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    Digital ID on the cards to tackle small boats, Pat McFadden says
    United Kingdom

    Digital ID on the cards to tackle small boats, Pat McFadden says

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    24 Comments

    1. seany1212 on

      I fail to see how identification is going to stop someone landing on a beach in the south east

    2. Dedsnotdead on

      Which has been the plan for a very long time.

      But really it’s an irrelevance, it doesn’t meaningfully reduce the number of people applying. It simply identifies who they and we are from birth to grave.

    4. trmetroidmaniac on

      I hardly think we were checking their passports when they arrived to begin with.

    5. The-Peel on

      Digital ID cards, the brain child of Tony Blair that he has spent decades pushing for…

      Eventually, the British public are going to have all of their rights taken away that we will be living in Orwell’s 1984, and even thinking negatively about the governing party will be grounds for *re-education*.

    6. klepto_entropoid on

      People on all sides of the political spectrum really need to wake up and come together to challenge this encroaching tyrannical bollocks.

    7. AlwaysCreamCrackered on

      Gangs that should have been smashed : ” Roll up, roll up. Special deal for today only. Channel boat crossing and fake digital ID card combo…now only €17500. Choosing your preferred name, age and Country of origin only €300 each extra. Be quick because we only have 300 combos available per day”

    8. JayR_97 on

      Labour really do seem to be trying to speedrun becoming as unpopular as possible dont they?

    9. Vaxtez on

      Am i the only one who doesn’t outright disagree with ID cards?
      Not for the reason mentioned, but it does create a standardised way of IDing a person without them & allow those who can’t get a driving licence to be able to carry a recognised & easy to carry ID (I know citizencard exists, but having an official gov ID would add alot of weight). Many european countries have ID cards & it’s fine for them.

    11. Machinegun_Funk on

      Can someone ELI5 the reason why lots of people seem to be against this I’ve never quite understood the opposition to Digital ID.

    12. Wombletrap on

      National ID cards – physical or digital – are a completely normal mundane feature of life in almost all advanced countries. Every EU/EEA member (except Denmark) has some form of national ID. So does most of the Americas and most of Asia. There are very few countries which don’t – mainly in sub-saharan Africa, Central Asia, plus the UK. In most places it is not mandatory to carry, but it is a universally-owned way to prove your identity when needed. It also makes it easier to prove you have the right to work, to access healthcare & welfare services etc. People keep the card in their wallet, or leave it at home, and go on with their lives.

      But whenever this is mentioned in this sub, there is an immediate tidal wave of paranoid ranting. You’d think the proposal was to shit on the magna carta and make the entire population wear a GPS ankle tag. It’s a ridiculous overreaction to a perfectly normal thing. It’s an ID for god’s sake. It’s not the second coming of the antichrist (right now he’s busy in the US anyway 🙂 ).

      Is this the same thing that happens with 15 minute cities? When the proposal that is made it goes something like this:

      “You shouldn’t **have to** travel more than 15 minutes from home for your daily needs”.

      But there a lot of people actually hear something completely different, more like:

      “You shouldn’t **be allowed to** travel more than 15 minutes from your home, without a good reason”.

      Is something similar happening with digital ID? The reaction is so out of proportion to the proposal that it seems people are responding to something else altogether.

    13. deyterkourjerbs on

      We do already have biometric forms of ID like passports and driving licenses.

      They’re introducing digital driving licenses this year and there are plans to introduce a digital standard for passports. We also have a biometric Digital Visa system for legal immigrants.

      We also have non-biometric ones like NHS IDs, and National Insurance numbers.

      So why not just have one universal system for everything government related?

      They did a reasonably good job on the eVisa system last year. I would imagine that any digital ID system would be an extension of that.

    14. Weird-Statistician on

      So, all the people who arrive and don’t have a digital ID are going straight back? No? It’s just another way to track what law abiding people are up to?

    15. Historical_Cobbler on

      Or just check their passports on arrival to the beach?

      It’s nonsense this has any impact, can’t even get companies to follow standard ID processing for new starters.

    16. Askefyr on

      There’s one other country in Europe that doesn’t have an ID scheme, Denmark, and their system would make pretty much any British person blush.

      Every person is, at birth or when moving permanently to the country, assigned a CPR number. This number is essentially your NIno, NHS number, electoral roll number and signature rolled into one, but on steroids.

      As part of CPR, you must notify the government of any change of address. Failing to notify your local council within 14 days of moving your usual residence is punishable by a pretty steep fine.

      You cannot do *anything* in Denmark without a CPR number. You can’t access any kind of health care, including prescriptions, you can’t have a bank account, you can’t rent, take any kind of education, have a job, pay taxes, get a driver’s license, own a car, take out insurance, or essentially anything that you’d need to have habitual residence. If you’re not registered correctly in CPR, a doctor can’t register any treatment on you without charging you, nor can you sign up with a GP. Any kind of digital signature also requires MitID, which, you guessed it, is tied up to CPR.

      This makes being illegal in Denmark very very difficult. There are some illegal immigrants, but the number is vanishingly low.

      Anyone who seriously wants to reduce illegal immigration and visa overstaying should be itching to introduce this kind of system. This is one of the few situations where if you don’t want an overarching ID scheme, people being able to fly under the radar is *literally* the price you pay.

    17. setokaiba22 on

      Honestly I’m so sick of reading and hearing about the boat situation that I just don’t care anymore. There are other things going on in the world and this country that require attention and media focus.

    18. tallbutshy on

      This will obviously not help in the context of small boat crossings but using Estonia as an example for digital IDs is a good choice.

      Estonia scores higher on many Freedom Indices than the UK does, going against the kneejerk reactions that a universal ID system will supposedly guarantee authoritarianism.

    19. mariah_a on

      My former MP who still is due his comeuppance for his role in the post submaster scandal, whose only ever response to my emails to him were “sorry for the several week delay, I was on holiday. I’m still voting in line with the conservatives.”

    20. BronnOP on

      Digital ID to stop the boats? What about normal ID? They don’t have that either!

      If only there were a universally accepted document… Like a passport!

    21. Loreki on

      Everyone must give up their civil liberties as only a tiny part of the solution to dangerous boat migration, says guy who just wants to do ID cards and reckons he’s found an issue emotive enough to allow him to push it through.

    22. Alarmed_Inflation196 on

      What is he doing in Estonia? Who paid him to go there? Why?

      Has he really gone on a government trip funded by the taxpayer to chat about digital IDs?

    23. VamosFicar on

      The digital ID will make no difference to illegal immigrants. It is purely a means of centralising and expanding upon existing databases: Passport, Driving Licence, Birth Certifictate, Health Records, Financial Information, Benefit Information, Personal Habits, Residence Location, Movement/Travel, Shopping Habits. The list is long and exhaustive.

      Now, once you have that data you can tie it all up nicely with: Digital (realtime variable) Currency, Carbon Credits (Personal Carbon Footprint – see the recent carbon trust white paper for that), Facial Recognition and ultimately Social Credits and availibility to services.

      Additionally, that information is VERY valuable for Insurance companies, marketing and advertising, retailers and service providers. banks, police (not all bad) and …. goverment NGO’s.

      Who do we trust with this information? Yea… the same people who held 24,000 Afganistani Records (for those that helped the UK) and over 100 SAS, MI6 and Military operatives in the region… leaked.

    24. Zephinism on

      National ID cards in France don’t seem to stop the of thousands of random people who walk around their country and cross the channel.

      Surely the police could check all the migrants on their end and arrest anyone without an ID.

      Who’s to say that our police force won’t be just as complacent about arresting people without ID here?