Before the election I was approached by a bubbly young woman who tried to persuade me to vote Labour: "No thanks, last time I did that they tried to introduce ID cards", "But that's not in our manifesto" she replied, "It wasn't the last time I voted for them either".
It was introduced by the Tories, supported by both parties, and you live in a place with FPTP voting. Not voting for labour isn’t going to help anything except give more power to the others who are worse.
It all depends on exactly when they're mandatory and what tracking is associated with them.
My own personal thinking has evolved on the subject since I campaigned against ID cards under Blair ("no2id"). It is a question of trust and purpose. Things like the Estonian digital identity scheme do not seem to be bad in practice. The problem comes from identity checkpoints, which serve as an opportunity for inconvenience, surveillance, and negligence by the authorities.
Remember the "computer is never wrong" Fujitsu scandal? The Windrush fiasco (itself a story of identity and records)?
And anything born of an immigration crackdown is coming out of the gate with a declared intention to be paranoid and authoritarian.
> "Remember the "computer is never wrong" Fujitsu scandal?"
For anyone outside the UK who doesn't know this reference, the UK Post Office (originally the state postal system, privatised by this time) paid Fujitsu to build a computer system. It had bugs which made it look like money was going missing. The bugs were reported, and ignored. The Post Office prosecuted employees for theft and fraud over sixteen years, ruining hundreds of lives and reputations, sending hundreds of people to prison, and causing some suicides.
It eventually came out as an investigative journalism story that the system was at fault, the people were innocent, and the Post Office knew about the bugs right from the start and had been hiding them from the police/courts. "In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history" that's almost 10 years after it ended and 25 years after it started, rather too late to undo all the harm.
I've had a very similar journey. I also campaigned against them, rejoiced when the hard drives were shredded after the election. I am now less worried. The devil is in the detail, and the issue last time was in the database rather than the cards. That said, I think since then we have bigger concerns, and if an ID app alleviates some concerns about immigration then I'm fine with it. One big thing that has happened since then is GDS – the various GOV.UK apps tend to be actually good. I recently used the new GOV.UK One Login app to renew my driving licence and it was impressively good.
> and if an ID app alleviates some concerns about immigration then I'm fine with it
It won't.
The US border is now locked down far tighter than it ever was when I was a kid, and the cries for locking it down even more and violently apprehending suspected violators are at a fever pitch. The UK too - like many countries in the recent rightward lurch - has gone from a country where I can just show up to visit to one when were I need to request permission beforehand.
It sure seems like the "concerns about immigration" in the UK mirror those in the US, which in my analysis is a reaction towards the loss of white privilege combined with the loss of economic power. Putting stricter id checks may assuage abstract xenophobia, but the concrete details don't fundamentally change the concrete details.
It's not like Brexit fixed those concerns about immigration.
'Opinion polls found that Leave voters believed leaving the EU was "more likely to bring about a better immigration system, improved border controls, a fairer welfare system, better quality of life, and the ability to control our own laws"'
Doesn't seem to have helped, has it?
So a justification based on a premise of alleviating some concerns about immigration has a long historical trail of failures behind it, as I'm sure the Windrush generation can share. The US and Canadian citizens along what was once pridefully called the world's longest unprotected border have also their misgivings.
As I read here, the UK passed the law that required employers to check employee eligibility. I'm sure that was meant to alleviate xenophobic concerns. Why wasn't that enough?
> Through this new network, much personal information which the individual has to provide, for example to claim a benefit, or to an employer - will be routed through successive computers to wind up on a ‘central index’. Even if no new law is passed, the effect of the system will be to create a national population register which each individual is obliged to inform of changes of name and address (and often a great deal more). Moreover, by the same time, the majority of adults (on present plans) will have been issued with a National Insurance (NI) ‘Numbercard’, laying an easy basis for the future introduction of a national identity-card system.
> Since the start of 1984, a NI Numbercard - resembling a standard plastic credit card, complete with signature space and a magnetic strip encoding the bearer’s name and number — has been issued to everyone reaching the age of 16, and to anyone else registering in the NI system for the first time or applying for a new card.
> Eventually, the cards could be used in automatic readers, similar to the present automatic telling machines (ATMs, or cash dispensers) installed by most banks.
> Despite government claims to the contrary, the Lindop committee concluded that the British NI number was already close to being used as a personal identity system. Although no further government proposals have been made for the use of the NI Numbercard, it is fairly certain that - for benefit claimants at least - its carrying will become obligatory. It did not take long for suggestions about compulsory carrying of NI cards to creep into public discussion. In August 1984, in what NCCL called the ‘thin end of a nasty wedge’, the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons suggested that casual workers should be issued with the new Numbercards and required to produce their cards when being paid - so that information about payments made to them could be collated successfully by the Inland Revenue.
Here's also a picture of the thing in an advert in Smash Hits:
Could you please give me your real name "celticninja", your phone number, your address, your NI number -- oh, and you'll need to install this app on your phone which I promise will never be used to monitor your location, purchases, friends. Then I'll explain.
With your logic, everything can be used, or change to be used in a bad way, so nothing should be changed. There is never a guarantee. Seriously, is there anything which cannot be changed to be shit, in the best case to be a worthless money pit?
Edit: btw this proposal already has something which can be criticised: ID on mobile phones… so probably they’d lock everybody into a duopoly.
Yes? They can kill half Europe with a single nuclear power plant if they really want. They are safe only for accidents, and external sabotage. They are absolutely not for intentional internal fuck ups. The whole system is built on that most workers there don’t want that. The whole system is built on trust.
No, I’m arguing that it can be used for good, and it shouldn’t be dismissed when it cannot be used for evil things by law, especially not because of future possible evil usage, because that’s true for everything. Btw, why do use the internet? It’s quite contradictory to argue about this here. And that is the case since almost its inception.
There is no difference between changing a law more, than less. It can be done the same way, with a single vote. So the balance doesn't matter at all, especially that voters clearly don't make distinctions based on that.
there's a difference between "the police can request this information from an individual" and "this information will be automatically gathered from everyone at all times and stored by the state". for one, there are circumstances in which the police are allowed to request that information and you can say "no", and there are also practical limits to the number of police that can be out requesting. The central equivalence you're trying to draw here is simply false.
They'll invoke one of the more ambiguous sections, it's usually the anti-terrorism one, but sometimes is the anti-drugs one (i can't remember the numbers), and they'll detain then arrest you and haul you to the police station.
You can complain later, and maybe get some pounds out of it, but make no mistake: if the uk police wants you identified, they will identify you.
Interesting. We could turn it into a logical argument just so we can see if this is the case. The course of the argument is:
> Could you explain what is so distasteful about ID cards?"
which is roughly how humans say "ID cards are okay" (P0)
> I mean if you have a passport then you already have an 'ID card', but I certainly don't want to take that out with me to prove my age.
which is roughly how humans say "We already collect information that would be on an ID card and store it against a passport" (P1) provided only for completeness because it is not used later
> "Could you please give me your real name "celticninja", your phone number, your address, your NI number -- oh, and you'll need to install this app on your phone which I promise will never be used to monitor your location, purchases, friends. Then I'll explain."
which is roughly how humans say "If (ID cards are okay) (P0 again) then (there should be no problem sharing that information with me, a stranger) (P2). But (there should be no problem sharing the information with me, a stranger) (P2 again) - is absurd"
Therefore, if all of these were logical, then indeed this is a valid proof that ID cards are not okay by reductio ad absurdum, a valid proof technique.
I suppose the gap in the argument is in the logical statement P0 => P2. If some chain of argument could provide P0 => P2 then this would indeed be a valid proof of the falsehood of P0 by reductio ad absurdum to P2 an absurd conclusion. Of course I wrote it out to illustrate, but it was obvious it was reductio ad absurdum.
It just strikes me as curious that someone would point that out. A bit like saying "syllogism" when someone makes a one-step logical conclusion, which is not something that humans usually post on web forums. Then again, if you say "Knowledge is power" someone will inevitably say "France is bacon" ;) so there's a bit of an ability to prompt things out of human beings that only has phatic purpose. Perhaps Latin, in particular, draws this out of someone but I'd think it odd if people went around saying "quod erat demonstrandum" in replies to someone who proved something.
I suspect this particular human was trying to say "straw man fallacy" but ended up with "reductio ad absurdum" instead, which is pretty much the opposite. If you think the first thing entails the second thing then you've executed a successful absurdum, if you think it doesn't then the second thing is a straw man. These are both annoying ways to wrangle about perceptions.
The nuance is that you can have a NI number, then have your visa lapse for whatever reason - you still have the NI number. Hence the requirement to prove your right to work through another means.
Previously you could use proof of British nationality or a physical biometric residence card - but they've been replaced by the digital share code system (which tbh hasn't been too bad)
Sorry I worded that poorly - I was trying to make the point that citizens prove their right to work using passport/birth certificate, and until recently visa holders used a physical BRP, and now a digital system (which oddly enough uses your expired/redundant BRP number as a username)
I am sure by now it has been explained by others. But basically - an ID document is like a bearer token that does not need to call a central authority every time it is verified. I am sure there are cases where it is, but a digital token that is linked to location every time it is verified is a quite different thing. Currently in the UK the law states that ultimately only a court can force you to identify yourself - by which time hopefully the purpose for which identification is being done is quite a serious and valid one. Making it cheaper to track people is not exactly a goal worth pursuing in my (not so humble) opinion.
To add to this - there is very rarely in my mind a need for someone to actually identify themselves - there are plenty of examples where it's useful for *audit* purposes to have a record, or to have a role-based credential to be able to do a thing, but *identity*?
Should be used for basic things like driving a car or signing up for a government service. Should be used to determine if you can make money to survive on or walk down the street without being stopped to very that you as a brown person are legit. "What are you doing in this part of town? Your sort isn't usually around this area"
If you want to prove your age, there are a host of *voluntary* forms of identity you can carry if you wish to do so. Please tell me how a new *compulsory* scheme (with privacy invading overreach) is going to help you.
And even then you're never asked for it if you look over 25. Which is fair - if in doubt, verify, but usually you don't need to give over your *identity* to a place that serves alcohol.
It gives me no pleasure to be right on this.