As Keir Starmer’s government is reportedly considering yet another proposal for a mandatory universal digital ID system, it’s worth a reminder of what’s at stake for the privacy rights and civil liberties of tens of millions of citizens and residents in the UK.
Less than two months after the so-called “BritCard” proposal by pressure group Labour Together, which Downing Street said it was “considering”, reporting from both The Observer and The Times suggests that another, more secretive proposal for a universal digital ID is gaining support within government. Downing Street is said to be considering the “workability” of a “unique digital identifier” proposed in an internal paper by the Tony Blair Institute which has so far not been made public.
While this proposal may differ in some technical and policy aspects to “BritCard”, the fundamental impact on our privacy rights remains the same. The introduction of any mandatory, universal ID scheme would effectively upend our relationship with the state, and turn Britain into a “papers, please” society. While these checkpoints may be digital rather than physical, the real-world impact on everyone will be enormous.
Far from being a panacea that would somehow solve illegal migration or other societal woes, mandatory digital ID would create a significant burden on the largely law-abiding British population, such as employers, who have been required to check the immigration status of employees since the 1990s. All a digital ID system would do is force those already abiding by the law onto an online system that is prone to system failures and inaccuracies - such as those we’ve witnessed with the highly problematic e-visa system.
So far there have also been insufficient measures proposed to accommodate those who, for many reasons, cannot or do not want to be online. True digital inclusion also means providing for them and providing workable offline alternatives. This includes some of the country’s most vulnerable, such as those with low digital literacy, the poor, and the elderly, and would have discriminatory and racialised impact. Further, there are those who will always fundamentally object to such proposals due to rights-based concerns, and they should always be able to retain a choice in the matter, rather than being steamrolled into compliance.
Perhaps most worrying of all, a mandatory digital ID would give the government unprecedented access to, and control of, all of our personal data, creating a honeypot for hackers and other malicious actors. At a time when the government is also utilising the mass surveillance powers granted through the draconian Investigatory Powers Act in an attempt to force tech companies to break encryption, many of us have little confidence that our data would be adequately protected.
After the public backlash that “BritCard” received, it’s very telling that the latest proposal by the Tony Blair Institute is being kept under wraps, with The Times reporting it’s been dubbed “Operation Kelp” within government. Surely a policy measure which would have such an extreme impact on all of our daily lives should be open to public scrutiny from the outset. Also telling is the fact that it was not included in the Labour Party manifesto, effectively eliminating any chance for voters to have a say in the matter.
The British people have a long and proud history of rejecting proposals for mandatory ID, whether in physical form or now digital, which is in many ways more sinister given the sheer volume of centralised data that the government would hold. Whether under the guise of “BritCard”, “Operation Kelp”, or whatever else is to follow, proposals for mandatory digital ID should be scrapped, and privacy rights must be protected at the core of any further policy efforts to address illegal migration.
Rebecca Vincent is the Interim Director of Big Brother Watch
