when even Palantir won't touch it.

To be fair, the head of Palantir's UK operations pointed out you don't need an id card. You just create a database of NHS no, NI no, etc mapping to some unique key and be done with it. Palantir already have Gotham used by the Met and now presumably MoD, and all the NHS data since Covid. Their spook stack does not require id cards, that's kind of the point.

The purpose of Digital ID is ability to track your movements and correlate them with other people, listening what you say, picking up keywords etc and then limiting what you can or cannot do. People are conditioned to swipe e.g Club Card during shopping, so another swipe with Digital ID could be required and your whole basket will be sent to database. Do you buy too much sweets? NHS surcharge for you... and so on. Possibilities are endless for anyone getting off on controlling people.

>>> rummaging through drawers

Are those English ot American "drawers"?

In the English context they would be unmentionable(s). The BBC's infamous 1949 [1]Green Book famously specifically banned suggestive references to Ladies’ underwear, e.g. winter draws on ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Book_(BBC)

Both.

If it's not needed for anything except work why they are touting early trials to Veterans and promising all manner of benefits "About 1.8 million veterans are eligible for the card which helps proves their status to access services and discounts."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj3zmjrzegjo

You can imagine the comments sections in the Facebook groups ;-)

Probably because they're a market that is already used to Id cards, having needed them for their day to day work. A significant number of veterans (40% of 2.4 million according to a 2020 report) are under 65, so it's more than reasonable that they're going to be able to use it for work.

As a former member of what the Cosuins like to call the Military and a member of a Ex-Forces forum I can safely say that this has gone down like a poo sandwich. I'm sure it has nothing to do with keeping track of the group of people who are trained and experienced in weapons usage. Anonymous for obvious reasons

Serious question here, but why does an Id card do that better than your National Insurance number, passport, driving licence, existing veterans card?

I've already got a digital ID. It's called a passport. Y'know that little circle-square symbol thingy. You wave it over a scanner and it talks to it. And [1]86% of the population have one.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=how+many+uk+people+have+a+passport

But that doesn't get used enough to harvest lots of loverly jubbly data.

The first thing you'll notice on the yet-another-new-government-portal website will be the scream of 184 "absolutely essential" cookies being dumped onto your machine followed by the declaration that your data *will* be shared with "trusted third parties".

...as a backbencher.

I'm surprised he found a bank branch that was still open.

Surveillance tech is surveillance tech. The people that monitor it, function above the law, so they will not be bothered by any restrictions. That is why it is always better to not have it, than to have it with any restrictions or (stupid term alert), 'guardrails'.

"I'm surprised he found a bank branch that was still open."

Perhaps that's why he had to go all the way to Brighton?

Or maybe he was just visiting Big Ange and popped into the bank on the way past?

He was probably visiting Angela Rayner's bank. :-)

You are far too kind. He should be rebranded as a shepherd, and exported o New Zealand as being surplus to requirements in the UK. I don't have anything against Kiwis, but they are about as far away from the UK as you can get without leaving the planet. If/when Herr Muskrat gets his Mars thingy working, he can be exported to Mars.

Blunket tried this way back and (thankfully) got nowhere with it

As far as the government is concerned, it’s main purpose is to keep tabs on everyone for tax and state benefit purposes. It has always been about this - nothing else. Everything else is a “nice to have” (from a govt perspective) and it’s certainly not for our benefit

As has been pointed out many times, everyone has (probably multiple) forms of govt issued id - birth certificate, passport. Driving licence being the most obvious. This new farce has NOTHING to do with proving identity

How often do we change jobs?

I am willing to rummage around once every 15-20 years rather than this.

That might depend on how often your employer makes you redundant, or makes a change to your T&Cs so fuckwitted that you walk out the door.

How often do we change jobs?

That depends on when your employer decides to make you redundant or does something sufficiently fuckwitted to your T&Cs that you walk out the door.

...'he claimed customers were "really excited about it," '

Definition of 'excited' is required....

I imagine "excited" in the same vein as the rowdy rustics armed with various lethal farm implements, assembled outside the castle gates.

People referred to in press releases like this are always "excited". Perahps nearly as "excited" as the company executives quoted in press releases, who seem to go around in a permanent state of excitement that their company has contracted another company to clean the bogs (or whatever the contract which the press release is about happens to be)...

And what are the mitigations for identity theft, or is it just game over when some joker pulls my details?

the Government of the day needs to answer with more than bland platitudes:

+ How much will to actually cost, to setup, and to run?

+ What data will be collected, and who will have access to it?

+ What control will each of us have over how ‘our’ data is used?

+ How will the system cope with ‘false-positives’ – you are identified as someone else?

+ How will the system cope with ‘false-negatives’ – you failing to be identified as you?

+ How will failures and abuses be managed – what protections and recourse will be in place, will they be timely and will they properly compensate people for the negative impacts on their livelihoods and lives generally?

+ How will the system look after people who cannot access it, or who refuse on grounds of conscience?

+ How will the system be prevented from undergoing ‘mission creep’: “We promise that the system will only ever be used for A and B, and never for things like X or Y” – ten years later it is being used for A,B,C,D,X,Y, and Z is about to be added?

+ What will stop the ‘ID system’ being used to make the people of the nation de facto ‘possessions and servants of the state’, instead of ‘the state’ being servants to, and beholden to, the people of the nation?

+ Do we, the people, actually NEED the proposed system?

The announcement also said the public consultation on the scheme "will launch by the end of the year," a change of language from "later this year" when it was announced on September 26.

That's only a change of language if you're no good at interpreting weasel-words.

Well, I'm sure nobody expects any policy change to this shit-headed idea from a consultation, and they're right, but I'll share a few observations here.

Normally, planning a proper government consultation requires a lot of time to have everything properly prepared and to ensure proper engagement with all interested parties. Then, even with a lot of bush-beating, a typical consultation gets a few hundred to a few thousand responses. A consultation on an exceptionally arcane and dull matter might have a dozen or fewer. However, when something is really contentious, such as Rees Mogg's idiotic imperial measures consultation then you get lots more - in that case 100,000 responses. As each consultation response has to be analysed, that caused a hell of kerfuffle, and swamped the tiny team who are responsible for such things, and loads of people had to be diverted from their main job to help do the work by hand, me included. And if you took your time to respond, I'd like to thank you for your valued responses - unless you were one of the ignorant c**ts who wasted their energies blaming and swearing at the Civil Service for running a consultation at the demand of a government minister of the day, in which case f*** off and learn how your government actually works and who is responsible for what. For those swearing at the relevant minister, PM or government of the day then I have no problem with that, we all enjoyed those responses.

Anyway, in this case we can expect what? For starters a rushed and poorly considered consultation that ministers have demanded has questions that are loaded towards a supportive outcome. Then it's going to be very high profile. so at a guess north of 250,000 consultation responses, maybe even over a million. How will they be handled? Well, I can assure you that now they'll tip into AI (see link below) and it'll spew out an LLM summary. This will be taken as an accurate synopsis of the responses, but ONLY after using heavy prompt engineering to get the most favourable reading from the responses. Then, regardless of what the balance of opinion actually is, our lightweight, lacklustre PM will announce that the consultation has raised issues that ministers will give careful consideration to during the implementation of ID cards. There won't be any debate in government "should we/shouldn't we", because he and the other wankers of the Labour party don't actually care about what the public think, they just want to press on with this and the other spectacularly bad and pointless ideas they've plucked out of their poorly qualified backsides - NHS reorganisation, local government reorganisation, ID cards, using AI in government etc.

Reading and reflecting, para two explains how government actually works, unfortunately. You didn't think ministers care what you think, did you?

https://ai.gov.uk/projects/consult/

....types outraged commentard on device that already tracks them and sells all that data to absolutely anybody in the world even if they think they are clever and have turned off all those activities......

so that's alright then? Just because it's already a shit show means it's just fine for us to pay our government to add to the shit that already exists.

... is for Crapita to be given the contract.

In all seriousness this could well be Starmer's "Poll Tax" moment.

(For our non-UK readers that was the policy that ended Margaret Thatcher as PM).

"In all seriousness this could well be Starmer's "Poll Tax" moment."

Only if somebody will stab Starmer in the back, and the problem there is that the parliamentary Labour party doesn't have anyone with knife-related talents, nor are there any good quality challengers likely to rally their MPs even after a year of chaotic under-achievement. Even though not a Labour voter myself, I had such high hopes of Starmer being dull but competent but in the event he's turned out to be dull and incompetent.

Latest IPSOS polls show 79% of voters disapprove of Starmer's performance compared to 13% who do, and with a net dissatisfaction of -66%, Starmer has the lowest rating of any PM (including Truss, May and Johnson) of the last 45 years, and he's had the fastest fall in his approval of any newly elected PM. And yet there's still no challenge. I wonder if the forthcoming budget will be the trigger point? If there's any back stabbing does go on, then my money's on that talent-free weasel Streeting.

Zack Polanski is pretty impressive. The Green Party are progressive, tolerant, and socialist. Their membership is booming, so there is hope.

The Greens are tolerant? You are funny...

The Greens are one step ahead of PETA. This is not a compliment.

@Like a badger

"Only if somebody will stab Starmer in the back, and the problem there is that the parliamentary Labour party doesn't have anyone with knife-related talents" >snip

Oh I don't know, You have never heard of Peter Mandelson?

Yes, but he's history now. And with his Epstein association out there, there isn't any path back.

Funny isn't it, any cove that's associated with Epstein is a total outcast, unless they're a fat orange felon in which case they get a state visit.

Apples and Oranges. Truss had the support of the media to prop up her image and only lasted 49 days. Want to guess where her approval could have been after a year?

Wilted.

@graeme leggett

No she did not. She was ridiculed from the get go. If she had the support of the media then the limp lettuce thing would never have gained the traction it did. Even the Telegraph was quoting sources saying she was bonkers.

" All we need now...

... is for Crapita to be given the contract."

Or Fujitsu!

Regardless of what the PM claims digital ID is about this week, the minister in charge of the scheme, Darren Jones, has already labelled it the "bedrock of the modern state".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/digital-id-card-keir-starmer-migration-b2834193.html

Bedrock.

That's where the Flintstones lived!

"For people who simply don't want it, well, they don't need it – apart from the right to work."

"The digital ID is about putting power back in people's hands"

- and how exactly is forcing conscientious objectors onto the dole going to put power in their hands?

Let's parse it another way:

"In order to try and stop evil foreigners from fucking over our society, we're going to fuck you over our own way."

Please please can we have some foreigners over here taking the shit jobs brits are too proud to do. I want their taxes paying our pensions and NHS. I want the smart ones fleeing the Kingdom of Trumpland too.

So he's been down in Brighton, yabbering about bank customers being "really excited about it". Cue a mahoosive attack of deja vu - nearly sixteen years ago, the Jacqboot was havering about how Mancunians were [1]itching to get their mitts on ID cards . Which turned out to be a complete load of caca. Meg Hillier was [2]equally enthusiastic . Or even more so, given the figures she conjured up out of thin air.

Of course, [3]the BBC obligingly helped her along . I don't doubt they'll try the same trick again.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2009/01/30/idcard_cobblers/

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2010/03/16/hillier_id_cards_on_fire/

[3] https://www.theregister.com/2008/11/14/bbc_stories_cant_wait/

So, if you don't qualify or you refuse on principle, your existing employer has you over a barrel. You have to take every scumbag abuse and exploitation they throw at you, or face being thrown onto the muckpile of the unemployed and unemployable. Enjoy the choice!

"You'll never need ID to go into a hospital or anything like that," he said. "For people who simply don't want it, well, they don't need it - apart from the right to work."

You also don't have to breathe if you don't want to.

Are they that maliciously stupid?