My key take-aways (not to say there aren't plenty of others):
- Request: "Do not introduce Digital ID cards" - Response: "We will introduce a digital ID within this Parliament" - Not even an acknowledgement. Gotta love being governed by my mum who always knows best.
- "By the end of this Parliament, employers will have to check the new digital ID when conducting a ‘right to work’ check." followed by "For clarity, it will not be a criminal offence to not hold a digital ID" - now "not hold" might mean "not keep on your person at all times" or it might mean "not have one at all" which is ambiguous, but why does it matter if I have to be jobless without one?
- "This will help combat criminal gangs who promise access to the UK labour market in order to profit from dangerous and illegal channel crossings." - so rather than going after the criminal gangs, you're instead going after everyone who lives here to force them to own a phone in order to hopefully make it hard enough for someone who is here illegally to get a job... But as an EU citizen, I already have to present proof of my ILR to new employers. What difference will this make?
- "Digitally checkable digital credentials are more secure than physical documents which can be lost, copied or forged, and often mean sharing more information than just what is necessary for a given transaction." - Ah, they finally elaborated on a key point. So you will store a key on an HSM. And can it be any HSM? Because if it's a virtualized HSM then the credentials can be copied, but if its only an approved HSM, then now you make having a job in the UK strictly dependent on specific hardware from specific vendors.
Still no clarity on whether they will lock it down to Android builds which license GMS or not. Their constant mentions of google pay and apple wallet make me think the UK government will be formally endorsing a duopoly.
Thanks UK government, I hope they pay you well to screw me over.
I wonder how many different justifications are offered around the world for digital ID, and how those reasons shift depending on the issues perceived to be most pressing at the time.
That line about controlling illegal immigration is infuriating and false. At the moment Britain can't get control of the situation because all our sovreignty has been surrendered to the eu and activist judges and lawyers who based on their messed up humanist worldview allow basically everyone who comes here illegally to stay and prevent any meaningful effort from the government to stop it. Not that there's much political will from two tier kier to do anything about it.
Trump has proved that you don't need any crazy, complicated schemes to deal with illegal immigration.
This just feels like more authoritarianism from the starmer government who can't hold themselves back from scoring own goals because they are completely out of touch with what the people want.
