attribute databases would be no exception, for exfiltration, or simply modification of data. Ie: creating a fake ID.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#633

Post by guy_5676 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #606
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your idea of afghani culture isn’t exactly representative. Also likely that the immigrants’ culture would differ from that of their native country.

Every time I see a comment like this I wonder if they just don't know that countries like Afghanistan are on an explicit travel advisory list from basically any government, or if you just conveniently fail to mention it since it doesn't fit your narrative. My country - Germany - explicitely requests all Germans to leave Afghanistan at once. Why do you think that is?

We're talking about a country that has been at war for 20 years and is now under the thumb of a fundamentalist totalitarian regime. You don't have to look far to find thousands of examples of afgani people/refugees denouncing the Taliban. Using this as a representative example of afgani culture is at best misleading. It would be like labeling the citizens of North Korean as being culturally against their own human rights and chastising them for that.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#634

Post by Arch-TK »

motbus3 wrote: post #305

Can anyone really point me out the real problem about the immigrants? How big is it compared to, for example the lack of funding of the NHS or the hyper funding of other initiatives such as war in Ukraine. Or are those things somehow related? I would be crazily scared to know that immigrant care workers will leave NHS as most hospitals relies on them. The government already made clear they won't pay people more nor w…

The NHS may lack funding, or it may not. But what is certain is that if you know how the NHS operates internally, or you know someone who does, then it's extremely evident that the NHS is severely mismanaged by administrators who definitely are not underfunded.

I think saying "the NHS is underfunded" all day is just ignoring the other major issue: even when the NHS has funds, they squander most of them.

I don't think solving just one of them will solve the whole problem, but maybe solving the blatant corruption at the NHS's administrative level might improve their financial situation by virtue of the money not lining the pockets of the rich.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#635

Post by adolph »

aftergibson wrote: post #189

A secure, optional digital ID could be useful. But not in today’s UK. Why? Because the state has already shown it can’t be trusted with our data. - Snoopers’ Charter (Investigatory Powers Act 2016): ISPs must keep a year’s worth of records of which websites you visit. More than 40 agencies—from MI5 to the Welsh Ambulance Service—can request it. MI5 has already broken the rules and kept data it shouldn’t have. - Encry…

> I'm certain it's worked well in other countries, but I have zero trust in the UK government to handle this responsibility.

This commenter may sound like a paranoid person (and may very well be, I don't know them) but read about the way the UK government handled an IT error in post office accounting software. Someone living there has good reason to not trust the powers that be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#636

Post by tim333 »

randerson wrote: post #466

[flagged]

>The UK must surely have satellites or drones that can spot boats of migrants coming in via France

You don't really need that - you can stand on the beach and watch.

The issue is more with the laws - we have human rights laws where you can claim asylum and a very slow and expensive legal system where almost no one actually gets send back. What the government should do is change the laws to something that agrees more with common sense.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#637

Post by 9x39 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #628
randerson wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major difference between visiting a place and emigrating there. How many cultures actually learn another language just to go on their annual vacation? You seem to be arguing simultaneously that the Brits are worse than average when it comes to adapting to local norms as tourists, while also suggesting that the people moving to Britain permanently shouldn't have to? There's nothing wrong with a culture adapting over t…

> You seem to be arguing simultaneously that the Brits are worse than average when it comes to adapting to local norms as tourists, while also suggesting that the people moving to Britain permanently shouldn't have to? No. I’m arguing that people who say “people change their personalities to suit mine” are hypocrites. > But a small country can't preserve their identity when they are overloaded by so many immigrants c…

>I do think it’s courteous for people to make an effort to integrate. But it should also be their decision, not ours.

If I choose not to integrate, and to instead practice particularly illiberal approaches to women, for example, is that still my decision? If my culture uses rape and acid to control women, may I continue?

I'm picking on a particularly onerous difference between Western and MENA peoples that's been a flashpoint in the UK, from what I can see.

If immigration was purely unfounded scapegoating, and we all could simply talk about our heritage and share new foods in these borderless economic zones that used to be countries, why would there be articles like these popping up:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/05/disputed-or-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvnnj301l3o

Another debate probably reduced to a single bit of information between participants. Class based analyses on immigration are probably more telling, but there doesn't seem to be much available.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#638

Post by endgame »

nostrademons wrote: post #458
aftergibson wrote: post #189

A secure, optional digital ID could be useful. But not in today’s UK. Why? Because the state has already shown it can’t be trusted with our data. - Snoopers’ Charter (Investigatory Powers Act 2016): ISPs must keep a year’s worth of records of which websites you visit. More than 40 agencies—from MI5 to the Welsh Ambulance Service—can request it. MI5 has already broken the rules and kept data it shouldn’t have. - Encry…

I wonder if zkSTARKS could help here. Prove that the validity of a statement (like "I am a citizen that is authorized to receive benefits") without revealing your precise identity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interactive_zero-knowledge...

Whizz-bang cryptographic solutions to this class of problem (digital ID, electronic voting, etc) have at least three major problems that I consider fatal:

1. The contract to build the thing will go to the lowest bidder, who is all but guaranteed not to do any of it correctly (cf. the UK Post Office scandal and Fujitsu's role in it).

2. The public has no guarantee that it is implemented in the cryptographically secure way, or that is is ONLY implemented in the cryptographically secure way (e.g., either by accident or through malice the system leaks info it shouldn't).

3. The overwhelming majority of the public are not trained in nearly enough computer science to understand "no actually this system isn't a total privacy nightmare" (assuming that it's actually implemented securely).

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#639

Post by closeparen »

It has been obvious for at least 10 years of "digital privacy" as an issue that the next time people with certain database attributes would be restricted from full participation in society or rounded up by armed men, the attributes at issue would be citizenship and immigration status.

This moment is the test for the edifice that the privacy advocates have built in all that time. We should all be watching closely.

Re: Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

#640

Post by aussieguy1234 »

"Government says digital ID will make it harder to work illegally"

Today it's immigrants, tomorrow it could be dissidents.

In East Germany a common strategy the government used was to not put dissidents in prison, but make life hard for them in many ways including by denying them employment.

Of course none of this stops under the table work - which those engaging in illegal work are probably already doing.

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