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.

So the Netherlands may not be the best example to use as a positive example here.

Notoriously, the national identity system was used during World War II as a system for discovering and eliminating the Jewish community[1]. The lessons learned from that are a frequent topic of discussion in civil liberties groups, and the Dutch experience is often cited, both global conversations and within the Netherlands -- e.g. On Liberation Day 2015, Bits of Freedom held its annual Godwin Lecture on the risks of prioritising ID efficiency over civil liberties[2].

It may be that special protections were coded into the current system to prevent this from happening again, I don't know the details.

Certainly, the reputation for how obligatory papers have been (mis)used in mainland Europe since Napoleonic times have fed into the anglo world's suspicion around introducing similar regulations[3]. There are several recurring memes around how compulsory documents are a sign of an authoritarian environment.

[1] - https://jck.nl/en/agenda/identity-cards-and-forgeries

[2] - https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2015/04/30/during-world-war-ii-...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Valjean

My response as to the difference is the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Something that has already been branded as the Brit Card is simply something that wouldn't work in Northern Ireland, and that the name passed any scrutiny say an awful lot.

Ireland is not Britain, and people from Northern Ireland can chose to identify as British, Irish or Both by birthright.

A "Brit Card" is not something a significant portion of people would want.

I personally am more disgusted by the nationalistic naming, but I also don't like the idea of needing a smartphone or my walle when walking.

If these aren't true details then the messaging has been poor, per form, and needs to be addressed, quickly.

You will not need to carry it around with you.

It also seems it'll actually be called Digital ID by the government, this is more a marketing tool, BritCard.

(Just clarifying if it helps, I see some misinformation out there).

Huh? Everyone carries their phone everywhere and an ID card on an app is carried everywhere. When you stay at a hotel you might have to produce it, go to a doctors appointment,... and so on