This is bad populism. It's understandable people fear Google/FB etc., but an entity contracted by the state to do digital ID services is not going to be sellin

This is bad populism. It's understandable people fear Google/FB etc., but an entity contracted by the state to do digital ID services is not going to be selling your phone number if doing so would put them out of business and land them in jail. Sadly, the notion of basic digital ID would be very useful for so many things and maybe even help with privacy if content providers switched to this kind id vs. social logins. Ironically, these 'government IDs' may be a vanguard in the fight for privacy because they establish a privacy-based alternative that doesn't currently exist. (Edit) There are already private institutions that manage ID data (Finance, Health) no our behalf and generally we are not concerned. (Although VISA is owned by banks and that's a concern). In Canada, they have temporarily allocated ID literally to the banking system - you can login to the gov. tax portal using your banking login. So, de-facto, the banks provide ID services to gov. already. It's irrational populism. ID services are sensitive obviously, but governments already deal in such types of sensitive information and there's no reason 3rd parties can't manage those services with the right kind of oversight.