Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

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.

- Encryption backdoors: Ministers can issue “Technical Capability Notices” to force tech firms to weaken or bypass end-to-end encryption.

- Online Safety Act: Expands content-scanning powers that experts warn could undermine privacy for everyone.

- Palantir deals: The government has given £1.5 billion+ in contracts to a US surveillance firm that builds predictive-policing tools and runs the NHS’s new Federated Data Platform. Many of those deals are secret.

- Wall-to-wall cameras: Millions of CCTV cameras already make the UK one of the most surveilled countries in the world.

A universal digital ID would plug straight into this ecosystem, creating an always-on, uniquely identified record of where you go and what you do. Even if paper or card options exist on paper, smartphone-based systems will dominate in practice, leaving those without phones excluded or coerced.

I’m not against digital identity in principle. But until the UK government proves it can protect basic privacy—by rolling back mass data retention, ending encryption backdoor demands, and enforcing genuine oversight—any national digital ID is a surveillance power-grab waiting to happen.

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

Was reading through your post, finding it difficult to find fault with anything you were saying, but something wasn't sitting right. And then ...

> I'm certain it's worked well in other countries

It has! In the Netherlands for example, it's just an incredibly convenient system, and if there's anything dodgy going on I'm not aware of it.

So what makes the UK so different to the Netherlands? Genuine question, because I really don't know. My only guess is that the people of the Netherlands hold their politicians to account, whereas nothing ever seems to happen to UK politicians whose corruption is so severe that they're sometimes literally criminal.

Mandatory ID cards are a cultural no-no in the UK. They were required during WW2, then discontinued in peacetime. People burned them in the street. You are not required to show ID to a police officer. Even when driving you don’t need to show a license on the spot, though if stopped for cause you have to present it at a police station within three days. At least those were the rules when I was a young driver there.

The UK has an idiosyncratic relationship with freedom. Technically you have little because (formally limited) monarchy. In practice there’s this aversion to IDs, things like freedom to roam which gives a lot of access to private property, and the ability to get citizenship elsewhere and keep UK, which republics like the US and India won’t allow.

And yet there’s massive camera surveillance from the recent nanny state. And libel laws mean you have to be careful what you print about people. Odd place. Maybe the weather inspires it.

I don't understand why Americans hold freedom of speech / the First Amendment in such high regard.

What does it buy you?

Major corruption, abuse and misconduct still happens. Being able to criticise your government doesn't seem to matter in the social media age. Look at the state of politics in the US right now.

Seems like it's slightly redundant these days – a bit anachronistic?

Kind of odd the obsession with it.

(p.s.: All the social media companies being from the US, of course – thanks for all the misinformation, disinformation and hate speech platforms along with all that 'free speech'!).

>What does it buy you?

Well, for one thing, it's not a transactional question of what it "buys". It's a matter of principle and defense against future repression or manipulation by politicians on a power trip.

For example, given Trump's current and blatant attempts to crush free expression against his own policies and bullshit, or even those who constantly insult and criticize him (whining about it like a little kid actually) imagine how much easier he'd have had it if there were no U.S 1st amendment to use against him.

There's an example of its value. It's just one of many.

If you think being able to protect free expression and the ability to speak out freely against power and its abuse is anachronistic, then I don't know what else to say except that you're a naive or dishonest fool, and possibly part of the very problem in places where péople just don't seem to care that under pretext X or Y, they can be stifled at any time.

Yes, the social media companies produce, or facilitate the production of, vast amounts of misinformation, disinformation and even hate speech, but guess what? All that shit gets produced en masse anyhow by repressive authoritarian regimes with narratives to construct and agendas to maintain. Free speech certainly isn't at fault for its existence, given that such things have existed since there's been propaganda or a perceived need for it.

At least, in a place like the U.S, where free speech remains protected (for now at least), any misinformation, disinformation or whatever speech by those in power or outside of it who create it, can be countered by others trying to speak more truthfully.

Try doing the same against misinformation and disinformation by government in Russia, or many other countries where "anachronistic" free speech is curtailed right to hell.

In essence, when governments can legally censor speech they decide is misinformation, disinformation or "hate speech", they can create all sorts of um, interesting, rubrics for deciding what fits under these labels, and then oops, by coincidence it can be anything that goes against their agendas. Going back to the Trump example, just pause for a moment to think about all the uncomfortable facts and opinions he loves to label as "fake news" or "misinformation" or even as hate speech. Now imagine him having the legal authority to sweep them away.

Nothing in any state guarantees against a future leadership with similar authoritarian proclivities from forming to use anti-free speech laws in similar ways.

There, my good faith response to your completely absurd line of rhetorical questioning.