Digital ID: yes or no?

[Pblakeney]

It's a continuous scale not a binary position.

Data has value. Data is unreliable and that unreliability could have impacts. Those issues get worse the more data is amalgamated. eg. Some time back I made a Subject Access Request on the Conservative Party who I have never had any dealings with - I got back 13 A4 printed pages most of which was twaddle eg they had my birthday correct but had me leaving school and education before age 16 (though reality was I did 2 higher University degrees). They didn't make-up that information but got it from Experian (they gave the sources) who do credit reference ...

Government has no need to centralise information they have about me (which is limited anyway).

Lack of privacy and control over your data has real world impacts both for individuals and companies/research, etc. eg I withdrew from several long term medical clinical trials because the body holding the data broke privacy assurances and gave a load of medical data to an insurance company, China has been given access to half a million GP records despite UK security services "fears", Human Diversity Foundation (HDF - which carries out pseudoscientific research purporting to prove fundamental differences between races) seems to have bypassed controls to UK Biobank data (medical and genetic records for 500,000 people), etc.

The more organisations hold data the bigger the risk. Fine if that doesn't worry any individual but it is not for those who aren't concerned to dictate that those who are should just give away any privacy.

Sounds as if you advocate going off grid.
I've not changed my opinion.

 

[Psamathe]

I think it is a bit like a passport. If you have that you can blag quite a lot of things. But a passport is hidden safely somewhere in my home, not held on a .gov.uk server and vulnerable to someone in a government department not paying attention and opening a phishing email.

As you say a passport is personal. Much of the information in my passport the UK has no record of, no idea about. UK has very limited information about what I do with my passport.

 

[Psamathe]

Sounds as if you advocate going off grid.
I've not changed my opinion.

Maybe you missed my point. "On grid"/"Off grid" are binary. Privacy is a continuous scale, a question of degree.

I'm not looking for you to change your attitude to privacy, just accept that I can hold my attitude and that I should not be needlessly forced to give up privacy I regard as important (when losing that privacy serves no purpose).

 

[Pblakeney]

Maybe you missed my point. "On grid"/"Off grid" are binary. Privacy is a continuous scale, a question of degree.

I'm not looking for you to change your attitude to privacy, just accept that I can hold my attitude and that I should not be needlessly forced to give up privacy I regard as important (when losing that privacy serves no purpose).

I get that. I just don't think your online/electronic privacy is as private as you think.
Just thoughts and opinions.

 

[Psamathe]

I get that. I just don't think your online/electronic privacy is as private as you think.
Just thoughts and opinions.

Difficulty is you have no idea how private I think my electronic/online privacy is nor reality of how private it really is.

On the sliding scale I don't do a lot of stuff online many others do (eg no online banking and all my financial accounts are not connected to online accounts and a number not even in the UK).

 

[Pblakeney]

Difficulty is you have no idea how private I think my electronic/online privacy is nor reality of how private it really is.

On the sliding scale I don't do a lot of stuff online many others do (eg no online banking and all my financial accounts are not connected to online accounts and a number not even in the UK).

Fair point. I don't. My view is more a generalisation for the general public.
I accept that some may be able to retain some privacy by being extremely vigilant, the vast majority won't. And some don't even care.

 

[CXRAndy]

My thinking is that you either go off grid completely or succumb.
Any middle ground is an illusion.

Mass non compliance will kill DID

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Sorry, missed the 'no' option. Now added.

What's the difference between options 2 and 3? 🤔

 

[briantrumpet]

What's the difference between options 2 and 3? 🤔

2: everyone has one, but doesn't have to carry
3: having the digital ID itself is optional

 

[Psamathe]

2: everyone has one, but doesn't have to carry
3: having the digital ID itself is optional

Important distinction given Government's track record for losing or leaking private data they hold on individuals.

 

[Psamathe]

No 10 Petition doing surprisingly well. Way into the higherst ever 5 petitions in terms of votes (maybe top 4 by now?) and the policy was only announced yesterday.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194

 

[presta]

If this story is true, there's another Horizon already under way.

The claim is that the new Government OneLogin system is being developed by one of the world's most notorious countries for hacking, security reviewed by the same company that produced it, and accessed in an ad hoc manner by hundreds of personnel who have no security vetting, and no secure terminals to use. Finally, when a civil service insider blows the whistle on all this, he gets fired and smeared.


View: https://x.com/StarkNakedBrief/status/1971820562138968376

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/02/digital-id-is-a-danger-to-us-all/

Digressing a bit, Oxford Uni has published an index of which countries are the most notorious for hacking:

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-04-1...index-ranks-countries-cybercrime-threat-level

 

[CXRAndy]

No 10 Petition doing surprisingly well. Way into the higherst ever 5 petitions in terms of votes (maybe top 4 by now?) and the policy was only announced yesterday.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194

Don't know why this is a surprise.

Its was resoundingly rejected when Blair tried to introduce it. Now after another 25 years of shoot government's, trust is at an all time low.

Starmer has no chance of getting this off the ground-the most despised PM

 

[Evil_Breakfast]

View: https://x.com/StarkNakedBrief/status/1971820562138968376


Reading that thread is more than enough to convince anyone that the Digital ID/'BritCard' project is, intrinsically, already profoundly flawed and compromised.

 

[briantrumpet]

View: https://x.com/StarkNakedBrief/status/1971820562138968376


Reading that thread is more than enough to convince anyone that the Digital ID/'BritCard' project is, intrinsically, already profoundly flawed and compromised.

Well, if the 'how' is by cosying up to dodgy big tech and paying big $s, add that to the long-standing UK resistance to the notion of needing ID cards, and I suspect it'll be dead in the water by the time it gets anywhere near being discussed in detail in parliament. I'll be looking forward to reading Private Eye's take on it.

I seem to remember a couple of the phone-based covid apps appeared quickly and worked pretty well (I was surprised and pleased when one worked in a random bakery in SE France to show my vaccine status), and had been done relatively cheaply in-house. Or am I misremembering?