Also since all the data available about you in one place any malicious actor who can bribe someone with access can immediately get all your data: passport info and tax id, addresses, work history, all cars and all owned properties, everything.
Having centralized system with information about everything can very easily be used for oppression.
The only saving grace for us is incompetence. Tyrannies breed incopmetence in goverments since competent people are able to ask troubluing questions. At least I hope so.
Note that having a 'Digital ID' and 'all the data available about you in one place' are two completely different things. You can have a electronic ID system and separated specialized systems. In fact I think Germany is going in this direction, also giving the citizens the ability to request deletion of all information held about them in a particular system.
KYC has already killed any financial privacy people may have had.
Confidential data can have better security checks and encryption layers so it is accessible only by the citizen itself or whoever the citizen grants access to (please don't bring up blockchain, it can be done without it). The technology exists.
It's a great way to combat bureacracies. It only doesn't work against smart people, such as computer hackers.
However, a bad actor (depends on how well funded/connected they are) would still have a harder time getting information.
As for the KYC thing, right now it's mostly to ensure you're not funding terrorist/criminal enterprises (at least it was the case for one of my previous companies). The data isn't just readily available to any political party who asks for it (I guess most companies will comply under certain conditions, but the legal friction is the point I think).
Not quite right. This is defense in depth. The judicial system is supposed to prevent abuses like this, but just in case, you also limit the ability of the government to track you.
> Confidential data can have better security checks and encryption layers so it is accessible only by the citizen itself or whoever the citizen grants access to
The countries that these discussions are about (the UK and RU, with the subtext of the US) have not demonstrated that their legislators are trustworthy enough to implement digital ID in a privacy-preserving. Unless and until that happens, then discussion of it is off the table. When you advocate for a thing being implemented, you are implicitly advocating for its current real-world implementations.
My point was the government can still totally track you as an individual, the data is just fragmented all over the place. But if you are high profile the government can totally put some investigator to track down everything.
As others stated: KYC killed private banking. Good.