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Starmer’s live facial recognition plan would usher in national ID, campaigners say
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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This is a completely honest question from a random Finn, but what are the issues that some people see with national IDs? I'm so used to having some sort of a national ID card (although I've forgotten to renew mine; they're not mandatory here) that it really didn't even occur to me that they could be a contentious issue in the UK. I've seen Americans rail against them before, but I sort of assumed they're pretty standard all around Europe – when I had mine I used it for traveling in the Schengen zone, since it's essentially as good as a passport
It's kind of complicated in the UK - parts of both the left and right have issues. Some reasonable, some less so, etc
Around the same time of the original proposal for National ID, the government lost discs containing the data (including NI numbers and even bank account details) of 25m people, 7.25m familes. They were literally lost in the post. Understandably this made a lot of people sceptical about 'the government's ability to protect it's data'
It was already an unpopular idea. A lot of this was kind of libertarian-y people, combined and heightened by a post-WWII fear of having to carry 'papers' and present them for identification. How reasonable this fear is/was is up for debate, but for better or worse it was a big part of the conversation.
Then in the years since there's been more concerns raised: things like the Windrush Scandal. In case you're unaware, basically a lot of immigrants from the Caribbean who had been here for decades, sometimes nearly their whole lives, and who thought they were Citizens, were apparently not. There were pensioners who lived here since they were kids and who followed all the correct procedures getting deported to places they had never meaningfully lived in.
Some people say that a National ID would have prevented this - but others say that since the UK is apparently so inept at dealing with this data, it's just more evidence that we could end up in a system whereby if you can't get a card for whatever reason, you could face discrimination or even prosecution.
So yeah I guess it basically comes down to a distrust of the government combined with a British Libertarian mythos
For what its worth, personally I don't think a National ID inherently poses any problems that don't already exist between documentation and our data being collected online etc. But I'll admit that on a gut level I don't like the idea, even if that's a bit irrational
https://www.ft.com/content/2ec95b9a-4709-11e8-8c77-ff51caedcde6
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/nov/21/immigrationpolicy.economy3
Ah right, it does make sense that people of a more libertarian bent would be against it in the UK as well, and I suppose that you folks do have a bit more reason to be leery of the government than we do over here (not that shit's exactly excellent here either, mind you…)
Thank you for the in-depth answer!
As someone in the UK I don't understand it either...
How many of these people opposing a National ID already have a driving licence or passport?
Yeah, my initial reaction was that it's not like THE GOVERNMENT doesn't already have your photo and relevant information if you have either one of those (well, assuming driving licenses are national in the UK which I take it they are?), but I of course understand that there could be other factors at play here that I'm not aware of
I think that it's not that people are scared of the Government having that information; it's that they are afraid that a national ID scheme will make indexing, organising, and retrieving that information easier.
Right, yeah, I guess that makes sense, although I guess that even if that were the case my question would be "so what?", and I feel a bit doubtful that a national ID scheme would make it markedly easier than it already is at any rate, what with driving licenses etc.
Because it's been an EU proposal that has been on the cards for ages and was always resisted by the UK government because everyone since it was proposed it has been an easy target for politicians to sling shit at reasonable ideas out of Brussels.
I'm not against the introduction of ID, in fact it'd probably make life easier for people who don't drive or have a passport! And I can't see why the campaigners think it'd automatically lead to the introduction of ID cards. Having said that, I'm also not in favour of public surveillance on a massive scale.
Oh yes just to clarify, I didn't think that you specifically have a problem with a potential national ID system, I was just wondering what the people who do see it as a problem have against it