Experiments
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Britain’s garbage government has a new gambit on the table, ID cards, prompting a whole lot of discussion around the country and making me feel even more right with my choice to say that I won’t save them with my vote next time around, having skeptically voted for them as the lesser evil last year.

ID cards have been mostly absent in the UK, having twice experimented with them before:

In World War 2, where it was compulsory from the start of the war in 1939 to 7 years after it ended, in 1952
Then in the early 2000s, where it was introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government, planned to be compulsory but launched for voluntary applications, before being scrapped in 2011 after Labour lost the election

The scrappings were basically motivated by freedom and cost, the wartime cards lost their credibility without there being the war to justify civil liberties being lower down than usual, the 2000s scheme essentially caused more anxiety over time due to feature creep, with the cards being tied to a “National Identity Register” that would include huge volumes of information about every person, up to 51 different pieces of data, after Labour lost the new government consisting of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who had both opposed the ID Cards, invalidated them as documents and had the register destroyed.

This brought us back to the status quo of the last few decades, where there is no national ID card, with there being 2 main other forms of ID, Passport and Drivers Licence. A full drivers licence is only for people who’ve actually done the driver’s tests, but you can get a provisional one, which lasts for 10 years and allows you to do the tests and drive with supervision, on request.

These 2 are the only universally accepted form of ID, there are other digital and physical schemes like the PASS card, CitizenCard or YOTI app but people don’t have to accept them, making them effectively useless, I actually tried using YOTI to get into my local pub just after I got to the drinking age and it was rejected, forcing me to settle for my passport until I applied for my provisional.

Even though I never plan to take any lessons or get a car, the provisional is a staple of my wallet since it’s much more convenient to carry around than a passport, less damaging to lose, always accepted and long lasting. Since at 22 I’ve now got a well grown beard I rarely actually get asked for ID anymore, my beard basically being an ID in itself, but some venues have a strict policy of asking for it from anyone on the door even if they’re obviously over 18, so it’s always useful to carry around.

Back on the Table
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The idea of restoring ID cards started to gain pace mid way through this year, with Labour having gotten back into power last year a Labour affiliated think tank called Labour Together published a proposal for a return to ID that they called the “BritCard”, promoting it as a way to crack down on illegal immigration by forcing people to prove their right to live here before getting a job, through the ID, although with the progressive spin on top of saying that that proof would help protect people who do have the right from being wrongly deported, referring back to the Windrush Scandal of a few years ago where “Windrush Generation” immigrants, migrants from the Caribbean who came over in the 1960s, were threatened with deportation after their documents were accidentally destroyed.

The BritCard, went the pitch, would be “mandatory” “universal” and “free of charge”, being used for proof of right to work, right to rent, and also access to digital services, the BritCard being the focal point of consolidating all or most of the government’s services online in one place.

This was at the time just a think tank pitch and the government clearly said that it wasn’t on the cards for them, but 2 days ago the Tony Blair Institute, Tony’s own post gov think tank, published their own paper calling for Digital ID with basically the same arguments, a compulsory system for proving who you are and accessing services (although not using the BritCard name), including a mockup of what the app could look like as a kind of Everything App including ID, election registration, community complaints, with the system being adopted by every government institution and its ID registration handed to every citizen at 18.

A day after that it leaked that the government was going to revive this rejected idea and implement digital ID, light on detail but confirming just 2 things, it would be mandatory and it would be used for those “right to work” checks.

The right to work element was the only confirmed bit of the scheme, which I already saw as ridiculous and stupid, if you’re the kind of employer that takes black money and hires illegal immigrants, you’re also the kind of employer who won’t bother with these ID checks, so how is this supposed to stop illegal immigration?

But then there was the wider element, the “Everything App” was in both pitches of the ID system that clearly influenced the government, Labour Together has been a key backer of the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Tony Blair and his affiliates have acted as mentors to his team, even though they’ve at times tried to keep some distance from him because he’s a highly controversial figure, despised for his illegal invasion of Iraq and the lies he used to justify it and his embrace of noxious Neoliberalism.

The data hoarding embodied by the NIR in the 2000s and the Everything App now goes far beyond other ID Card systems, for example in Germany the ID Card has:

7 data points, far less than what the NIR involved, or what an Everything App would involve, to the point that Massi quickly understood why the UK has been very hostile to those kinds of ideas when I explained where how far they were going to him, when he’d previously seen that opposition as bizarre or just a British cultural quirk.

I would be against even something like the German model being mandatory because I just don’t see a justification for forcing it on people, but would I actually apply for one? Yes!

I think it’s stupid having to apply for a driver’s licence when I never actually plan to drive, since everywhere I’ve wanted to go has always been in the reach of public transport and my own two feet, so an actual ID Card that fits that purpose, so I can prove my age when I want to go party in the club, would make sense to me.

The Everything App I can also see value in, having heard about Estonia’s extensive use of “E-Governance” where even voting is often done online, and despite paranoia about hacking and compromise it seems to be going well enough for them, as well as the Ukrainian Diia system, which has consolidated huge swathes of government bureaucracy into one app, no doubt making many processes a million times simpler to grasp, but it’s also I’m much more sceptical of too.

Having everything in one place could go a long way for convenience, but it could also demolish the safeguards that exist to protect privacy. Even in this day and age, yes, those things do somewhat exist.

If I give bits of my info to one government agency, another one can’t just access it and take it whenever they like, they’ll usually have to request it and prove they have a valid reason to use it, so that can help avoid the risk of institutions poking their noses where they don’t belong, at least to an extent.

If the data is all bundled into one place, that line of defence is gone, and anyone who can get access to that one place has the Holy Grail, a vast picture about you. I’m mostly thinking about government overreach here, but corrupt officials misusing data, or criminals getting access to your app, are another point of serious vulnerability.

So would I opt into it? I don’t know, I would be highly skeptical, would I see it as justifiable for the government to force it? Absolutely not.

This big shift of course quickly sparked a massive debate online, with many showing outrage for some of the reasons I mentioned, or going further and seeing it as part of a wide institution of control, tied to recent experiments with facial recognition on the streets, internet censorship moves and so on.

Defenders I saw making a few different arguments, which basically boiled down to these:

Seeing it as a gateway to convenience
Everywhere else/the EU does it, so why shouldn’t we?
If you’re not a criminal, what do you have to hide?
I don’t care/What’s the problem/I live in a country where we already do this and I don’t see it as a problem*

*this part either coming from EU folks confused at why this was causing so much controversy, or Brit immigrants in EU countries

Which I mostly found disturbing or extremely eyeroll worthy, although the first was understandable, but still complicated by the risks it poses:

I don’t really care how many other people try an idea, I care if it works well and makes sense, and like I mentioned with the Germany example compared to our experiments, the British pitches for ID systems have actually been way more data hoarding than others in the EU, which is why theirs have been relatively controversial and ours have been rejected
The classic “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” is just such an absurd argument I was really surprised to even see it on my feed at all, and really if someone genuinely still thinks like this, they’re pretty lost, I shouldn’t have to explain what’s wrong with it
And while a lot of people might see it as normal or no big deal, that’s great for them, but I do see it as a problem, so how about a voluntary system that’s the best of both worlds? You get the system you want, I don’t have to take a system I don’t want, you’re not having me locked up, and we’re all happy

Because that’s the thing, whatever merits a system like this would have, the sunny side kind of goes away when your pitch takes the sinister edge of, by the way you don’t actually have a choice, and especially given my libertarian spirit where I don’t see any need to force these things or justification to do it my instinct will quickly turn to “just nuke this idea”.

There are some rules that exist for very good reasons, it’s good that you have to get a licence before you drive a car, it’s good that employers can be tied down by pesky little things like worker’s rights, it’s good that you can’t harass, commit fraud, steal or murder, when it’s about restraints on the really malicious side of individual actions, or restraints on larger wholes like corpos strangling the individual, I’m more of a fan.

Probably my most abstractly “needed” rule that I believe in is forcing people to vote, and that’s because I do think a tyranny of the minority from a “democracy” where half the population doesn’t turn up is worse than the “tyranny” of nudging people to show up with some coercion.

But as a general rule, I prefer personal choice.

Another sort of flavour of “I don’t care” I heard wasn’t really rooted in actually supporting this kind of big ID system, but basically passive acceptance, a relative of mine I was chatting to about it had applied for an ID card back in the 2000s because back when we were still in the EU it could’ve been used for passport free travel there, but was disturbed by the expansiveness of the NIR and happy to see it destroyed, but those concerns about data hoarding didn’t lead to an opposition to this new scheme, because they felt that with all the mass surveillance already going on, cookies hoarding your browser, personalised ads, etc etc, pushing for privacy was basically a lost cause, your digital footprint is already out there.

To which I said, yes, but what say, Facebook, can get out of you is a very different kind of picture than what the government can get, and you’re not forced to give that data to Facebook either, you can avoid using most of the net altogether, but if you don’t want to live under a rock you can also use all sorts of kit to meddle with their data hoovering.

When I’m browsing the web I have 2 layers of tracker protection, plus a browser extension on PC, Consent-O-Matic, that automatically rejects those pesky consent forms that try to ask you to hand over your data in about 90 different ways, you know the type: “we and our 250 partners really care about your privacy, check these 50 boxes if you’d rather we don’t steal your data, and another 40 for the same thing, but we labelled it “legitimate interest” instead for fun!”

Even in so-called “consent or pay” systems where you have to press a “consent” button or sign up to a subscription to not be tracked, which I would never pay, that highly coerced “yes” is instantly placed with my 2 layers of “no”, giving me the last word.

Now I’m not naive enough to think that means they’re not getting anything or that I’m anywhere near off the grid, but it makes a difference.

Compare that to the government forcing you to hand over your data to their consolidated system, it’s quite different. And just in general, even if things are already too far gone as it is, why sit back and let it go further without protest?

So when I found a parliamentary petition calling for the Digital ID to be rejected, of course I signed it, not like I expect it will magically make them 180, but good to put my voice on the record.

Announcement
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And today finally came the official reveal, first in an awkwardly delivered interview by the government’s culture secretary Lisa Nandy, where she first suggested the ID would be voluntary, then backpedalled into saying it would be compulsory for all adults, then finally reaching the stickler that it would indeed be needed for the “right to work”, something Keir Starmer later confirmed in a speech, saying that you have to have Digital ID to work in the UK, “it’s as simple as that”, with the name being purely “Digital ID” not BritCard, the BritCard name being rejected by Nandy because of the anger it could cause from groups under the Union’s formal thumb that don’t see themselves as British, like Scottish nationalists in Scotland and Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland.

The focus was very much on migration, barely on the wider Everything App at all, though a press release did start pointing more to that side of things, with other role model countries being namedropped as helping with service access and fraud reduction.

I do wonder why there was this very different focus compared to the Labour Together and Blair Institute pitches, but I think it was basically an attempt to make the strongarming element look more justifiable, rather than being a coerced “we’re going to make you take it because it’s good for you” it turns into an us vs them, the us of the government and the public vs the them of illegal immigrants and people traffickers.

An argument that has convinced absolutely no one, with all the other parties coming against it, with a mix of civil liberties arguments or pointing out that the stupidity of it supposedly being an effective immigration crackdown tool, basically pointing to it as a rushed out gimmick to pretend to be problem solving.

So far everyone in power has insisted that only the “right to work” is where ID will be enforced, the rest, like the Everything App type consolidation will be optional, and you’ll never have to show the Digital ID elsewhere.

Despite the inherent hostility that gives me from it being forced, that’s a much lighter touch than what the think tanks were suggesting, but is it really trustworthy? Well, this is a government that has been willing to use terrorism laws to crack down on peaceful protesters, and exploit “child protection” to try and destroy privacy rights, so they already don’t have the best track record, and the fact that this scheme is very much inspired by the think tanks who see shovelling the Everything App down our throats as a must makes it very suspicious, Starmer’s own announcement speech was at a conference organised by none other than… Labour Together.

That doesn’t mean the government has to follow their blueprints, but it does mean that their malicious vision still has a chance to break through.

This government is one that wants to plan for the next decade, not just the 4 years it has left, Digital ID will start with “right to work”, and then if they get another term, that’s when the Everything App could really start to be forced into our lives, either by law or just making it so you can’t access services without it.

Even if that isn’t already what’s on their minds it later could be, given that the idea as they’re selling it obviously won’t work at crushing the economic underground, so what would they do when that becomes obvious later? Pretend it’s working anyway? Give it up? Or push it in further?

Not that I think they’ll get the chance, since I don’t think they’ll be back in 4 years time, certainly not on their own at the least, but still, it’s a threat that’s on the table.

But that’s all a slippery slope argument, which makes it a fairly weak one since I’m arguing against what could be the plan rather than what is the plan, so I’ll just focus on what they’ve really said.

Just looking at it on the surface, it doesn’t even make any sense, if the only place it would actually be forced into use is those work checks, making it more like a work permit than a real ID card, why would someone like me get one?

So far I’m self employed and I haven’t taken on UK clients, my clients have been an American and an Ozzie, since neither of them are in the UK, UK law doesn’t apply to them, so they wouldn’t have to check my ID and there’s no reason why they’d choose to, so if you’re not going to check it anywhere else, how are you going to force this on to me if I’m not convinced by the Everything App? The self-employed are a small (although growing) minority in the UK, so it’s not like it’s a huge gap in the system, but it still is a gap, and these sorts of loopholes make it seem like the “kneejerk” bit is very much true.

Which, yes, it does reek of that, it feels like we’re already at that era we were in with the last Conservative government where they were constantly tossing out gimmick after gimmick to try and refloat their electoral boat, Starmer has hit a record low approval rating with 7 in 10 Brits not being fans and it already seems like Labour are facing a repeat of what happened to the Conservatives back in 2019, a new leader reinvents the party, leads them to a commanding majority (although one based on our broken voting system rather than genuine public support) then pisses it away through a mix of scandal and sheer arrogance, leading to an electoral wipeout.

Starmer supporters would of course say that we still have 4 years to go, and that’s true, but I don’t really see where the magic turnaround in public opinion is going to come from, it feels a bit like Hitler hoping for a sudden turnaround in the Battle of Berlin while he was commanding his fictitious armies on his map, Steiner will get it all under control!

That does give me hope that we could see the end of the 2 party system for good and progress towards a more genuine democracy, but our government being so incredibly shit, and the risk of a total lottery on the country’s future as a result, leads to plenty of anxiety too.

But now, for both this policy and the future of the country, it’s all a waiting game.