Right now, the digital ID scheme is a large and unnecessary move toward more government surveillance. It follows a pattern of government overreach and could leave older people and those with less money excluded from society. Advertising the scheme on YouTube before the consultation ends also shows a troubling attitude toward democracy, which should worry everyone, no matter their views on digital identity.
The Government claims that proving your identity is complicated and difficult, but this is open to debate. For generations, people in Britain have used passports, National Insurance numbers, driving licences, bank statements and utility bills to prove who they are. This system is intentionally spread out. No single authority controls it, so there is no single point of failure, and no one institution can take away someone’s ability to prove their identity.
The United Kingdom has a distinctive and hard-won tradition of resisting national identity schemes. When wartime identity cards were retained after 1945, the public mood turned sharply against them. In 1951, a motorist named Clarence Willcock refused a police officer’s demand to produce his card. The subsequent court ruling was so emphatic in its defence of individual liberty that the cards were abolished shortly afterwards.
The belief that the state must answer to its citizens, not the other way around, has continued. This led to the cross-party rejection of Tony Blair’s Identity Cards Act, which was repealed in 2010 after strong public opposition. Now, the current Government is trying a similar idea under a new name. The goal remains the same, even if the method has changed....<<<Read More>>>...
