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Digital ID to be mandated in the UK

Oh dear, the UK appears to be taking a big step towards total dystopia.

Reports appeared late last week which indicate that the UK government is about to mandate compulsory digital ID for all it's residents.

What's that noise?

It's the sound of all those fallen soldiers who risked and/or gave their lives in WW2 to fight against "papers please" facism rolling in their graves.

That, in the span of 80 short years, the UK government itself would force upon its people one of the very things that so many died for is an insult to the memory of those brave men.

Keir Starmer and his government should hang their heads in shame -- not only for daring to discount the value of the sacrifices made by those who battled facsim in the 1940s but also because the forced introduction of compulsory digital ID has huge potential to create a disaster of previously unseen magnitude and effect.

What am I talking about?

Well some of the justifications being rolled out by Starmer and his government for a mandatory digital ID are that it will reduce fraud, tax evasion and a raft of other crimes -- thus making the average UK resident safer.

We all know that identity theft is a very real issue in today's modern world. If someone gets their hands on your personal information they can use that to secure credit or perform evil deeds that could result in a world of hurt. What's more, given the fact that so many institutions and companies seem to suffer security breaches that allow this sort of personal information to be stolen and sold on the dark web, surely a government-issued digital ID and authentication service would be a huge asset, right?

No. A thousand times no!

Think about it this way... if the local garage or supermarket has its computer system hacked and your personal information (such as login details, credit card number and such) is compromised then that is a problem. However, it's a problem of limited scale and effect.

Yes, you might need to cancel your credit card so that fraudulent transactions can't be placed using the old one and you may have to change your password so as to lock out anyone trying to access your account using the stolen credentials but that's as far as it goes.

When each individual online service provides its own authentication then we effectively sandbox the amount of harm that any given security breach can create. If someone hacks your supermarket it won't affect the security of your online banking system because that's totally separate.

Now consider the scenario where the government takes over and issues digital IDs that provide an authentication service for banks, shops, government departments and the like.

How much simpler and more convenient for these services. Instead of having to create, maintain and ensure the security of their own login and authentication databases, they can hand that job off to a government run system. Instead of dealing with login credentials and perhaps two-factor authentication, these services can just leave that up to the government's digital ID system and save themselves a bundle of cost and worry -- right?

Yes, this sounds great. Users don't have to remember dozens of different passwords while businesses can sleep soundly without worrying about hackers trying to smash their virtual doors down.

However... think about this.

A government run digital ID system is a single point of failure. Anyone who breaches its defenses will have access to every single service that relies on it. That's banks, online shops, government departments and a raft of other services which will all hold valuable information for every person in the country.

The fact that breaching the government-run digital ID service would be such a huge win for hackers will automatically make it a very high-value target. Instead of trying to outwit the local bank or whatever, hackers (of all description, including state-funded hackers from "unfriendly" countries) will turn their sights on that digital ID system because they know that rich rewards await anyone that can get in.

Even more of a worry is the almost guaranteed certainty that a new digital ID system run by the UK government will in some way or another be reliant on AI systems. Whether it's simply that they use some AI-agents to help with the coding or whether it has an AI-run public-facing front end to deal with public queries, AI will be in the mix there somewhere.

Given the ease with which AI can be outsmarted so as to provide back-door access to data and given that the code generated by AI can include all sorts of unexpected surprises that produce their own vulnerabilities, I forsee no way to guarantee that such a digital ID system would be 100 percent secure.

One only has to look at the chaos caused when hackers brought down systems that handle passenger check-ins at UK and European airports last week to see the potential for disaster here.

What would be the effect of some state-backed hackers breaching the digital ID system and then raping and pillaging all those services that rely on that system for their authentication and security?

The provision of all UK government services and a huge chunk of commercial services such as banking would be lost, in the blink of an eye. Recovering from such a disaster would be along, complex and hideously expensive business.

Any buffoons who think this is a good idea need to be outed for what they are: morons.

You'll notice I haven't even got into the issue of lost freedoms and rights associated with a digital ID system. Overseas we've seen that once digital IDs have been introduced and linked to bank accounts the government of such nations has an unfettered ability to block people's access to their own money if they dare to criticise or offend "the powers that be". This is the sort of draconian facism that we can't allow to gain a toe-hold in the Western world.

UK, the world is watching you. You've already trampled on your people's right to free speech and now it appears you're extending the hand of facism even further with this digital ID proposal.

The UK is a dystopia now. How can anyone sanction a government that fears its own flag and arrests those who would fly it?

Over and out -- for today.

Carpe Diem folks!

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