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Digital ID – The New Chains of Capitalist Surveillance

140 points by Refreeze5224 1y ago

hhh 1y ago
I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something. An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE project[1], where we can start raising the barrier of entry for all of these bot farms to require at least a felony in identity theft to start. Curious what others opinions are :) [1]: https://decodeproject.eu/publications/final-report-pilots-amsterdam-and-sustainability-plans.html https://decodeproject.eu/publications/final-report-pilots-am...
- zwnow 1y ago
  In Germany it unfortunately failed abysmal. Most digital ids stopped working after like 6 months of introduction of the system...
  - Semaphor 1y ago
    What? It works great when it’s supported. It’s just that there still aren’t enough public or private places supporting it.
    - zwnow 1y ago
      Not my experience unfortunately
  - microtonal 1y ago
    I think in Germany, such efforts are doomed to fail (or were at least doomed to fail when we lived in Germany) because Germany is reluctant to connect different government administrations due to historical baggage (SS, Stasi, etc). We have had DigiD in The Netherlands since 2004 (at least that's when it got its current name) and it's glorious. Everything from requesting a new passport, logging to your tax administration, registering as a company, making an appointment for Corona vaccination to doing declarations with your insurance company is done with DigiD. The authentication flow is super-smooth and quick. I know there are risks to having one central account (slightly mitigated by support for 2FA and scanning your ID card/passport/driver's license NFC as another factor). But it makes dealing with the government so much easier. We lived in Germany and it was a total disaster in comparison.
    - zwnow 1y ago
      Germany as a whole has become a total disaster sadly. From public transportation to schools over retirement homes to rent prices. Everything is crumbling and its depressing. I wished we could at least have good technical infrastructure, as its relatively cost efficient, but no, we lack competence and old people are blocking every modernization there is (in public offices). Its honestly extremely frustrating.
      - port11 1y ago
        This is one of the most exaggerated takes on the country I've come across. I lived there for 8 years and Germany is, frankly, a superb place to live. I left Germany 3 times and my quality of life took a hit each time. The first 2 I went back; sadly I can't do it again. Public transportation was in the top 3 of what I've experienced in Continental Europe; schools are seen as respectable and good; healthcare was generally very good if expensive (14.x% of salary is a bit much). I could go on. Germany has definite problems, and the federal overruling of things like “rent brakes” is cause for concern. But to call the country ’a total disaster’ can only be done by one that, quite honestly, has no idea of what a bad or even mediocre country looks like.
        zwnow 1y ago
        8 years, wow. Try 30 and actually growing up in this country. School is letting people down, rent prices are exploding. Public transportation is a complete joke (https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=1S258ynDJZkGZdoT https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=1S258ynDJZkGZdoT) Sorry, but with how rich Germany is I can and should expect more from this country.
        port11 1y ago
        Public schools, public transport, well, public everything is being dismantled or cost-savings-worsened by neoliberal governments all across Europe. I've yet to live in a country where the public institutions aren't being torn apart by privatisation and cost-cutting. That's sadly universal. So I'd say Germany fared better than the other places I've lived: Portugal, Spain, France, and Belgium. In Belgium we have a higher marginal tax rate with the same results as you're complaining about. Your universities are still seen abroad with high regard. Rent… well, damn, yes. Rent is very high everywhere, for a number of reasons largely due to letting foreign and corporate investment hoard up property, while at the same time building too much high-cost residential and not enough for lower and middle class people (single or otherwise). The market won't correct itself until only individuals are allowed to own housing and up to a certain highly-progressively taxed limit. That said, my rents in Germany were lower than, say, Belgium. I agree you have a rich country and I didn't live there all my life. But it's still one of the few countries I'd say is doing something for its citizens, largely due to the German understanding of the collective good and social norms :)
  - tchalla 1y ago
    Hopefully BundID remains
- stavros 1y ago
  I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable. To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal. Perfect enforcement leads to an ossified society that only changes when the people who can lobby for laws that benefit them want it to. It will be a perfect dictatorship that can never be toppled, it can only get worse. Every dystopian film or movie starts with some tyrannical society and a resistance movement. Now imagine you made resistance impossible, which is what perfect law enforcement will do.
  - skrebbel 1y ago
    This is the part of the argument I don’t get. A digital ID system like the one in NL is basically just a login system. It’s oauth for public services, not too different from “sign in with Google”. How does that lead to perfect law enforcement? Like, how does it prevent homosexuals from kissing? I don't mean this dismissively. I assume there is a series of steps that make sense that I’m not seeing.
    - michaelt 1y ago
      Here in the UK, the government wants: * ID checks for social media (to protect children) * A digital ID card, allowing ID check records to be provably linked to the original ID document (to prevent illegal working) * The police arresting people for posting unfashionable takes on human sexuality to social media And even if you trust the current government, there are very real fears the next government will be Trump-admiring right wing populists who are eager to upend the status quo.
      - pjc50 1y ago
        > The police arresting people for posting unfashionable takes on human sexuality to social media When you look into these cases, they always turn out to be "a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse against one or more named individuals". It took years for even Glinner to finally cross that line and get his collar felt.
- wesammikhail 1y ago
  > An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I get the convenience part. I am from Sweden. We have BankID. I really get it. But in reality, when centralized systems go to shit, they go to shit REAL BAD. So I personally oppose any such measures on both principles but also... it's okay if life is a little bit less convenient. Not everything needs to be ultra optimized for efficiency. Privacy and systemic integrity is worth at least that much imo.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    The Netherlands has had a standard for authentication, which is supported by all government organizations, many insurance companies, etc. for 21 years and it only got better with time. I also strongly prefer it over the shitty, broken authentication systems many government organizations, companies, etc. come up with otherwise (we lived in Germany for a while and the crappy systems we had to deal with were endless). Or even worse, let some FAANG company do the authentication.
  - cowboy_henk 1y ago
    BankID seems quite different. Importantly the Dutch system is not tied to banks in any way; no commercial parties required for it to function.
- witnessme 1y ago
  Does Decode project overlaps with Solid project (Sir Tim Berners Lee's project with similar objective)? P.S. Thanks for sharing Decode, it looks good, I will be diving deeper into it this weekend. TIA.
- Mashimo 1y ago
  Same in Denmark. It acts as a SSO for Banks, library, 2fa for debit card, hospital websites, all kinds of government services. Makes it easy, because you don't need a new or different account.
  - graemep 1y ago
    Which means the provider can track you across all those. What you spend, what you read, what medical treatment you have. All just to save carrying a wallet?
    - vachina 1y ago
      The provider is the government by the way, and SSO doesn’t give them the ability to track activities beyond where I signed in. It is possible, to trust the government in other parts of world.
      - closewith 1y ago
        Can you imagine a scenario where this might become a problem?
        Muromec 1y ago
        That entirely depends on how hostile you believe both parties of SSO exchange are towards you.
        array_key_first 1y ago
        The idea is we should develop systems that are resistant to relying on trust. Ideally, I should have faith in my life being okay without needing to blindly trust every single company I interact with.
        Muromec 1y ago
        You can't actually. Everything we interact with eventually ends up relying on trust, even the blockchain, but especially everything with humans and politics.
- a-french-anon 1y ago
  Can it be used without a smartphone aka "portable telescreen"? Do they explicitly guarantee this'll remain the case? If not, you're just being hoodwinked via cheap convenience.
  - Lauris100 1y ago
    Everyone has a smartphone lol - i can tell that living in a country with great digital services is a lot less stressful than in country with no digitization and old school paperwork i have gone through both.
    - closewith 1y ago
      Falsehoods programmers believe about society.
    - jcgl 1y ago
      If smartphones are to be a requirement for participation in civil society, privacy- and freedom-preserving smartphones are needed at the very least. People shouldn't be required to submit to some company's Terms of Service in order to participate in society.
      - ta20240528 1y ago
        Should everyone be required to use private banks to access e.g. foreign exchange? The answer is yes: which is why banks are licensed and have ombudsmen. As are telcos. No modern society is going to maintain a parallel government economy to serve the vanishingly small minority who live in fear of private companies. Perhaps they should (IDK), but they won't.
        pjc50 1y ago
        Telcos are licensed. Mobile phone manufacturers and, crucially, OS providers, are not. Although in the EU they are now subject to some Digital Markets Act control.
- scott_w 1y ago
  From the UK and listening to people who don't have things like passports, it sounds like it'll make proving your right to work much easier for people, too. I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is: 1. To open a bank account you need an address 2. To rent somewhere (get an address), you need a bank account 3. See above The same happens for children opening their first bank account. They get round this usually by having a parent vouch for you, however, this isn't much use to children with estranged/dead/abusive parents. A system that is mandatory, acts as sufficient ID in all cases (proof of ID, proof of address, etc.) and is free for the recipient has the potential to make otherwise excluded peoples' lives easier.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    > I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is Lots of countries have this circularity, including Continental ones with ID systems, and I think it's an intentional anti-immigrant measure.
    - scott_w 1y ago
      Absolutely, it’s a major problem. I would think this system needs to hand out ID cards to everyone who needs one (student, work visa, alongside NI number, etc.) to break that loop.
      - pjc50 1y ago
        For a while the UK had the stupid situation where there was a high-security biometric identity system, but only for immigrants, and one of the things you did as part of the process of becoming a citizen was the requirement to hand back or destroy the ID. (this of course tells us where all the ID pressure is coming from: voters want an identity system that can be weaponized against immigrants and The Other.)
    - buildfocus 1y ago
      For Spain at least, most banks have foreigner accounts you can open with a passport, and convert into a normal account once you have local id later. It's a mildly unusual setup (and a bit confusing when you're new) but it's pretty widely available and it's not a significant blocker. There's plenty of other challenges and structural disadvantages as an immigrant, but this one at least isn't too bad. If anything, there's really a big advantage to it for the banks - most locals already have banking, immigrants are the one market where you can get new customers without having to push them past the effort/laziness of switching from their existing setup.
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  I dunno man, there is an interesting comment below about that time the Netherlands unusually complete population data made the Nazis lives easier.
- deep_lol 1y ago
  Don't forget couple of things: Dutch digid is tightly coupled with your address. All documents only go via regular post to your registered address in the Netherlands. No address? Moved to another one? Didn't register new address? Moved out of country? Good luck getting or updating digid. Digid verification goes to your phone. Lost phone or get stolen? Changed mobile number? Guess what, no digid for you anymore.
  - apexalpha 1y ago
    You can just install and register a new Digid App it's not that complicated. I mean people have physical passports and they sometimes lose those which doesn't seem to be a blocking issue.
    - deep_lol 1y ago
      Oh man, you probably never used it. You cannot register digid without paper documents being sent by post to your registered address in the Netherlands. Also, once you go beyond very basic services you might discover digid only works if you are a citizen. Otherwise you are back to papers.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  I think this is the plot of every dystopian movie ever though? You're betting that the government are always going to be nice to you and those around you, carefully ignoring all the history books.
- phatfish 1y ago
  Agreed, all the scaremongering is hilarious. As if a digital ID is what is going to be used to repress the common (wo)man. News flash, if your "liberal western government" wanted to they have more than enough tools to do it already. See all the repressive governments with institutions stuck in the 60s. - Don't trust corporations that you have no control over. - Vote wisely for the government you do have some control over. - Accept compromises are needed in a society of millions rather than constant political conflict. Start with the above for a better life.
  - DrProtic 1y ago
    In the same breath you mention repressive governments and how you have control over governments. Which one is it?
    - phatfish 1y ago
      Depends which sort of government you live under obviously. Luckily in the UK we do have control over our government. If people got off the internet they might realise they have all the tools needed to make their country a better place.
  - user3939382 1y ago
    I don’t think it’s scaremongering or hilarious. I think you’re weak. Oh it’s nice to have this, so I’ll relinquish my sovereignty, if you can’t beat em join em. Enshrined in a false dichotomy: how about we don’t trust the corporations OR the government? As far as their “tools” I invented a stack which demolishes all digital surveillance. The real point is we need people like me not people like you, then we’d actually have solutions to these problems. YOU are the problem. Your weakness and laziness is what enables these horrible patterns.
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    all the scaremongering is hilarious. Only if you didn't pay attention in history class. Certain European governments didn't tattoo serial numbers on the arms of certain citizens so they could more easily access government services and check out library books. You can say "Europe isn't like that anymore" all you want. Governments change. Power shifts. Less than a decade ago, Europe was saying that Russia is no longer a threat because it was welcomed into the Western economy. Things change. The present is not the future.
- anal_reactor 1y ago
  Poland takes it a step further. You don't need to carry the driving license with you because the police can check it in the system anyway.
wmf 1y ago
This article is written from an anarcho-socialist perspective so it may not be that persuasive to many people. In the US we don't have any official government digital ID but instead various data brokers are providing it... with no real oversight. If the people of the UK reject government digital ID they may get Palantir digital ID instead. It's not clear to me which is worse, the government playing by its own rules or private companies playing by essentially no rules. Europe may be better because at least they have GDPR.
- octo888 1y ago
  We're likely getting Oracle digital ID. The UK gov of course is going to contract it out
  - microtonal 1y ago
    We don't they ask some European partners? Some have great ID systems. In The Netherlands we have DigiD, which was developed by a government organization and works very well. IIRC Estonia als has a digital identity system that works well.
    - pjc50 1y ago
      It's verboten in UK politics to acknowledge that any EU country might be doing something well and to consider copying it. Only America can be used as a model.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - octo888 1y ago
      Because the UK gov doesn't want a system like theirs. You don't need to keep Europsplaining to Brits. We aren't all idiots. We know you have ID cards etc and we know about Estonia. Also if we reject one your ideas, it's not always because we misunderstood it - we can understand it AND think it's a bad idea. I know that often hurts the egos of Germans, the French and the Dutch ;(! It's funny because it's often Europeans not understanding British politics...the irony ;)
alkonaut 1y ago
I hate these fluff pieces that use "Digital ID" as some nebulous thing that represents everything from a social credit system to a mandatory id card to a location tracking device injected the spine of every citizen. Why is there suddenly so much talk about vague implementations of Digital ID? Is it because of the UK proposals? No one seems to know exactly what that amounts to either - but importantly it seems to be nothing like what people in the rest of Europe mean when we say "Digital ID". If you want to discuss "Digital ID" - or write a long blog post about it - then please just describe what it is you are writing about. Don't use it as a label for everything you don't want.
- yuvadam 1y ago
  TFA talks about how pervasive Digital ID (no quotes) systems are in everyday life, with multiple examples, feels very concrete and not at all vague.
  - alkonaut 1y ago
    You mean the biometric systems in India or geofencing in South Africa and the like? Absolutely no one ever used ”Digital ID” for those phenomena which is my point. TFA takes a wide range of dystopian tech and says ”these are digital ID, ergo digital ID is dystopian!”
wilg 1y ago
I'm not sure the summoning of "capitalism" adds much here (and detracts a lot).
- sQL_inject 1y ago
  "The notion of “identity” under capitalism has always been bound up with surveillance and discipline." This is the classic surface level grasp where the author uses words like capitalism where they really mean corporatism -- I hope the author isn't against the free and mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services between two willing parties Secondly just replace the word in this quote ^ with communism...or any large state apparatus for that matter, and it still could work.
  - wagram 1y ago
    The problem is that the author is referring to a body of arguments that most people aren't familiar with, and wouldn't agree with if they were. Within certain leftist circles these are well known, and it's standard to assume the usefulness of ideas from French poststructuralist writers from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Frankfurt School writers from 1920s and 1930s. These are sometimes called "critical theory". "Surveillance and discipline" comes from Foucault's book "Surveiller et punir," which was translated into English as "Discipline and Punish". It argues that the logic of surveillance from prisons has worked its way into a bunch of institutions in modern society. Articles in this style feel to me like a word salad of leftist shibboleths that never really amount to an actual argument: capitalism, resistance, settler-colonialism, domination, class rule.
    - pseudalopex 1y ago
      The article had clear arguments. No continental philosophy reading is required to understand By embedding digital checkpoints into daily life, whether entering a building, logging into a service, or accessing healthcare, surveillance becomes routine.
      - wagram 1y ago
alwa 1y ago
The author asserts that reports have documented deaths of starvation due to Aadhaar identification issues. That seems pretty extreme and horrifying. The author doesn’t cite their source for that claim—is anyone familiar with the underlying work?
- captn3m0 1y ago
  > While the government remains in denial about the deaths highlighted by Right to Food activists, the Minister admits that Santoshi Kumar, 11, died because her family ration card was deleted for not being linked to Aadhaar. Taramani Sahu, a foot soldier of the Right to Food Campaign, says she had raised this issue with the district authorities months before Santoshi died. The administration assured intervention, but that came only after the child’s death. Jharkhand has the most of these, due to the underlying issues and activism on Right to Food in the region. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/death-by-digital-exclusion/article28414768.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/death-by... I also remember a case where an infant Aadhaar was issued by CSC at the hospital and was celebrated as a win because the doctors refused emergency Heart Surgery without the infant having an Aadhaar.
fedeb95 1y ago
it's not that without digital ID you didn't need verification. At least in Italy, digital identities means don't having to go attending lengthy queues in public offices, where paper identities where usually checked. Sometimes you still have to do it. What I agree with, is that some system is needed to help those without an identity, or at the border of the system. Digital stuff can help there too.
rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
I think privacy abuse can be largely prevented if a hard line is drawn saying that digital ids must only be used by the government for government services, such as voting, taxes, immigration, welfare, etc. If any private parties like banks, social media, or online stores are allowed to check your digital id, they are going to be a privacy disaster.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Banks are _required_ to check ID! And act as unpaid immigration enforcers. Already in the UK. https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/immigration-act-2014 https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/immigration-act-2014
  - rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
    Yeah the situation with banks is a whole other problem. Banks have basically become an arm of the government, but without the protection of due process. Financial privacy is a pipe dream at this point, so I'd prefer basic bank accounts be run directly by the government. At least that way, they can more easily be held accountable for their actions. Enforcement of the state's desires by private corporations leads to all kinds of evil.
- fergonco 1y ago
  In my country, "hard lines" are next month's "soft lines". So any system that requires those is a problem.
gorgoiler 1y ago
The bouncer saying I need to see your ID always rubbed me up the wrong way, not because I objected to being challenged but because they don’t need to know who I am, they just need to see proof of age. Not even that! Proof that my age is greater than or equal to X! In a world where we would might actually see societal benefits in having people prove things about themselves*, could we not leverage technology to emit verifiable tokens that say “I have the right to work” and “my eyeballs have this shape and are this far apart”** without the world turning into 1984? (I suppose with enough people there could still be a black market for token generators where you could feasibly buy one that matched a subset of your biometrics.) * Illegals have the potential to be exploited just as much they themselves can be exploitative. It goes both ways. ** Is it possible to have biometrics that can be verified against my physical presence, but which can’t be used to identify me in a crowd?
- potatototoo99 1y ago
  That is what digital IDs usually do: the website requests the smallest amount of information they need, you decide to grant it, and only that gets sent. And at least in my country you also have a physical card, so if you really don't want to grant anything via the internet (or find their request is too broad) you can just do whatever process it is in person.
  - raspyberr 1y ago
    What if sites start to request more information than they need because why not? If you don't give it, you don't get access, and you want access. What incentive do they have for requesting less information?
    - cowboy_henk 1y ago
      Asking for more information than required will cause people to stop using the website, hurting revenue.
      - tavavex 1y ago
essi_ 1y ago
As a privileged European, I am not primed to fully engage with this point of view. The "pro digital id" arguments of freedom appeal to me, for instance it means it's easier for me to have secure, reliable access to my medical data. That being said, I do appreciate that it must look very different when you don't get access to it, especially when so much of travel and government assistance relies on it. Our digital Id solutions definitely still have accessibility issue for instance. And I do believe that in some societies, it can be (and maybe is) used as a "boot to the neck". I would say the main goal should be to make it easier for anyone to obtain and use the benefits of these tools, but that it relies on a society where the government protects personal freedom of movement as necessary.
BatteryMountain 1y ago
I think a digital id in concept is fine but will ultimately be used to exploit or exclude people from the system. A digital id can be great but it needs some extra decorations to make it better suited to being used in the wild. Some thoughts: What happens if "the system is offline"? No healthcare that day? No transactions? What are the effects of downtime, whether intentional or cause by hackers etc? What happens in countries with low literacy rates? Some people cannot read or write, some countries use paper only, how will you travel to those countries? On privacy abuse, I think there should be an app alongside the digital id, that when a third party requests information, I get the request and I have to approve it. It should have an expiry date attached so that the third party has to delete their records. I should be able to see exactly what data they request. What happens if the system is offline? A digital id can eliminate many cases where people have to "trust" each other and they would rather rely on the system instead. Lets say the bank asks me to give them certified copies of my id or statements from a different party. Many fraud occur as people can forge documents, so with a digital id, this whole step gets eliminated as the bank can simply ask the gov for the information so they don't have to trust me or that the documents are valid. Some laws might be needed to ensure that you are forced to keep your data up to date, so that when someone needs to request your home address (as an example, an attorney might need it), they should be able to get an up to date address. But still, all round with how things are at the moment, such a system WILL be abused, especially by special interest groups, politicians, scammers etc. Technically feasible but the specific society might not be compatible with the convenience it brings.
ranguna 1y ago
My digital ID in the western European country I live in is great, it also works offline. There's no extra information the government has that it didn't already have. Everything is the same, except now I don't have to carry a physical card with me all the time, I just need my phone and I can switch to a new phone easily.
- willvarfar 1y ago
  And you can use online services to interact with the government and other important things like your bank. Imagine the alternative: each government department has their own auth system to roll out and maintain, and you have a gazillion logins to manage etc.
  - ranguna 1y ago
    Indeed
agnishom 1y ago
I don't disagree with the concerns of the author, but to me it seems that the response should be to wage war against chokepoint capitalism, i.e, third party tech oligopolies which might own the critical infrastructure to Digital ID databases and the verification systems, not Digital ID itself
pjc50 1y ago
So .. back in the day I was active in the no2id campaign against UK identity cards. Since then the UK has introduced mandatory ID and immigration status check requirements for banking, renting, employment, and voting .. but not issued any new forms of ID, apart from the short lived immigrant-only "Biometric residence permit". The ID question splits into two halves: 1) ID requirements: situations where you cannot proceed without presenting ID 2) ID issuance: issuing an ID to comply with (1) People here, and the thin liberal/libertarian side of UK politics, are quite against (2) because they think it will lead to (1). But it turns out to be very easy to impose (1)_in half-assed and inconvenient ways even without (2). We just got "identify yourself to use social media"! That's already happened, except the people you are identifying yourself to are random non-GDPR US data broker services which are almost certainly cc'ing US intelligence on a copy of all the faces you show them. (2) is where the real fight is, and now we've mostly lost that (because the public wants authoritarianism so long as it's used primarily against The Other), not having (1) becomes a matter of dealing with an inconvenient and broken pseudo-ID system where "utility bill" is a valid form of ID and organizations may require things that no longer exist like "original printed bank statement".
stroebs 1y ago
Having grown up in South Africa, having a physical document to prove who you are, along with an identity number is just so normalised. When I moved to the UK later in life, I found it absolutely bizarre that there’s no mechanism to uniquely identify yourself to the government, or any other entity that deals with your personal/financial/health identity. It’s just a combination of name and address, which anyone can access with ease. Digital identity is on the slightly more controlling side of this, but the article focuses entirely on the cynical perspective without considering the positives.
- dekken_ 1y ago
  > identify yourself to the government "The government" is not an abstraction, it's bunch of people, fallible people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart, so really, why should they have much to do with the every day existence of the public?
- octo888 1y ago
  Other than finding it bizarre has it actually negatively affected your life? I'm not talking 10 minutes of extra admin once a year hah What are those positives you allude to?
- Forhan 1y ago
  I'm in South Africa and working for an Australian company. I still find it weird that they don't have ID numbers, instead we make use of a name + surname + DoB combination. I didn't even know it was like that in the UK as well or anywhere else to be honest, I always just assumed everyone makes use of government issued ID's.
philipallstar 1y ago
Calling a state ID card capitalist surveillance is hilarious.
- tavavex 1y ago
  Regardless if you agree with the point or not, I'm not seeing the contradiction. Your government is capitalist, is it not?
  - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
    The government is not capitalist. No where in the Constitution will you see a mention of capitalism. Communist states however organize their governments around their economic system necessarily.
    - tavavex 1y ago
      > No where in the Constitution will you see a mention of capitalism Of course not, why would it be there? I'm talking about the way a government acts, not what they declare in centuries-old documents. The vast majority of modern countries are unquestionably capitalist, despite not pledging their affinity to it literally. If the frameworks in your country are centered around supporting and regulating a capitalist system, then it's a capitalist country. That shouldn't be a controversial or partisan statement. All countries use regulation to railroad the way their economic system will run, and just because the USSR et al. were way more totalitarian and uncompromising doesn't mean the rails are completely absent where you live and that your country's systems are some kind of a free and natural outcome. All nations exercise this control. Every country has greater economic plans that are in line with an ideology or movement they think will be good, and laws are used to nudge people and businesses towards making all the "correct" choices.
      - philipallstar 1y ago
        > If the frameworks in your country are centered around supporting and regulating a capitalist system, then it's a capitalist country But the government isn't capitalist.
zenlot 1y ago
I don't know why people complain much about it. In UK especially. For example all EU citizens, after Brexit been "marked", with sort of digital ID. 1. You cannot open bank account without presenting share code from gov.uk, which shows your photo and right to stay and work when generated. 2. You cannot rent without presenting same share code. 3. You cannot go on cruise ship without presenting that. 4. Employers cannot hire you without presenting that code. Codes are temporary, you login, generate and share that. It's very much digital ID that's been in place for many years by now. So getting it to everyone makes sense, either "mark" everyone in a country or "mark" no one. And EU citizens been "marked" for a while and tested on with that system.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Buried in this discussion is the nastier side of UK politics: people (well, marginal voters) want an identity system, but _only_ to inconvenience foreigners.
renegat0x0 1y ago
There are two sides of the story, as usual - we already have some forms of IDs. Most of us have personal ID, driving license, you data exist in government tables - we already have some forms of IDs online. Everything is stored per email address, and phone address - this makes some people do not care - until government starts using it for nefarious reasons. All it takes is one president to change, one super power to shift - people are ignorant, until it is too late - the problem with digital ID is with centralization, that it is goldmine for hackers, it can be used to spy on you if all your data are in one bucket - therefore people who say that they have digital ID lack imagination on what can happen - it all works, when everything is disconnected, platforms, governments, etc.
sjw987 1y ago
The issue isn't so much an identification system, or a digital identification system. It's just that we're waiting to see if there's going to be a non-smartphone implementation of this, and we're waiting to find out if this is handled locally or handed to a company like Palantir (which is likely given their cosying up to the UK government). If this ID is only required at point of reference for job applications, as they are implying, why does it need to be operated via smartphone app? Can it not just be a card, or website? If it's purely digital, what happens in the case of a leak, cyber attack or internet outage? If the ID grows in purpose in the future, does this mean we'll have to carry smartphones around with us at all times as if it were an extension of our body? You don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to take issue with the idea of carrying an internet connected microphone, camera and location tracked device around at all times. They aren't revealing anything yet. I want the UK to stay a country where you don't need to reveal identification at a whim, as opposed to a country where you must always carry it at all times ready for questioning. I don't want to live in a state where a lack of smartphone is grounds for suspicion of criminal/illegal behaviour.
lambdaone 1y ago
Right now email is true One True SSO. I suspect that the root of trust for the digital identity of most people here is something like a Gmail account, unless you have gone to vast efforts to secure personal digital sovereignty in terms of having entirely self-hosted domain, email, DNS etc. The question is: in the long run, do you trust your government more than Google?
krmbzds 1y ago
The word "Capitalist" is casually thrown in with other bad things to make it look bad. Don't be tricked. Capitalism is a good and moral system. In fact, it is the only moral system that works. What's bad is central planning and government surveillance.
- tavavex 1y ago
  This blog is written by an anarchist - a member of a group that's infamously opposed to both things you mention as bad. Would you mind providing a more specific critique of what they're arguing? So far, all you've said just comes off as ideological reflexes. I don't even need to caricature you to say that your post is just "My thing is always good, and the only good. Any other thing is bad." with no further argumentation.
kkfx 1y ago
Digital ID is logic, in a digital world, what's not logic is centralized digital IDs instead of open, public chain-of-trust ones. Similar for many other digital things: they could be good or bad depending on how you do them. As long as 99% have no clue of IT it's pretty normal that digitization evolve against the common interests, when people get a bit of knowledge then things change.
metalman 1y ago
theremust be balance in the use of digitised personal records that are availible to officials first, every single touch on someones info is recorded, and abuse in any form is punished, catestrophicaly. even the ticket checker, will be monitored, and if there is any discriminatory pattern to there "checking" they are prevented from any job or occupation that involves power ,and authority to prosecute. 2 no ministerial overrides,etc, without a court order 3 if the whole thing becomes unmanageble and leakes private info, it is trashed and we go back to cards the people pushing this must face catestrophic consequences for failing to impilment a digital sytem of ID that is perfectly secure, and immune from abuse. no mights,no coulds, no excuses, no mumbling,no clauses, no public private, secure national ID, fuck with it and go to jail forever
xtiansimon 1y ago
Well. Yeah. The criticism of digital ID writes itself. Given the US president’s inflammatory rhetoric about “Democrats” and “radical left”, this passage is an ominous prediction: “Welfare can be rationed through digital checkpoints, ensuring that only the “deserving” poor receive aid. Policing is strengthened through biometric databases, making dissent and protest more dangerous.” This mirrors the reasons for resisting Voter ID laws. And given story after story written here on HN about corporations who are unaccountable for their poor data handling, given digital services routinely deny users fair resolutions for bad algorithmic actions or ambiguous “policy violations” and without human arbitration. (Ha! Or just Byzantine department compartmentalization). If you’re not chilled by the thought of Universal Digital ID for every single bit of life’s necessities, why no? Are you team Ellison? Do you think there will be room for _you and your family_ on the Ark? https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance-oracle-tiktok-deal-social-media/ https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance...
sershe 1y ago
"wielded by states and capitalists to monitor, control, and discipline populations. From passports to colonial passbooks, from welfare cards to border regimes, the apparatus of identification has always been tied to domination." Uh, what is the word capitalists doing here? All of the examples are of the states. Notably, most of the states doing those were the least capitalist of all. In Soviet Union (and Russia) you have an internal passport that you have to carry at all times and show to the cops if asked. You need/used to need a residence permit or some other explanation to be somewhere other than your address stamped in the passport (in fact, earlier they wouldn't give rural people passports at all, so they wouldn't travel). Or btw if your photo is too old you could be taken to a police station. I have been, almost, and the only difference added by capitalism is that you could conveniently pay a bribe on the spot (it was literally the birthday I was supposed to change my photo so I got a free birthday special after some discussion) I surrendered my internal passport with my Russian citizenship and never had "capitalists" offer me any replacement digital ID! It's jarring, what am I supposed to show to capitalist cops?! Sure, surveillance, etc. But the author is clearly extremely biased and keeps harping on the sins of Paul to condemn Peter.

140 points by Refreeze5224 1y ago

hhh 1y ago

I dunno man, I migrated to the Netherlands and our digital ID is an amazing system that literally makes my life easier anytime i need to interact with something. An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I also personally think we are going to need some form of digital id and hopefully some sort of attribute based credential implementation à la the DECODE project[1], where we can start raising the barrier of entry for all of these bot farms to require at least a felony in identity theft to start. Curious what others opinions are :) [1]: https://decodeproject.eu/publications/final-report-pilots-amsterdam-and-sustainability-plans.html https://decodeproject.eu/publications/final-report-pilots-am...

zwnow 1y ago
In Germany it unfortunately failed abysmal. Most digital ids stopped working after like 6 months of introduction of the system...
- Semaphor 1y ago
  What? It works great when it’s supported. It’s just that there still aren’t enough public or private places supporting it.
  - zwnow 1y ago
    Not my experience unfortunately
- microtonal 1y ago
  I think in Germany, such efforts are doomed to fail (or were at least doomed to fail when we lived in Germany) because Germany is reluctant to connect different government administrations due to historical baggage (SS, Stasi, etc). We have had DigiD in The Netherlands since 2004 (at least that's when it got its current name) and it's glorious. Everything from requesting a new passport, logging to your tax administration, registering as a company, making an appointment for Corona vaccination to doing declarations with your insurance company is done with DigiD. The authentication flow is super-smooth and quick. I know there are risks to having one central account (slightly mitigated by support for 2FA and scanning your ID card/passport/driver's license NFC as another factor). But it makes dealing with the government so much easier. We lived in Germany and it was a total disaster in comparison.
  - zwnow 1y ago
    Germany as a whole has become a total disaster sadly. From public transportation to schools over retirement homes to rent prices. Everything is crumbling and its depressing. I wished we could at least have good technical infrastructure, as its relatively cost efficient, but no, we lack competence and old people are blocking every modernization there is (in public offices). Its honestly extremely frustrating.
    - port11 1y ago
      This is one of the most exaggerated takes on the country I've come across. I lived there for 8 years and Germany is, frankly, a superb place to live. I left Germany 3 times and my quality of life took a hit each time. The first 2 I went back; sadly I can't do it again. Public transportation was in the top 3 of what I've experienced in Continental Europe; schools are seen as respectable and good; healthcare was generally very good if expensive (14.x% of salary is a bit much). I could go on. Germany has definite problems, and the federal overruling of things like “rent brakes” is cause for concern. But to call the country ’a total disaster’ can only be done by one that, quite honestly, has no idea of what a bad or even mediocre country looks like.
      - zwnow 1y ago
        8 years, wow. Try 30 and actually growing up in this country. School is letting people down, rent prices are exploding. Public transportation is a complete joke (https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=1S258ynDJZkGZdoT https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=1S258ynDJZkGZdoT) Sorry, but with how rich Germany is I can and should expect more from this country.
        port11 1y ago
        Public schools, public transport, well, public everything is being dismantled or cost-savings-worsened by neoliberal governments all across Europe. I've yet to live in a country where the public institutions aren't being torn apart by privatisation and cost-cutting. That's sadly universal. So I'd say Germany fared better than the other places I've lived: Portugal, Spain, France, and Belgium. In Belgium we have a higher marginal tax rate with the same results as you're complaining about. Your universities are still seen abroad with high regard. Rent… well, damn, yes. Rent is very high everywhere, for a number of reasons largely due to letting foreign and corporate investment hoard up property, while at the same time building too much high-cost residential and not enough for lower and middle class people (single or otherwise). The market won't correct itself until only individuals are allowed to own housing and up to a certain highly-progressively taxed limit. That said, my rents in Germany were lower than, say, Belgium. I agree you have a rich country and I didn't live there all my life. But it's still one of the few countries I'd say is doing something for its citizens, largely due to the German understanding of the collective good and social norms :)
- tchalla 1y ago
  Hopefully BundID remains
stavros 1y ago
I'm not against digital ID, but I am very much against perfect law enforcement. Society evolves, and things that used to be unthinkable (eg gay marriage) slowly become acceptable. To become acceptable, however, they need to be allowed to be done, even if illegally. If you arrested every homosexual the moment they kissed someone, then homosexuality would never have become legal. Perfect enforcement leads to an ossified society that only changes when the people who can lobby for laws that benefit them want it to. It will be a perfect dictatorship that can never be toppled, it can only get worse. Every dystopian film or movie starts with some tyrannical society and a resistance movement. Now imagine you made resistance impossible, which is what perfect law enforcement will do.
- skrebbel 1y ago
  This is the part of the argument I don’t get. A digital ID system like the one in NL is basically just a login system. It’s oauth for public services, not too different from “sign in with Google”. How does that lead to perfect law enforcement? Like, how does it prevent homosexuals from kissing? I don't mean this dismissively. I assume there is a series of steps that make sense that I’m not seeing.
  - michaelt 1y ago
    Here in the UK, the government wants: * ID checks for social media (to protect children) * A digital ID card, allowing ID check records to be provably linked to the original ID document (to prevent illegal working) * The police arresting people for posting unfashionable takes on human sexuality to social media And even if you trust the current government, there are very real fears the next government will be Trump-admiring right wing populists who are eager to upend the status quo.
    - pjc50 1y ago
      > The police arresting people for posting unfashionable takes on human sexuality to social media When you look into these cases, they always turn out to be "a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse against one or more named individuals". It took years for even Glinner to finally cross that line and get his collar felt.
wesammikhail 1y ago
> An open standard for the world to use for this seems like the ideal way you would want it to happen. I get the convenience part. I am from Sweden. We have BankID. I really get it. But in reality, when centralized systems go to shit, they go to shit REAL BAD. So I personally oppose any such measures on both principles but also... it's okay if life is a little bit less convenient. Not everything needs to be ultra optimized for efficiency. Privacy and systemic integrity is worth at least that much imo.
- microtonal 1y ago
  The Netherlands has had a standard for authentication, which is supported by all government organizations, many insurance companies, etc. for 21 years and it only got better with time. I also strongly prefer it over the shitty, broken authentication systems many government organizations, companies, etc. come up with otherwise (we lived in Germany for a while and the crappy systems we had to deal with were endless). Or even worse, let some FAANG company do the authentication.
- cowboy_henk 1y ago
  BankID seems quite different. Importantly the Dutch system is not tied to banks in any way; no commercial parties required for it to function.
witnessme 1y ago
Does Decode project overlaps with Solid project (Sir Tim Berners Lee's project with similar objective)? P.S. Thanks for sharing Decode, it looks good, I will be diving deeper into it this weekend. TIA.
Mashimo 1y ago
Same in Denmark. It acts as a SSO for Banks, library, 2fa for debit card, hospital websites, all kinds of government services. Makes it easy, because you don't need a new or different account.
- graemep 1y ago
  Which means the provider can track you across all those. What you spend, what you read, what medical treatment you have. All just to save carrying a wallet?
  - vachina 1y ago
    The provider is the government by the way, and SSO doesn’t give them the ability to track activities beyond where I signed in. It is possible, to trust the government in other parts of world.
    - closewith 1y ago
      Can you imagine a scenario where this might become a problem?
      - Muromec 1y ago
        That entirely depends on how hostile you believe both parties of SSO exchange are towards you.
        array_key_first 1y ago
        The idea is we should develop systems that are resistant to relying on trust. Ideally, I should have faith in my life being okay without needing to blindly trust every single company I interact with.
        Muromec 1y ago
        You can't actually. Everything we interact with eventually ends up relying on trust, even the blockchain, but especially everything with humans and politics.
a-french-anon 1y ago
Can it be used without a smartphone aka "portable telescreen"? Do they explicitly guarantee this'll remain the case? If not, you're just being hoodwinked via cheap convenience.
- Lauris100 1y ago
  Everyone has a smartphone lol - i can tell that living in a country with great digital services is a lot less stressful than in country with no digitization and old school paperwork i have gone through both.
  - closewith 1y ago
    Falsehoods programmers believe about society.
  - jcgl 1y ago
    If smartphones are to be a requirement for participation in civil society, privacy- and freedom-preserving smartphones are needed at the very least. People shouldn't be required to submit to some company's Terms of Service in order to participate in society.
    - ta20240528 1y ago
      Should everyone be required to use private banks to access e.g. foreign exchange? The answer is yes: which is why banks are licensed and have ombudsmen. As are telcos. No modern society is going to maintain a parallel government economy to serve the vanishingly small minority who live in fear of private companies. Perhaps they should (IDK), but they won't.
      - pjc50 1y ago
        Telcos are licensed. Mobile phone manufacturers and, crucially, OS providers, are not. Although in the EU they are now subject to some Digital Markets Act control.
scott_w 1y ago
From the UK and listening to people who don't have things like passports, it sounds like it'll make proving your right to work much easier for people, too. I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is: 1. To open a bank account you need an address 2. To rent somewhere (get an address), you need a bank account 3. See above The same happens for children opening their first bank account. They get round this usually by having a parent vouch for you, however, this isn't much use to children with estranged/dead/abusive parents. A system that is mandatory, acts as sufficient ID in all cases (proof of ID, proof of address, etc.) and is free for the recipient has the potential to make otherwise excluded peoples' lives easier.
- pjc50 1y ago
  > I've spoken to friends who have foreign relatives and they've also pointed out the problem the UK has which is Lots of countries have this circularity, including Continental ones with ID systems, and I think it's an intentional anti-immigrant measure.
  - scott_w 1y ago
    Absolutely, it’s a major problem. I would think this system needs to hand out ID cards to everyone who needs one (student, work visa, alongside NI number, etc.) to break that loop.
    - pjc50 1y ago
      For a while the UK had the stupid situation where there was a high-security biometric identity system, but only for immigrants, and one of the things you did as part of the process of becoming a citizen was the requirement to hand back or destroy the ID. (this of course tells us where all the ID pressure is coming from: voters want an identity system that can be weaponized against immigrants and The Other.)
  - buildfocus 1y ago
    For Spain at least, most banks have foreigner accounts you can open with a passport, and convert into a normal account once you have local id later. It's a mildly unusual setup (and a bit confusing when you're new) but it's pretty widely available and it's not a significant blocker. There's plenty of other challenges and structural disadvantages as an immigrant, but this one at least isn't too bad. If anything, there's really a big advantage to it for the banks - most locals already have banking, immigrants are the one market where you can get new customers without having to push them past the effort/laziness of switching from their existing setup.
Brian_K_White 1y ago
I dunno man, there is an interesting comment below about that time the Netherlands unusually complete population data made the Nazis lives easier.
deep_lol 1y ago
Don't forget couple of things: Dutch digid is tightly coupled with your address. All documents only go via regular post to your registered address in the Netherlands. No address? Moved to another one? Didn't register new address? Moved out of country? Good luck getting or updating digid. Digid verification goes to your phone. Lost phone or get stolen? Changed mobile number? Guess what, no digid for you anymore.
- apexalpha 1y ago
  You can just install and register a new Digid App it's not that complicated. I mean people have physical passports and they sometimes lose those which doesn't seem to be a blocking issue.
  - deep_lol 1y ago
    Oh man, you probably never used it. You cannot register digid without paper documents being sent by post to your registered address in the Netherlands. Also, once you go beyond very basic services you might discover digid only works if you are a citizen. Otherwise you are back to papers.
jalapenos 1y ago
I think this is the plot of every dystopian movie ever though? You're betting that the government are always going to be nice to you and those around you, carefully ignoring all the history books.
phatfish 1y ago
Agreed, all the scaremongering is hilarious. As if a digital ID is what is going to be used to repress the common (wo)man. News flash, if your "liberal western government" wanted to they have more than enough tools to do it already. See all the repressive governments with institutions stuck in the 60s. - Don't trust corporations that you have no control over. - Vote wisely for the government you do have some control over. - Accept compromises are needed in a society of millions rather than constant political conflict. Start with the above for a better life.
- DrProtic 1y ago
  In the same breath you mention repressive governments and how you have control over governments. Which one is it?
  - phatfish 1y ago
    Depends which sort of government you live under obviously. Luckily in the UK we do have control over our government. If people got off the internet they might realise they have all the tools needed to make their country a better place.
- user3939382 1y ago
  I don’t think it’s scaremongering or hilarious. I think you’re weak. Oh it’s nice to have this, so I’ll relinquish my sovereignty, if you can’t beat em join em. Enshrined in a false dichotomy: how about we don’t trust the corporations OR the government? As far as their “tools” I invented a stack which demolishes all digital surveillance. The real point is we need people like me not people like you, then we’d actually have solutions to these problems. YOU are the problem. Your weakness and laziness is what enables these horrible patterns.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  all the scaremongering is hilarious. Only if you didn't pay attention in history class. Certain European governments didn't tattoo serial numbers on the arms of certain citizens so they could more easily access government services and check out library books. You can say "Europe isn't like that anymore" all you want. Governments change. Power shifts. Less than a decade ago, Europe was saying that Russia is no longer a threat because it was welcomed into the Western economy. Things change. The present is not the future.
anal_reactor 1y ago
Poland takes it a step further. You don't need to carry the driving license with you because the police can check it in the system anyway.

wmf 1y ago

This article is written from an anarcho-socialist perspective so it may not be that persuasive to many people. In the US we don't have any official government digital ID but instead various data brokers are providing it... with no real oversight. If the people of the UK reject government digital ID they may get Palantir digital ID instead. It's not clear to me which is worse, the government playing by its own rules or private companies playing by essentially no rules. Europe may be better because at least they have GDPR.

octo888 1y ago
We're likely getting Oracle digital ID. The UK gov of course is going to contract it out
- microtonal 1y ago
  We don't they ask some European partners? Some have great ID systems. In The Netherlands we have DigiD, which was developed by a government organization and works very well. IIRC Estonia als has a digital identity system that works well.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    It's verboten in UK politics to acknowledge that any EU country might be doing something well and to consider copying it. Only America can be used as a model.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - octo888 1y ago
    Because the UK gov doesn't want a system like theirs. You don't need to keep Europsplaining to Brits. We aren't all idiots. We know you have ID cards etc and we know about Estonia. Also if we reject one your ideas, it's not always because we misunderstood it - we can understand it AND think it's a bad idea. I know that often hurts the egos of Germans, the French and the Dutch ;(! It's funny because it's often Europeans not understanding British politics...the irony ;)

alkonaut 1y ago

I hate these fluff pieces that use "Digital ID" as some nebulous thing that represents everything from a social credit system to a mandatory id card to a location tracking device injected the spine of every citizen. Why is there suddenly so much talk about vague implementations of Digital ID? Is it because of the UK proposals? No one seems to know exactly what that amounts to either - but importantly it seems to be nothing like what people in the rest of Europe mean when we say "Digital ID". If you want to discuss "Digital ID" - or write a long blog post about it - then please just describe what it is you are writing about. Don't use it as a label for everything you don't want.

yuvadam 1y ago
TFA talks about how pervasive Digital ID (no quotes) systems are in everyday life, with multiple examples, feels very concrete and not at all vague.
- alkonaut 1y ago
  You mean the biometric systems in India or geofencing in South Africa and the like? Absolutely no one ever used ”Digital ID” for those phenomena which is my point. TFA takes a wide range of dystopian tech and says ”these are digital ID, ergo digital ID is dystopian!”

wilg 1y ago

I'm not sure the summoning of "capitalism" adds much here (and detracts a lot).

sQL_inject 1y ago
"The notion of “identity” under capitalism has always been bound up with surveillance and discipline." This is the classic surface level grasp where the author uses words like capitalism where they really mean corporatism -- I hope the author isn't against the free and mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services between two willing parties Secondly just replace the word in this quote ^ with communism...or any large state apparatus for that matter, and it still could work.
- wagram 1y ago
  The problem is that the author is referring to a body of arguments that most people aren't familiar with, and wouldn't agree with if they were. Within certain leftist circles these are well known, and it's standard to assume the usefulness of ideas from French poststructuralist writers from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Frankfurt School writers from 1920s and 1930s. These are sometimes called "critical theory". "Surveillance and discipline" comes from Foucault's book "Surveiller et punir," which was translated into English as "Discipline and Punish". It argues that the logic of surveillance from prisons has worked its way into a bunch of institutions in modern society. Articles in this style feel to me like a word salad of leftist shibboleths that never really amount to an actual argument: capitalism, resistance, settler-colonialism, domination, class rule.
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    The article had clear arguments. No continental philosophy reading is required to understand By embedding digital checkpoints into daily life, whether entering a building, logging into a service, or accessing healthcare, surveillance becomes routine.
    - wagram 1y ago

alwa 1y ago

The author asserts that reports have documented deaths of starvation due to Aadhaar identification issues. That seems pretty extreme and horrifying. The author doesn’t cite their source for that claim—is anyone familiar with the underlying work?

captn3m0 1y ago
> While the government remains in denial about the deaths highlighted by Right to Food activists, the Minister admits that Santoshi Kumar, 11, died because her family ration card was deleted for not being linked to Aadhaar. Taramani Sahu, a foot soldier of the Right to Food Campaign, says she had raised this issue with the district authorities months before Santoshi died. The administration assured intervention, but that came only after the child’s death. Jharkhand has the most of these, due to the underlying issues and activism on Right to Food in the region. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/death-by-digital-exclusion/article28414768.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/death-by... I also remember a case where an infant Aadhaar was issued by CSC at the hospital and was celebrated as a win because the doctors refused emergency Heart Surgery without the infant having an Aadhaar.

fedeb95 1y ago

it's not that without digital ID you didn't need verification. At least in Italy, digital identities means don't having to go attending lengthy queues in public offices, where paper identities where usually checked. Sometimes you still have to do it. What I agree with, is that some system is needed to help those without an identity, or at the border of the system. Digital stuff can help there too.

rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago

I think privacy abuse can be largely prevented if a hard line is drawn saying that digital ids must only be used by the government for government services, such as voting, taxes, immigration, welfare, etc. If any private parties like banks, social media, or online stores are allowed to check your digital id, they are going to be a privacy disaster.

pjc50 1y ago
Banks are _required_ to check ID! And act as unpaid immigration enforcers. Already in the UK. https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/immigration-act-2014 https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/immigration-act-2014
- rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
  Yeah the situation with banks is a whole other problem. Banks have basically become an arm of the government, but without the protection of due process. Financial privacy is a pipe dream at this point, so I'd prefer basic bank accounts be run directly by the government. At least that way, they can more easily be held accountable for their actions. Enforcement of the state's desires by private corporations leads to all kinds of evil.
fergonco 1y ago
In my country, "hard lines" are next month's "soft lines". So any system that requires those is a problem.

gorgoiler 1y ago

The bouncer saying I need to see your ID always rubbed me up the wrong way, not because I objected to being challenged but because they don’t need to know who I am, they just need to see proof of age. Not even that! Proof that my age is greater than or equal to X! In a world where we would might actually see societal benefits in having people prove things about themselves*, could we not leverage technology to emit verifiable tokens that say “I have the right to work” and “my eyeballs have this shape and are this far apart”** without the world turning into 1984? (I suppose with enough people there could still be a black market for token generators where you could feasibly buy one that matched a subset of your biometrics.) * Illegals have the potential to be exploited just as much they themselves can be exploitative. It goes both ways. ** Is it possible to have biometrics that can be verified against my physical presence, but which can’t be used to identify me in a crowd?

potatototoo99 1y ago
That is what digital IDs usually do: the website requests the smallest amount of information they need, you decide to grant it, and only that gets sent. And at least in my country you also have a physical card, so if you really don't want to grant anything via the internet (or find their request is too broad) you can just do whatever process it is in person.
- raspyberr 1y ago
  What if sites start to request more information than they need because why not? If you don't give it, you don't get access, and you want access. What incentive do they have for requesting less information?
  - cowboy_henk 1y ago
    Asking for more information than required will cause people to stop using the website, hurting revenue.
    - tavavex 1y ago

essi_ 1y ago

As a privileged European, I am not primed to fully engage with this point of view. The "pro digital id" arguments of freedom appeal to me, for instance it means it's easier for me to have secure, reliable access to my medical data. That being said, I do appreciate that it must look very different when you don't get access to it, especially when so much of travel and government assistance relies on it. Our digital Id solutions definitely still have accessibility issue for instance. And I do believe that in some societies, it can be (and maybe is) used as a "boot to the neck". I would say the main goal should be to make it easier for anyone to obtain and use the benefits of these tools, but that it relies on a society where the government protects personal freedom of movement as necessary.

BatteryMountain 1y ago

I think a digital id in concept is fine but will ultimately be used to exploit or exclude people from the system. A digital id can be great but it needs some extra decorations to make it better suited to being used in the wild. Some thoughts: What happens if "the system is offline"? No healthcare that day? No transactions? What are the effects of downtime, whether intentional or cause by hackers etc? What happens in countries with low literacy rates? Some people cannot read or write, some countries use paper only, how will you travel to those countries? On privacy abuse, I think there should be an app alongside the digital id, that when a third party requests information, I get the request and I have to approve it. It should have an expiry date attached so that the third party has to delete their records. I should be able to see exactly what data they request. What happens if the system is offline? A digital id can eliminate many cases where people have to "trust" each other and they would rather rely on the system instead. Lets say the bank asks me to give them certified copies of my id or statements from a different party. Many fraud occur as people can forge documents, so with a digital id, this whole step gets eliminated as the bank can simply ask the gov for the information so they don't have to trust me or that the documents are valid. Some laws might be needed to ensure that you are forced to keep your data up to date, so that when someone needs to request your home address (as an example, an attorney might need it), they should be able to get an up to date address. But still, all round with how things are at the moment, such a system WILL be abused, especially by special interest groups, politicians, scammers etc. Technically feasible but the specific society might not be compatible with the convenience it brings.

ranguna 1y ago

My digital ID in the western European country I live in is great, it also works offline. There's no extra information the government has that it didn't already have. Everything is the same, except now I don't have to carry a physical card with me all the time, I just need my phone and I can switch to a new phone easily.

willvarfar 1y ago
And you can use online services to interact with the government and other important things like your bank. Imagine the alternative: each government department has their own auth system to roll out and maintain, and you have a gazillion logins to manage etc.
- ranguna 1y ago
  Indeed

agnishom 1y ago

I don't disagree with the concerns of the author, but to me it seems that the response should be to wage war against chokepoint capitalism, i.e, third party tech oligopolies which might own the critical infrastructure to Digital ID databases and the verification systems, not Digital ID itself

pjc50 1y ago

So .. back in the day I was active in the no2id campaign against UK identity cards. Since then the UK has introduced mandatory ID and immigration status check requirements for banking, renting, employment, and voting .. but not issued any new forms of ID, apart from the short lived immigrant-only "Biometric residence permit". The ID question splits into two halves: 1) ID requirements: situations where you cannot proceed without presenting ID 2) ID issuance: issuing an ID to comply with (1) People here, and the thin liberal/libertarian side of UK politics, are quite against (2) because they think it will lead to (1). But it turns out to be very easy to impose (1)_in half-assed and inconvenient ways even without (2). We just got "identify yourself to use social media"! That's already happened, except the people you are identifying yourself to are random non-GDPR US data broker services which are almost certainly cc'ing US intelligence on a copy of all the faces you show them. (2) is where the real fight is, and now we've mostly lost that (because the public wants authoritarianism so long as it's used primarily against The Other), not having (1) becomes a matter of dealing with an inconvenient and broken pseudo-ID system where "utility bill" is a valid form of ID and organizations may require things that no longer exist like "original printed bank statement".

stroebs 1y ago

Having grown up in South Africa, having a physical document to prove who you are, along with an identity number is just so normalised. When I moved to the UK later in life, I found it absolutely bizarre that there’s no mechanism to uniquely identify yourself to the government, or any other entity that deals with your personal/financial/health identity. It’s just a combination of name and address, which anyone can access with ease. Digital identity is on the slightly more controlling side of this, but the article focuses entirely on the cynical perspective without considering the positives.

dekken_ 1y ago
> identify yourself to the government "The government" is not an abstraction, it's bunch of people, fallible people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart, so really, why should they have much to do with the every day existence of the public?
octo888 1y ago
Other than finding it bizarre has it actually negatively affected your life? I'm not talking 10 minutes of extra admin once a year hah What are those positives you allude to?
Forhan 1y ago
I'm in South Africa and working for an Australian company. I still find it weird that they don't have ID numbers, instead we make use of a name + surname + DoB combination. I didn't even know it was like that in the UK as well or anywhere else to be honest, I always just assumed everyone makes use of government issued ID's.

philipallstar 1y ago

Calling a state ID card capitalist surveillance is hilarious.

tavavex 1y ago
Regardless if you agree with the point or not, I'm not seeing the contradiction. Your government is capitalist, is it not?
- dinkumthinkum 1y ago
  The government is not capitalist. No where in the Constitution will you see a mention of capitalism. Communist states however organize their governments around their economic system necessarily.
  - tavavex 1y ago
    > No where in the Constitution will you see a mention of capitalism Of course not, why would it be there? I'm talking about the way a government acts, not what they declare in centuries-old documents. The vast majority of modern countries are unquestionably capitalist, despite not pledging their affinity to it literally. If the frameworks in your country are centered around supporting and regulating a capitalist system, then it's a capitalist country. That shouldn't be a controversial or partisan statement. All countries use regulation to railroad the way their economic system will run, and just because the USSR et al. were way more totalitarian and uncompromising doesn't mean the rails are completely absent where you live and that your country's systems are some kind of a free and natural outcome. All nations exercise this control. Every country has greater economic plans that are in line with an ideology or movement they think will be good, and laws are used to nudge people and businesses towards making all the "correct" choices.
    - philipallstar 1y ago
      > If the frameworks in your country are centered around supporting and regulating a capitalist system, then it's a capitalist country But the government isn't capitalist.

zenlot 1y ago

I don't know why people complain much about it. In UK especially. For example all EU citizens, after Brexit been "marked", with sort of digital ID. 1. You cannot open bank account without presenting share code from gov.uk, which shows your photo and right to stay and work when generated. 2. You cannot rent without presenting same share code. 3. You cannot go on cruise ship without presenting that. 4. Employers cannot hire you without presenting that code. Codes are temporary, you login, generate and share that. It's very much digital ID that's been in place for many years by now. So getting it to everyone makes sense, either "mark" everyone in a country or "mark" no one. And EU citizens been "marked" for a while and tested on with that system.

pjc50 1y ago
Buried in this discussion is the nastier side of UK politics: people (well, marginal voters) want an identity system, but _only_ to inconvenience foreigners.

renegat0x0 1y ago

There are two sides of the story, as usual - we already have some forms of IDs. Most of us have personal ID, driving license, you data exist in government tables - we already have some forms of IDs online. Everything is stored per email address, and phone address - this makes some people do not care - until government starts using it for nefarious reasons. All it takes is one president to change, one super power to shift - people are ignorant, until it is too late - the problem with digital ID is with centralization, that it is goldmine for hackers, it can be used to spy on you if all your data are in one bucket - therefore people who say that they have digital ID lack imagination on what can happen - it all works, when everything is disconnected, platforms, governments, etc.

sjw987 1y ago

The issue isn't so much an identification system, or a digital identification system. It's just that we're waiting to see if there's going to be a non-smartphone implementation of this, and we're waiting to find out if this is handled locally or handed to a company like Palantir (which is likely given their cosying up to the UK government). If this ID is only required at point of reference for job applications, as they are implying, why does it need to be operated via smartphone app? Can it not just be a card, or website? If it's purely digital, what happens in the case of a leak, cyber attack or internet outage? If the ID grows in purpose in the future, does this mean we'll have to carry smartphones around with us at all times as if it were an extension of our body? You don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to take issue with the idea of carrying an internet connected microphone, camera and location tracked device around at all times. They aren't revealing anything yet. I want the UK to stay a country where you don't need to reveal identification at a whim, as opposed to a country where you must always carry it at all times ready for questioning. I don't want to live in a state where a lack of smartphone is grounds for suspicion of criminal/illegal behaviour.

lambdaone 1y ago

Right now email is true One True SSO. I suspect that the root of trust for the digital identity of most people here is something like a Gmail account, unless you have gone to vast efforts to secure personal digital sovereignty in terms of having entirely self-hosted domain, email, DNS etc. The question is: in the long run, do you trust your government more than Google?

krmbzds 1y ago

The word "Capitalist" is casually thrown in with other bad things to make it look bad. Don't be tricked. Capitalism is a good and moral system. In fact, it is the only moral system that works. What's bad is central planning and government surveillance.

tavavex 1y ago
This blog is written by an anarchist - a member of a group that's infamously opposed to both things you mention as bad. Would you mind providing a more specific critique of what they're arguing? So far, all you've said just comes off as ideological reflexes. I don't even need to caricature you to say that your post is just "My thing is always good, and the only good. Any other thing is bad." with no further argumentation.

kkfx 1y ago

Digital ID is logic, in a digital world, what's not logic is centralized digital IDs instead of open, public chain-of-trust ones. Similar for many other digital things: they could be good or bad depending on how you do them. As long as 99% have no clue of IT it's pretty normal that digitization evolve against the common interests, when people get a bit of knowledge then things change.

metalman 1y ago

theremust be balance in the use of digitised personal records that are availible to officials first, every single touch on someones info is recorded, and abuse in any form is punished, catestrophicaly. even the ticket checker, will be monitored, and if there is any discriminatory pattern to there "checking" they are prevented from any job or occupation that involves power ,and authority to prosecute. 2 no ministerial overrides,etc, without a court order 3 if the whole thing becomes unmanageble and leakes private info, it is trashed and we go back to cards the people pushing this must face catestrophic consequences for failing to impilment a digital sytem of ID that is perfectly secure, and immune from abuse. no mights,no coulds, no excuses, no mumbling,no clauses, no public private, secure national ID, fuck with it and go to jail forever

xtiansimon 1y ago

Well. Yeah. The criticism of digital ID writes itself. Given the US president’s inflammatory rhetoric about “Democrats” and “radical left”, this passage is an ominous prediction: “Welfare can be rationed through digital checkpoints, ensuring that only the “deserving” poor receive aid. Policing is strengthened through biometric databases, making dissent and protest more dangerous.” This mirrors the reasons for resisting Voter ID laws. And given story after story written here on HN about corporations who are unaccountable for their poor data handling, given digital services routinely deny users fair resolutions for bad algorithmic actions or ambiguous “policy violations” and without human arbitration. (Ha! Or just Byzantine department compartmentalization). If you’re not chilled by the thought of Universal Digital ID for every single bit of life’s necessities, why no? Are you team Ellison? Do you think there will be room for _you and your family_ on the Ark? https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance-oracle-tiktok-deal-social-media/ https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance...

sershe 1y ago

"wielded by states and capitalists to monitor, control, and discipline populations. From passports to colonial passbooks, from welfare cards to border regimes, the apparatus of identification has always been tied to domination." Uh, what is the word capitalists doing here? All of the examples are of the states. Notably, most of the states doing those were the least capitalist of all. In Soviet Union (and Russia) you have an internal passport that you have to carry at all times and show to the cops if asked. You need/used to need a residence permit or some other explanation to be somewhere other than your address stamped in the passport (in fact, earlier they wouldn't give rural people passports at all, so they wouldn't travel). Or btw if your photo is too old you could be taken to a police station. I have been, almost, and the only difference added by capitalism is that you could conveniently pay a bribe on the spot (it was literally the birthday I was supposed to change my photo so I got a free birthday special after some discussion) I surrendered my internal passport with my Russian citizenship and never had "capitalists" offer me any replacement digital ID! It's jarring, what am I supposed to show to capitalist cops?! Sure, surveillance, etc. But the author is clearly extremely biased and keeps harping on the sins of Paul to condemn Peter.