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The UK must be one of the few countries left where you have to show (often paper) bank statements and utility bills to prove who you are (or simply that you liv
by trhoad 5y ago
The UK must be one of the few countries left where you have to show (often paper) bank statements and utility bills to prove who you are (or simply that you live where you say you live), and in the process revealing all kinds of personal information that is none of the recipient's business - including Government.
This could all be solved with a national ID card (and would save the public purse £millions, as shown by the Verify programme). The complexity isn't in the actual technology (which exists, and has done for a long time), but the sheer number of possible identity documents that need to be accounted for and the mechanisms for collecting that documentation for verification.
But Brits are too stubborn to accept it. These are the same swathes of people that share stuff on Facebook, install Ring doorbells, and throw bank statements in the bin un-shredded.
- davuinci 5y agoWhy is UK one of the few countries left to require such documents? I have been asked for those documents in several EU countries to prove residency.
- p_l 5y agoMost of the time if you're proving residency with such documents you're not a permanent resident and your ID is for foreign country under freedom of movement. There's a huge difference for example between identity/residency checks in Poland for people who are in PESEL database and people who aren't - and if you're in PESEL, you're going to have polish ID card as well.
- billpg 5y ago"We need you to prove your identity." "Here's something indistinguishable from something I could have knocked together using Microsoft Word an hour ago."
- ChrisKnott 5y agoI don't believe it was the same people. It was derailed by, essentially, "HN types" i.e. people who think they need to defend themselves from government surveillance. Without that campaign (NO2ID) screaming that it was Big Brother it would have been introduced without fanfare, because as you say Brits are generally pretty dismissive of their own privacy and trusting of the state, compared to many other countries.