“Trust” has nothing to do with it. There’s no genuine public need for a government-run digital ID system in the first place. The only people who need it are the corporations who lobbied for it, because it creates new revenue streams by turning identity into a product. Once the whole country is routed through one digital choke-point, everything else follows automatically: behavioural data, movement data, payments data, cross-service profiling. And once that system exists, it only ever moves in one direction.
A paper ID sits in your pocket and minds its own business. A digital ID is one update away from becoming a tracking token. Dress it up however you like, but it’s just an ankle tag with better UX. And the UK track record on data leaks, “accidental” sharing, and mission creep is spectacularly awful. The idea that this won’t be exploited is a fairy tale.
If it goes ahead in the flavour BlackRock and WEF types dream about, expect the usual:
- services quietly tied to compliance thresholds
- financial scoring bleeding into civic rights
- automated sanctions and “risk flags”
- real-time behavioural profiles sold as “fraud prevention”
- and every data breach blamed on a junior contractor who “misconfigured a bucket”.
None of this empowers the public. It just hands more leverage to the same institutions already shaping policy from behind the curtain.
As a person who lives across a society where this exists, and has lived in multiple societies without it.
Frankly, you’re wrong.
There’s a benefit to the public.
Let me frame what I mean with a parable (and, its relevant to my point even if it seems totally unrelated, and I’m typing from my phone, so forgive the briefness).
When I dated my (now) ex-girlfriend; she used to make mention of my teeth as a negative thing, that I’d be more handsome it they weren’t crooked etc.
One christmas she purchased for me, an electric toothbrush. A fancy one, she clearly thought a lot about which one to get: but to her surprise I was unhappy.
An electric toothbrush has (mostly) benefits, this one didn’t even need new heads all the time, dentists almost universally agree that an electric toothbrush is a good option. Yet I was unhappy.
Why? because the gift was mired in the backdrop of previous conversations and self conscious issues.
A few years later, and I received an electric toothbrush as a gift again. However, this time the person giving it had never said anything to make me self concious, even better: they had previously planted an electric toothbrush head at their apartment, so I could use their electric toothbrush body when I visited (this was one of the earliest moments in the relationship and was a not-so-subtle invitation to come back).
Now; it’s the same gift. Same benefits. Why was I happy now when I wasn’t before?
The context made a huge difference.
On the one hand the first gift felt like a way of controlling me and a subtle way of putting me down (or, emotionally it felt that way- regardless of if it was well intentioned or not). The other time it was gifted; it was enhancing what we already had.
Context is important, and thats why I say: this shit is pretty good, but I totally buy why you don’t think so.
I don’t trust the UK Government is doing it for our sake either.
The toothbrush analogy still treats this like a question of personal trust. The real problem is that digital ID systems don’t rely on coercion. They rely on pleasure. Huxley saw this coming: people end up liking the structure that controls them, because it rewards compliant behaviour.
That’s the danger here. Not some cartoon dystopia on day one, but a system that trains people to associate state and corporate approval with comfort.
- You behaved correctly, here’s smoother access to services.
- You kept your “risk score” low, enjoy a discount.
- You shared more data, here’s a fast-track queue or a tax perk.
It’s not a boot on the neck. It’s a pat on the head.
And the public will flock to it, because it’s painless and convenient. Until it isn’t. These systems don’t reset when the government changes. They persist. The next administration can inherit a ready-made apparatus for mass categorisation, movement tracking, sanctions and exclusion. A list of “people who said X, lived at Y, travelled to Z” becomes a single query.
That’s why the UK context matters. The British state already leaks data, already sells access, already outsources core functions to corporations with zero accountability. Give them a unified identity spine and they won’t need to push you into a dystopia. People will march into it smiling, because it’ll start with freebies and frictionless services.
The risk isn’t today’s government. It’s the one after, or the one after that, inheriting a machine built for total visibility. That’s the part everyone pretending this is just “a matter of trust” refuses to acknowledge.
All I asked for was an open mind since the idea seems to work for, what I would consider, superior countries. I don’t particularly mind if you personally want to keep my homeland in the dark ages.
Germany is much the same, and I would never want to live there for this reason.
a crazy disconnected bureaucracy that forces me to prove myself multiple times over with massive cracks to slip through will always be inferior to a well invested cohesive system.
But, look who I’m talking about. When has the UK invested in any good social or physical infrastructure in the last 50 years? ha. Crabs in a bucket.
A paper ID sits in your pocket and minds its own business. A digital ID is one update away from becoming a tracking token. Dress it up however you like, but it’s just an ankle tag with better UX. And the UK track record on data leaks, “accidental” sharing, and mission creep is spectacularly awful. The idea that this won’t be exploited is a fairy tale.
If it goes ahead in the flavour BlackRock and WEF types dream about, expect the usual:
- services quietly tied to compliance thresholds
- financial scoring bleeding into civic rights
- automated sanctions and “risk flags”
- real-time behavioural profiles sold as “fraud prevention”
- and every data breach blamed on a junior contractor who “misconfigured a bucket”.
None of this empowers the public. It just hands more leverage to the same institutions already shaping policy from behind the curtain.