However, as mentioned, I can’t in good faith argue for the government to have an easier time categorising people. Such a system is so ripe for abuse. I have even advocated for it based on the Estonian eID system and the Swedish BankID (though I am aware of Danish and Norwegian BankID- I never used those).
I’m still fully convinced that the British “Online Safety Bill” is actually a ploy to ensure that they have linked accounts to identity on any site where comments can be made; so they can prosecute people for expressing opinions[0]. Why else go for Wikipedia, and why else focus on sites with public commentary. You can’t say it’s to prevent pedophiles when with the right hand you imprison people for saying things online while with the left hand releasing actual pedophiles into society[1]
To be fair, they did say it wasn’t primarily about protecting children[2], but then I guess I should figure out what else the OSA is for.
[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2025-0022...
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/prisoners-ear... & https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce80nl1k0p3o
[2]: >>44910285
But they implemented that act, without needing a digital ID. I don't think they need a digital ID to push authoritarian policies.
And I think a digital ID has possible benefits for people who can't easily fit in to current setups, thus my point about it being orthogonal.
My feeling is though that digital ID can have benefits which shouldn't be discounted when considering it. Specifically some people have problems with current age verification due to lack of things like passports and driver's licenses which are often used as stand-ins for digital ID.
Also it can make a lot of very nonsensical processes better. Things were companies still insist on physical signatures as though those are good security measures, that could be replaced with digital signatures tied to an identity, which might actually provide some security benefits.
That’s before you include the mandatory security screening which will cause you to travel half of the UK (on our expensive travel infrastructure!)
If I didn’t have a job lined up I wouldn’t have gotten on, my mum didn’t have one her whole life until after I had gotten mine. It’s an arduous and expensive process for the bottom 20% of society in the UK.
Sounds like the UK government doesn’t have a history of making it easy to obtain identification.
> I'd expect a required UK digital ID to be free at point of issue
Where do you expect this point of issue to be and why do you expect it to be free? Is there any precedent to support your assumption?
It sounds like you’re advocating for cheap or readily available government ID. I see no reason why digital ID is uniquely or even well suited for either purpose.
> (otherwise there's not much point in it).
Well the point of the digital ID could be to further marginalize vulnerable communities by not providing easy access to the ID while also making it a requirement for participation in society.
Take a look at the southern United States for inspiration on that approach.
This is exactly the reason Americans (as students of history) are generally resistant to the idea of government identification.