Sweden has a national database and a national ID card system, and it makes my life in Sweden a lot better.
That said, I don’t trust the UK government, I haven’t trusted any UK government in my adult lifetime and I am coming into middle-age.
Solve that problem first, maybe?
Even the invoked name "Digital ID" makes it very clear that this system would rely on central databases. Only. In a country where the upcoming political parties are actively proposing stripping foreigners from their immigration status, it's pretty clear that all the parties learned at least one common message from the Windrush scandal: destroying documentation of immigrants was not the problem - leaving behind evidence of such action having happened was.
EDIT: the Finnish system at least sets up _some_ guard rails around how the data is used, and mandates a physical document that one can use as a proof when (not if) the central DB is down or going through Windrush 2.0 purge.
(I agree with you)
Again, the issue is mostly trust.
PS: oh dear, oh no, I appear to have offended someone and they’re flagging me, oh dear heavens I must be incorrect then! Woe is me. /s
A paper ID sits in your pocket and minds its own business. A digital ID is one update away from becoming a tracking token. Dress it up however you like, but it’s just an ankle tag with better UX. And the UK track record on data leaks, “accidental” sharing, and mission creep is spectacularly awful. The idea that this won’t be exploited is a fairy tale.
If it goes ahead in the flavour BlackRock and WEF types dream about, expect the usual:
- services quietly tied to compliance thresholds
- financial scoring bleeding into civic rights
- automated sanctions and “risk flags”
- real-time behavioural profiles sold as “fraud prevention”
- and every data breach blamed on a junior contractor who “misconfigured a bucket”.
None of this empowers the public. It just hands more leverage to the same institutions already shaping policy from behind the curtain.
Frankly, you’re wrong.
There’s a benefit to the public.
Let me frame what I mean with a parable (and, its relevant to my point even if it seems totally unrelated, and I’m typing from my phone, so forgive the briefness).
When I dated my (now) ex-girlfriend; she used to make mention of my teeth as a negative thing, that I’d be more handsome it they weren’t crooked etc.
One christmas she purchased for me, an electric toothbrush. A fancy one, she clearly thought a lot about which one to get: but to her surprise I was unhappy.
An electric toothbrush has (mostly) benefits, this one didn’t even need new heads all the time, dentists almost universally agree that an electric toothbrush is a good option. Yet I was unhappy.
Why? because the gift was mired in the backdrop of previous conversations and self conscious issues.
A few years later, and I received an electric toothbrush as a gift again. However, this time the person giving it had never said anything to make me self concious, even better: they had previously planted an electric toothbrush head at their apartment, so I could use their electric toothbrush body when I visited (this was one of the earliest moments in the relationship and was a not-so-subtle invitation to come back).
Now; it’s the same gift. Same benefits. Why was I happy now when I wasn’t before?
The context made a huge difference.
On the one hand the first gift felt like a way of controlling me and a subtle way of putting me down (or, emotionally it felt that way- regardless of if it was well intentioned or not). The other time it was gifted; it was enhancing what we already had.
Context is important, and thats why I say: this shit is pretty good, but I totally buy why you don’t think so.
I don’t trust the UK Government is doing it for our sake either.
That’s the danger here. Not some cartoon dystopia on day one, but a system that trains people to associate state and corporate approval with comfort.
- You behaved correctly, here’s smoother access to services.
- You kept your “risk score” low, enjoy a discount.
- You shared more data, here’s a fast-track queue or a tax perk.
It’s not a boot on the neck. It’s a pat on the head.
And the public will flock to it, because it’s painless and convenient. Until it isn’t. These systems don’t reset when the government changes. They persist. The next administration can inherit a ready-made apparatus for mass categorisation, movement tracking, sanctions and exclusion. A list of “people who said X, lived at Y, travelled to Z” becomes a single query.
That’s why the UK context matters. The British state already leaks data, already sells access, already outsources core functions to corporations with zero accountability. Give them a unified identity spine and they won’t need to push you into a dystopia. People will march into it smiling, because it’ll start with freebies and frictionless services.
The risk isn’t today’s government. It’s the one after, or the one after that, inheriting a machine built for total visibility. That’s the part everyone pretending this is just “a matter of trust” refuses to acknowledge.
Germany is much the same, and I would never want to live there for this reason.
a crazy disconnected bureaucracy that forces me to prove myself multiple times over with massive cracks to slip through will always be inferior to a well invested cohesive system.
But, look who I’m talking about. When has the UK invested in any good social or physical infrastructure in the last 50 years? ha. Crabs in a bucket.
Can you be a bit more specific about how?
Signing up for a new bank? No problem, the same ID is used for both banks so my authentication of one is good enough to action the transfer.
Benefits (Rot/Rut- for home improvements) are handled without me doing anything.
All my receipts/payslips etc; go to a digital mailbox and I can download them and print them no problem.
Its a lot like how the NHS works w.r.t. prescriptions: except for quite literally everything.
House prices, cost of living, lack of healthcare, my family, my health, the economy, transport, the job market etc consume 99.9% of my day-to-day general concerns.
Did people prior to the 2000s have mental breakdowns over paperwork??
How many times do you open a bank account a year??
I mean, there are larger things to fix, but this one is probably larger than you think, even if it's not helping you very much, it'll help crack down on illegal workers (hey, we don't like that, right?) and it'll make the social systems have much less friction.
2) Notice that outside of Stockholm, Swedish house prices are not pegged to infinite like the UK is? I'm not saying that it's because of a central ID system, but you seem to imply that it precludes reasonable house prices... which is weird.
3) The economy is better when it's more efficient. Plenty of people argue inefficiency for the sake of jobs (people pushing paperwork have jobs! cushy government jobs! without them having jobs there'll be more unemployed people! -- I see this a lot more with Americans, and I find it to be an uncompelling argument usually).
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That is to say, I'm actually on your side, I don't trust the UK government, I'm merely offering a contra-point because in other EU countries these things are actually great and simplify a lot of things that you only really notice when you live with it - thus a lot of the hypotheticals fall on deaf ears to me.
It's like watching people argue that having legs won't improve your life because someone can take away your shoes.
Will it, though?
Businesses already have to get a photocopy of your passport when they hire you, and check your right to work in the country.
If they're not performing the checks, what's the point of a second document they also won't check? Surely the solution is firmer enforcement of the existing law?
UK society does not demand that you have a passport per-se, but there’s very few functional photo ID documents available outside of a drivers license or passport- and getting by without those is annoying but totally possible.
I used to “prove” myself with bills addressed to me, and having a bank account- since, again, neither passport nor drivers license.
Now, getting the bank account was difficult, required a guarantor. But jobs themselves had no requirement, and I could give them someone else’s bank account details I guess.
Same is true of the national security number, which is probably what you meant that the employer must get; that “string” informs the government when you pay tax and therefore you need to be able to work to have one- except there’s no way of proving you’ve supplied the right one: the NI card even says on it that the card itself is not proof of ID.
As mentioned, my experience across multiple societies has proven as such.
Unless you live somewhere with a centralised ID system that somehow makes it harder? I doubt it somehow.
That's not my argument, and calling me self-centered isn't a very mature reply.
I'm countering the strawman that people are buried in paperwork day-in, day-out (your first reply to 'what makes my life your life better' was 'The amount of paperwork in my life is effectively zero') and the very heavy suggestion that "digital ID" would save us from all that paperwork (edit: though I admit perhaps I'm tilting at windmills a tiny bit in this thread)
> but you seem to imply that it precludes reasonable house prices... which is weird
Not at all what I meant. I was suggesting that paperwork doesn't even register in the very long list of things I care about
Later
> it'll help crack down on illegal workers
How? What evidence?
The UK would be far from the first country in the world to have an ID system; we don’t need to deal in hypotheticals. I am extremely sympathetic to the idea that the UK government might abuse the system, but I need to be very fucking clear right now: just because its difficult to tell you how much easier its made my life does not diminish it.
Given you likely wouldnt be able to live in Sweden since Brexit; you’re unfortunately going to have to take my word for it. But it absolutely does help tackle illegal workers.
Without a personnummer you cannot get access to social services; people try to get around it but it is very difficult.
Here is the UK talking about it, and how it works: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/146988/pdf/
Here is a study into how people attempt (and fail) to bypass a centralised system. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/handle/2077/28504/gupea_207...
Sorry you didn't make a stronger argument. It's one I've read a 100 times: 'we have it where I'm from, it's all I know, therefore it must be good'. Perhaps the UK should adopt Swedish as the official language too (given everything in northern EU is superior)
If you want to make an argument about tackling fraud etc, start with data about the scale of the existing problem, then present some research into exactly how much fraud, quantitively, will be reduced.
I'm not actually against things that would actually tackle fraud/visa overstaying etc – I just want solid evidence ethat multi-billion pound schemes that will reduce privacy will address a specific, known problem.
By the way, plenty of country have more digital systems and still have fraud and illegal workers. That completely destroys any such weak justification.
Did people prior to the 2000s have mental breakdowns over paperwork??
I think though it's a lot about the fact that the UK is sort-of an "adversarial" kind of democracy, and Sweden is more like a "consensus" driven democracy..
The UK is also pretty often plagued by sleaze scandals for officials in public office, by contrast Swedish politicians can be incompetent or fuck-up, but there's much more public access to what they're doing.
I think it's also true that people feel that public services are pretty good, even if the healthcare system is overburdened, and that there could be more police officers: taxes are high but most people definitely think that it's worth it.
The way COVID was handled and the ongoing freedom of speech issues in the UK are also something that make me not trust the government, they'll violate my rights on a whim. Compared to Sweden where even during COVID they didn't lock down (even if it was arguably the right thing to do and would have saved a lot of lives) because it would have violated peoples rights.
I'm not going to sit here and claim that Sweden is a paragon of virtue, they get a lot wrong and there are plenty of inefficiencies, but compared to the UK it's pretty stark.
It's like comparing trust in government between the UK and Russia. (I think that's actually a pretty fair comparison, USA and UK have comparatively similar trust in government compared to Sweden vs UK).
It was found that having a new person almost every day spending about 15 minutes at some elderly person home before going to the next person, without enough time to even wash their hands, had bad results during an pandemic. They also found out that having a very small number of doctors going from elder care facility to the next in order to sign off on all medicine was also a bad idea.