Welcome to Britain, where you already have to scan your face to access much of the internet, facial recognition is rolled out on our streets, and soon your digital ID will be essential to access literally any public service. This great nation, once the flag-bearer of liberal ideals and rights, is sleepwalking into a digital dictatorship.
One of the features of the Coalition Government that I am proudest of is that we repealed New Labour’s ID card legislation. Now, with fancy new branding and a cover that it is to help tackle problems with illegal migration, Labour appears to be back to its roots, and planning to roll out digital ID in this Parliament.
This appears to be inspired by a paper from the Starmer loyalist think tank Labour Together. I took the time to read this paper, and its contents are even more terrifying than the headlines suggest. In sum, the proposal is to introduce ‘BritCard’, dubbed as a ‘mandatory national digital identity’. The paper proposes to integrate essentially all of our interactions with the state into one digital location, including healthcare and driving licenses. Even more terrifying is that it explicitly endorses such a card being stored in a private sector system like Apple Wallets.
Even if I were to park the principled objection for a second, the Government will mess this up. I’ve worked in the NHS for years, and I can’t believe that our diabolical computer systems have not yet collapsed entirely. Look at Government’s myriad failures – from track and trace to the Afghan data leak – and I don’t think anyone could tell me with honest certainty that they don’t think this system will be hacked, will leak or will simply stop working at some point.
I look forward to the Russians (or indeed American tech companies) having literally all of my data, including my phone number, healthcare records, travel records, ethnic background, driving test scores and so on. To put all of this data in one place is beyond stupid, and simply inviting our enemies to throw everything they’ve got at it. Indeed, I look forward to seeing a list of every migrant, or brown person, in this country plastered all over the internet.
I have absolutely no faith that this is actually about illegal migration. Even if it was, it is a totally disproportionate response to a problem that can certainly be approached from a number of other means. This would be one of the largest infringements on our civil liberties in decades; and yet I fear the public will put up absolutely no resistance.
I was proud to be a member of the Young Liberals over a week ago, when they put up a principled response to the Online Safety Act, supported by student Lib Dem societies from across the country. It called out the restriction of certain content, such as protest footage, on the grounds of ‘online safety.’ When you couple this worrying crack down on freedom of expression with other authoritarian measures such as an expansion of facial recognition cameras, it seems that this Labour Party views freedom as an inconvenience to be trodden on, rather than a value.
We have to recognise that the internet is simply different to everything that has come before it. A quick ID check, with no permanent record, when you purchase alcohol for example, is substantially different to the mass data collection enabled by the Online Safety Act – or the ability of the Government to track my face wherever I go. I despair.
We are faced with an authoritarian Government, make no mistake. The question we must ask ourselves is simple – are we Liberals or not? Will we put up a fight that I hope future generations will thank us for, or will we simply acquiesce to Labour, and let them run our freedoms into the ground.
* Zagham Farhan is the Returning Officer, and a former President, of the Oxford Students Liberal Association.
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19 Comments
I have many liberal and practical concerns about this, but as with the move to make the NHS ‘app driven’ how can this be done without disadvantaging people who either aren’t online at all, or have the bare minimum of capacity to do stuff on the internet?
I don’t want my elderly parents or disabled sister-in-law turned into second class citizens.
I feel this article (and much of the current debate about freedom) confuses actual freedom with stuff that’s not meaningful.
Actual, meaningful, freedoms are things like, being able to speak your opinions, go about your daily life, choosing the lifestyle you want, forming relationships with who you choose, and so on. That is what we as liberals we should be focusing on. The fact that the Government has data about you in a central database is not in itself a meaningful loss of freedom. Neither is carrying some form of ID. There is nothing you or I might legitimately want to do that we would be unable to do merely because the Government is storing data about us, or because we might need to show we are who we say we are before accessing some service. Zagham seems to find this frightening, but I don’t find it frightening at all that the Government holds data about me – as long as that data is not misused to impinge on any actual freedoms (like free speech etc) – which is where the legal protections should be.
Misuse is an issue. Zagham is right to point out the dangers of hackers and so on. Any system does need to be as secure as possible against that: But that’s not an objection to the principle of the Government having that data or to digital ID – it’s a concern about making sure any implementation is good and safe.
I agree with Simon R and disagree with the main article.
We need to make it impossible for people who are in the UK unlawfully to work, or to access any government services. Enforcing that without some form of national ID system appears impossible. Accordingly I support having a national digital ID system.
Oviously, as Simon R points out, it needs to be done securely. However I have no objection in principle to the concept. Indeed I support it.
My response to Nick Baird is as follows.
I had two parents who were illiterate. If they were alive today, they would obviously be unable to cope with the digital world.
Fairness to the population as a whole means that services should be provided by the Government in the lowest cost way, which is digitally. Those who are incapable of accessing them digitally, or who choose not to do so, should pay an additional cost for non-digital provision.
“Welcome to Britain, where you already have to scan your face to access much of the internet,”
I use the internet fairly extensively and have never been asked to scan my face. I think there are lots of issues with the OSA – but not sure this sort of rhetoric helps
@Mohammed Amin – on your first comment, employers are already legally required to conduct “right to work” checks on employees. Those working illegally at the moment are mostly doing so cash-in-hand with the full knowledge of the dodgy employer (and sometimes with fake ID). A digital ID doesn’t stop that.
On your second comment – wow. So my sister-in-law with learning difficulties, or my dad with dementia in his nineties who’s never used a computer in his life and isn’t going to start now – they should be penalised for being “incapable”? That sentiment has no place in liberal policy making.
I’m really sad to see some of the comments here. Some of us came to this party because we are the right age to have come up during Blair and Blunkett’s efforts to outflank the Tories on authoritarianism and control. Labour have always been an authoritarian party, at least when in government. Someone has to oppose it, and it should be us, on principled civil libertarian grounds, but also on the basis of anti-conformism. I completely support the spirit of this post and think I should inform party policy more.
So the authorities hold data on us… So what
What if the data held on individuals is about domestic violence, etc? Does holding such data infringe their rights regarding seeking future employment, relationships. etc?
I’ve lost count of the number of times we are told, after an horrific event, how, “xxx had a history of yyy” but his new partner was not aware of this BUT Lessons will be learned”
How many complaining about data have ‘Loyalty Cards’, use their credit/debit cards for transactions, etc… Every on line enquiry builds a picture that dwarves the government tracking system..
I can’t see anything wrong with the principle of ID cards and to call this an authoritarian country is ridiculous and a bit of a slap in the face to people living in places like Tibet who are having their culture, religion and language erased. I do accept that there are concerns about over sharing data …..
I too worry that Zagham’s article is an overreaction. The carrying of ID cards would be an anathema to nearly all of us but a digital ID would simplify interactions with the state and reduce (but not eliminate) the chance of fraud and impersonation.
It may even reduce the inefficiencies is our “bloated” civil infrastructures.
However, what is essential is that constitutional protections are in place to prevent abuse of personal freedoms and exploitation by non-governmental bodies.
I have never understood the opposition to ID cards after all millions of us have passports, credit cards etc. What I do strongly oppose is the NHS contract given to US company Palantir to build a federated data base. There was no competitive tender although there are UK specialists. Palantir designed surveillance software for US govt which is widely used by military including UK and IDF. One of their execs has boasted of the help given to Israel in Gaza war. The BMA has said it is not an appropriate partner for NHS. Wes Streeting told Trusts they must adopt FDB, appears to be no opt out for them or patients. Some Lib Dem MPs signed an EDM in April questioning the contract but I have seen no statement from Lib Dems. Is there one? The concern is personal data being sold or misused by this company.
It’s not the ID document itself I object to it’s the supporting database behind it. What’s on it, who put it there, can I check it, can I change it if it’s wrong, who has access to it, why have they got access etc, etc, etc, Anyway I have got an ID document, it’s called a British passport and if that’s not good enough to be an ID document why on earth is it good enough to be a passport given the access it affords?
Mohammed Amin, (above) would love my local league football club. They now penalise season ticket holders who for whatever reason, often cost, do not own smartphones by charging them an extra £15 for their season ticket!
We already have two digital identity databases. The passport database is run by Government and is fairly uncontroversial because it contains little information of any commercial value. The NHS database, as mentioned above, has been contracted out to a private company, who are doubtless aware that it contains plenty of information which could potentially be monetised. That’s a problem.
This government has explicitly stated that commercial lobbyists are important to them. If they set up another ID database, they will be lobbied to get it cheap from a commercial supplier, provided that supplier can get nice commercially valuable data in exchange. That’s a big problem.
@Robert: That sounds like an objection to the practicalities of how a database might be implemented, rather than an objection in principle. Would you still object if the Government figured out satisfactory answers to questions about who could access it etc.
A passport is not very practical as an ID because it’s way too bulky to have to carry around with you very often. And doesn’t carry that much information.
I’d be careful of objecting too much to companies getting access to anonymised data. Maybe you don’t like the sense of a company making money out of the data but – to take one example – the NHS databases must contain a huge amount of data that, anonymised and viewed in aggregate – could be very helpful in research to better identify causes of various conditions and which treatments are most effective. Would you really want to deny researchers access to that data, and thereby deny future generations access to effective treatments?
@Simon R
“Would you still object if the Government figured out satisfactory answers to questions about who could access it etc.”
How would you define ‘satisfactory? Asking as someone who shares Robert Hale’s concerns, i.e.
“It’s not the ID document itself I object to it’s the supporting database behind it. What’s on it, who put it there, can I check it, can I change it if it’s wrong, who has access to it, why have they got access etc, etc, etc,”
I ask this as someone who has both passport and driving licence and expect the information held relating to those documents about me to be kept securely by the government departments concerned and access by other departments to be granted by me if I wish, unless there is a court order requiring the information to be shared.
The problem with compulsory ID cards or any increase in state control is not how such a law might be used by a moral government, but how it could be abused by an immoral one. I spent two years sailing through Israeli checkpoints at times when my neighbours were denied access to East Jerusalem for having the wrong sort of ID. It seems I could now be arrested in the UK for pointing out that wasn’t fair on a placard, under legislation intended to keep us all safe. There are other ways to solve benefit fraud; merge benefits with taxation and use national insurance numbers for both. There are other ways to solve illegal working; reduce the number of people forced into such circumstances by allowing asylum seekers to work whilst receiving a fair hearing. Isn’t the latter our actual policy?
Privacy and the validity of the information organisations hold are my concerns. There must be an easy way to access all the information they have on individuals and check it. It must also be easy to edit if incorrect.
A single national identity does not necessarily imply a central database containing all the information that all government departments have on you. It requires a database containing hashed information (no use on its own) which can confirm whether someone logging on to any system is telling the truth about who they are. It would be used by public sector bodies to give access to their own systems and also to companies doing legally required checks (such as over 18 and residency checks).
One of the biggest risks with big personal databases is that lots of people have legitimate reasons to access specific information on a few people. It often turns out that they can access more information than they need or about people they shouldn’t. With the vast number of interactions in the public sector, it’s inevitable that confidential information will regularly be seen by people who know the subject. The more interactions that are purely digital and cannot be accessed by staff, the less this will happen.
I recall a previous time around this merry-go-round. New Labour era, I think. This year looks like more of the same, only lazier from central government.
Where is secure ops Best Practice for some of these things? Principle of Least Privilege for age verification (not dumping lots of non-relevant PPI)? Sound architecture for Trust Roots for authentication for some of this stuff? Use of Trusted Third Parties (what happened to that)?
We seem to be drifting into a situation of default trust of the large Cloud providers, rather than standing up national Trust Roots and legal measures around those to make sure there is a strong incentive to be TRUSTWORTHY. (Trusted does not equal Trustworthy…)
It is not just the narrow technical detail that is suspect. It is the principles at the top level that are lacking. Vassal State indeed!