My country has had a form of digital ID since 1964, and there’s no nefarious ‘Big Brother’ business involved
Keir Starmer is reportedly planning on introducing mandatory digital ID. It’s understood he’ll make the announcement about the so-called ‘Brit-Card’ tomorrow (September 26) – and personally I think it’s a great idea.
Under the plans, anyone starting a new job or looking to rent a home would be required to show the card on a smartphone app. It would then be checked against a central database of people entitled to live and work in the UK. The hope is that it’ll reduce people working illegally.
I’m Norwegian, and when I was born, I was automatically assigned a ‘birth number’: my date of birth followed by a five-digit personal number. I’ve had it all my life, so does everyone else in Norway, and it makes life so unbelievably simple.
There’s already opposition to the plans for a similar scheme in the UK; civil liberty group Big Brother Watch has warned against their introduction, with a petition started by the group reaching more than 101,000 signatures. In a letter to Sir Keir, the group said: “Mandatory digital ID is highly unlikely to achieve the Government’s objective of tackling unauthorised immigration.
“The proposed schemes fundamentally misunderstand the ‘pull factors’ that drive migration to the UK and would do very little to tackle criminal people-smuggling gangs or employers and landlords who operate ‘off the books’. Instead, it would push unauthorised migrants further into the shadows, into more precarious work and unsafe housing.”
I absolutely agree that desperate people will do anything to survive. As such, the digital ID probably won’t do anything but make conditions more dangerous for those seeking asylum. However, compassion for asylum seekers is not the main reason I’ve seen on social media for people opposing the digital ID plans.
Most people have been shouting about how this is ‘a form of control by the government’, how they want to ‘track us’, and comparing it to bank cards letting the Government see where we spend our money.
But I do see the merit in it. When I first moved to the UK, I was baffled by how complicated it was doing anything official.
I had to travel to a physical location to get a National Insurance (NI) number, but that number isn’t connected to any kind of database. I now have the NI number and a Settled Status share code to prove my right to live and work here, but neither of those help me to get a new phone number, buy a house, open a bank account, or anything else. Instead, I am stuck in the eternal loop of proving my address history with utility bills and crumpled tenancy agreements.
In Norway, I would simply give the relevant authority my number, and whatever central database the Government uses would have all the information needed. I use that number to log into my bank account, see my medical records, view my student loan, and plenty more. And it doesn’t feel like an invasion of privacy; there is nothing interesting enough about me for the Government to ‘control’, or ‘steal’, or ‘spy on’.
And sure, we trust the Government a lot more in Norway. There’s no two-party system, we as a people generally feel heard by those in power, and there’s not nearly as much rioting as there is here. That inherent trust certainly contributes to why I feel so strongly about a digital ID.
But the bureaucratic systems used in the UK are so archaic that frankly, we need it streamlined. Imagine not having to remember your postcode from five years ago when applying for a job, or needing to get a text verification to your phone to make an online payment while worrying it’s from a scammer.
The biggest question is, will the UK be able to implement such a system efficiently? After many years applying for Settled Status, then a citizenship, and having seen five Prime Ministers since I moved here, I’m not so sure. Like the vast majority of the British public, I don’t hold much trust in the Government here; they are capable of messing up the smallest of tasks, and I doubt something of this scale would go smoothly.
We can only wait and see. But if executed correctly, a mandatory digital ID would make everyone’s lives so much easier.
Looking for more from MyLondon? Subscribe to our daily newsletters here for the latest and greatest updates from across London.
What do you think about digital ID? Let us know in the comments here.
