Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

What's the benefit of this over a passport? A passport is a physical thing, so you don't need to have a phone to be able to use it, proves who you are with the same details as this digital ID, and will probably require a similar amount of paperwork to get hold of

agree, seems pointless

You usually don't want to carry a passport with you at all times. In some European countries (e.g., the Nordics), you have your ID, driver’s license, firearm license, etc., all in a government app that can be verified with an app used by officials. You can also sign and authenticate all paperwork with the same system

Missing the point.

A passport is the universal identity document. It's way too valuable to carry around and expediting a new passport is costly and slow. Checks need to be done in person and the passport holder needs to be told in advance about the check (so impromptu checks don't work and expired passports get through, also catching fake passports and the like is hard).

A digital ID as its name says is digital, checks can be done remotely (as often as you want) in a secure environment with physical checks possible in addition to that. Regular and unscheduled checks are possible with a digital id after the initial check both presential and remote. Online checks especially can cover for things like the same id being used in multiple places, it also means employers cannot fudge it as the actual repository of truth lies online. None of this is possible with a passport.

Citizen IDs and more recently digital IDs have been used in Europe for decades now. Having a redundant piece of ID is incredibly valuable.

Good for them, but I don't see why we need this, or indeed why that's a good thing?

I use my passport to verify my right to work in the US during the first week of my job, and then I don't bring it any other time. So unless you're changing jobs very frequently it shouldn't be necessary to carry all the time. A bigger issue would be that many people do not have passports.

The government has been able to do checks on me using my passport number etc, like when I was getting my provisional driving license, so somewhere there is a digital version of it on a government server or something. Can't they just make that information available?

What impromptu checks would you need this ID for? The use cases I've seen for it are to make sure you are legal to work, and when renting a house, both of which are circumstances that you can be told about beforehand

Easy and cheap regular checks on the spot presential or/and online, as frequently as you want vs rare scheduled difficult and expensive checks.

Possibilities get realised such as regular remote checks (ie selfie to prove you are the id owner holder, address proof, etc, flagging odd id holder behaviour or employer, etc). Currently, you cannot do this, no visibility into who works where and where that person even resembles the person meant to be working for [insert gig company].

I would trust the Nordic governments to write an app to put on my phone and not slurp up all my data and spy on me with it. I can't say the same about the British government

The fact that the UK doesn’t allow “impromptu checks”, otherwise known as “Papers please!” is not a bug, it’s a feature that distinguishes our democracy from other states and we are pretty proud of it.

And in a situation where that is warranted (e.g. a traffic violation), you should probably have some form of proof of identification on you anyway

Denmark is the largest supporter of Chat Control

That is not what I mean. Doing checks using your passport number is not good enough . It only proves that you someone used your passport number for a job. It doesn't prove it's you. It doesn't prove that you didn't swap with someone else (worker proxy). A digital id is a token fully controlled that opens compliance possibilities that are not possible or financially feasible by using just a passport number because the government does not control the passport numbers of everyone (especially those for which this policy is intended).

Think: the ability to verify that the id owner's face resembles the face of the id holder. The ability to check that the id owner address matches that of the id holder. The ability to flag employers containing id owner employees regularly failing those checks. The ability to do this regularly without previous notice to the id owner at national scale remotely or in person is a level of compliance you will never get even halfway with just using a passport number.

That unfortunately can, and will change.

In times of war, civil liberties get curtailed. And in 2025 when Russian and Chinese bots are interfering in our democracy at an industrial scale to destroy our countries from within, the idea of identity being overlooked for all aspects of public life is looking increasingly untenable.

Not required by law in the UK to have ID on you while driving. Works well enough (you have to produce it at a station within 7 days). I'm sure if it's serious enough, the police can force some other method

I do selfie to prove I match my driver's license all the time (needed for app based banks, and so on)?

The government absolutely knows where I work, are you joking? That's what NI numbers are for. You seriously think there isn't a join table in a government database with my NI number and passport number?

In the UK you do not have to have your drivers license upon your person when driving a car. Usually you'll be instructed to present it to a nearby police station within a few days.

The driving license application page pulled up my photo from giving it my passport number. That photo of me proves that I am the owner of that passport. I recently gave my work my passport information to prove that I was legal to work there. If we need a new system to prove that I am legal to work there, then how was it good enough to use my passport for that?

To the extent this is technically possible, if the gig economy companies wanted to do this, they could do it already.

When the driver signs up, check their passport or driving license in the normal manner, and take a matching portrait you keep on file. Any time you want to, compare a selfie to the portrait on file.

Reason they don't do this is it's profitable to hire people who can't legally work in the UK, if they can get away with it - and the government lets them get away with it.

One of the problems the UK has is that our two primary government IDs – driver licenses and passports – are not universally issued. Instead, these IDs have requirements and must be applied for at a cost, so not everyone has one.

This means when you want to implement things like the Online Safety Act you basically have to implement alternatives to ID verification like age estimators which isn't ideal (for the government anyway).

With a digital ID anonymous age estimators will no longer be required, so when someone is trying to watch porn or view footage of a political protest they'll have to identify who they are instead of using a fake AI face.

They don't have any real benefit over passports expect for the fact that a passport is a selectively issued document which not everyone living and working in the UK has access to or has applied for, but with digital IDs everyone will have one so there will no excuse to not identify yourself any time the government wants you to.

There is nothing undemocratic about checking whether you are compliant with employment regulations on a regular manner anymore than it is to check whether your gas installation is compliant with gas regulations or your voting registration is compliant with voting policy. It is completely orthogonal. You might not be in favour of a policy but that does not mean that the policy is undemocratic.

In the UK all cars have number plates front and rear, so that's covered already.

There are other workers in the UK aside from you. The policy affects them too not just you. You are getting the business requirements wrong. You are unlikely to be the main reason for the policy. Folks getting paid under minimum wage such as some gig workers using someone else's identity are the main target.

Do you believe these russian and chinese bots are walking the streets, where an 'impromptu check' by a policeman would stop them?

Or are you saying this electronic ID card will be linked to people's twitter accounts, to better police speech online?

Can't use your passport online. In Sweden we have bank id, its used for everything from validating purchases, logging in to banks, government or other websites, to sign documents, get a loan, etc. To get it you would need to go to a bank and present a proper ID, the ones using bank id for auth or otherwise only get your name and personal number.

If they arrived here legally won't they have a passport? Or national photo ID at the very least? If they are driving for Uber or deliveroo then they'll have a driver's license too? If they don't have either (or a UK birth certificate) then it's safe to say they're not a legit citizen?

Who exactly are we solving for?

> If they arrived here legally won't they have a passport? Or national photo ID at the very least? If they are driving for Uber or deliveroo then they'll have a driver's license too? If they don't have either (or a UK birth certificate) then it's safe to say they're not a legit citizen?

Simple. Overstaying or/and expired passport will lead to that. Valid status is not a fixed binary state. It is better described as a function of personal id, rights docs and current time. Currently, the checks are more akin to updating a Boolean column on rare occasions. Digital id countries do checks more like function calls that you can perform easily and quickly

Sorry but my own corrupt politicians and ruling business class are doing far more damage to my country than Russian ad Chinese bots.

RTW already requires ID plus NI, but OK what about if we just said 'free passports' and then said passport or driving licence plus NI is needed to get a job here. If you have a foreign passport and no UK driving licence then yes you'll have to keep that up to date in order to work here, c'est la vie.

Cheap scare tactics

That gives the car's identity though, not the driver's identity