"A national digital ID could hand the government the tools for population-wide surveillance - and if history is anything to go by, ministers probably couldn't run it without cocking it up. That's the warning from Big Brother Watch in its new " Checkpoint Britain" report, published just days after Keir Starmer confirmed the government is considering a national digital identity scheme to tackle illegal immigration."
"The civil liberties group says the government's argument that digital ID will meaningfully reduce illegal immigration or employment fraud is poorly substantiated and warns that touting digital ID as a political fix for migration problems is misleading. It argues that ministers have also been far too vague about the plan's scope, which it says could easily extend beyond right-to-work and right-to-rent checks to cover "online banking, booking a train ticket, shopping on Amazon, or scheduling a GP appointment.""
A proposed national digital identity could enable population-wide surveillance and fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state. Government claims that digital ID will meaningfully reduce illegal immigration and employment fraud are poorly substantiated. The plan's vague scope could extend beyond right-to-work and right-to-rent checks to online banking, train tickets, shopping, or GP appointments, creating a 'checkpoint society' of constant identity checks. Existing systems such as One Login, which would underpin a BritCard credential, have known cybersecurity and data protection weaknesses. Public trust is low, with 63 percent of people not trusting the government to protect their data. Mission creep could make 'voluntary' enrollment effectively mandatory, risking exclusion, abuse, discrimination, and hacking.
Read at Theregister
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]