Digital identity
| "Digital identity" link (internet, surveillance, statecraft) | |
|---|---|
| File:CBC Vaccine Passports.png | |
| Digital ID enables the state to control most aspects of society |
Over 2.5 million people have signed a petition calling on the UK government not to introduce Digital ID cards.[1]
Big Brother
On 22 May 2026, Paul Knaggs of Labour Heartlands wrote an article entitled "Labour’s Digital ID: Your Papers, Please" which concludes:
"The people of Bolsover, of Hartlepool, of the Welsh Valleys, do not need a digital ID to know who they are. They know their neighbours. They know their community. They know that the person working cash-in-hand on a building site, or the mother cutting hair in her kitchen, is not a criminal mastermind but a person who finds themselves caught between the welfare trap and the gig economy. The real criminals are the employers who profit from exploitation in that gap.
"More than 2.87 million people have signed a petition opposing the scheme. A Home Affairs Committee inquiry received more than 3,500 submissions, the vast majority of which were strongly opposed. The 'People’s Panel on Digital ID', a consultation exercise involving between 100 and 120 people, has been announced as if it constitutes democratic legitimacy. It does not. It is the gesture of a government that has confused the vocabulary of participation with the substance of it.
"You do not solve the problem of illegal exploitation by treating the entire British workforce as suspects who must constantly prove their innocence to a smartphone app. You solve it by raising wages, enforcing labour laws and rebuilding the social contract that has been torn apart by forty years of deindustrialisation and neglect. But that would require a government that actually understands the working class. Instead, we have a government that inherited Tony Blair’s donor list and mistook it for a mandate.
"Samuel Huntington worried about an excess of democracy in 1975. Fifty years on, it appears he found sympathetic readers in Whitehall, and they are governing us now.
"The Surveillance State is coming. Big Brother will be watching you…"[2]