Digital ID is on the doorstep, bringing the prospect of unprecedented tracking of our actions and the possibility of being excluded from services we need and like. If you’ve realised that simply giving in and going along will only create more problems – the compliance fallacy – considering the steps to take, both on an individual and collective level, is unavoidable.
And there’s some good news: a new digital rights movement is coming into being.
Refusal is the first and most obvious response. Without personal information from the majority of the population, digital ID systems simply can’t work. But non-compliance is more complex than just saying no and forcing the authorities to back down. Though, following the public outcry, the Government has shelved plans for mandatory digital ID, it’s continuing to introduce digital ID by stealth, working group by group, gradually taking more and more of us into its net. The main examples in the UK are the digitalisation of passport and driving licence applications and the tax system.
Refusing to participate in these systems is fairly straightforward. It involves sticking to paper systems which public bodies have to provide because there are millions of people in the UK who lack access to computers, phone or who don’t have the skills to navigate digital systems. Paper forms and a trip to the Post Office avoid the need to use an online account.
The demand by Companies House that company directors must verify their identity digitally, a process which involves giving a 3D scan of your face – proper biometrics of the kind used in facial recognition – is of a different order since compulsion is involved. It’s a clear breach of the principle of consent, a kind of data version of vaccine passports. But since it’s backed by law, refusal calls for a deeper level of non-compliance. And so the new digital coercion generates a complex and evolving picture as people respond in different ways to a new kind of threat....<<<Read More>>>..
