Brit Card to Brit Cage.

Is the UK’s digital ID a passport to totalitarianism?

A still from the BBC’s 1965 “1984”.

‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever,’ said O’Brien, the grand inquisitor of the totalitarian regime in Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984.

With the UK government’s announcement of a mandatory digital ID, another Orwell quote risks becoming non-fiction.

There is no democratic mandate for this. It was not in the Labour Party manifesto, and yet here we are.

Tony Blair has been pushing for digital ID for decades. He and his Institute wield an unholy amount of power, and don’t mistake the hard authoritarian bent of their plans. During Covid-19, he said: “Vaccination is your route to liberty. It will be very hard for people to lead a normal life unless they can prove their vaccination status.” That would have been enforced nicely with digital ID wouldn’t it?

Lisa Nandy said on BBC Breakfast this morning that you won’t be fined if you don’t have digital ID, although “you will have a problem if you want to get a new job”. This is all very reminiscent of being told Covid Vaccine Passports wouldn’t be mandatory, except if you wanted to enter a cinema, a supermarket, travel internationally, go to school or to work etcetera etcetera. In other words, if you want to participate in normal economic and civic life you will need a digital ID. Otherwise, you can voluntarily take yourself off to die on a hill.

Digital ID is being introduced now to tackle illegal workers and immigration. But you already need a National Insurance number to work legally in the UK. Black market employers pay in cash — what exactly is going to make them start asking for digital ID? The government’s claims about cracking down on illegal work with digital ID are purely for show. They really think racist flag-shagging gammons are stupid enough to believe digital ID will stop illegal immigration.

And which European countries with digital ID schemes have achieved this? Italy has digital ID and nearly 1 million illegal arrivals by boat since 2015.

There are other levers at our disposal: remove and reduce welfare for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, and police the Channel. Both are cheaper for the taxpayer and don’t punish citizens. But no, immigration is just the latest excuse authoritarians reach for. They want to issue programmable digital IDs on your phone via a compulsory app. Switch the right to work on or off. The idea that digital ID will stop illegal working is for the birds. Even worse, it could make state control total.

You might think I am exaggerating. Is digital ID so bad? Won’t it be convenient? Maybe. If you’ve got nothing to hide, what’s the problem? Let me explain.

We don’t have to imagine O’Brien’s boot. We can look to China.

The Chinese Social Credit System is a wide-ranging regulatory framework designed to score and incentivise the trustworthiness of individuals and companies. The government rewards or punishes behaviour using real-time monitoring, data gathering and sharing, curates blacklists (punishments) and redlists (rewards). A report in 2019 found 23 million people had been blacklisted from travelling by plane or train due to low social credit scores. In a shocking 2018 example, a student was denied access to university because her father was in debt.

There isn’t a centralised and transparent set of rules; instead, it has been operated locally, but behaviour such as poor driving, spending too long playing video games, or posting fake news can result in low ratings, as well as more serious matters such as not fulfilling court orders.

You won’t find many Chinese critics of the Social Credit System, which is unsurprising given they can be instantly punished.

You’d think this system would unite western commentators in horrified criticism, but it is quite neutrally, even warmly, described by some left-leaning writers and think tanks.

Oh, but we’re not as bad as China, you say. Well, maybe not yet, but we’re getting there.

Consider the UK’s recent history: lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates that cost over 40,000 care workers their jobs. And the police turning up on doorsteps to question or arrest people about tweets. Just this morning I read an account by Pete North, who was arrested for tweeting a meme which read “Fuck Hamas, Fuck Palestine, Fuck Islam.” I could weep for the state of this country.

Critics, such as civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, have already raised alarms about potential mission creep where digital IDs could eventually link to broader surveillance, including internet data. Imagine a system that can monitor everything you do, track your spending, and limit access based on behaviour. It would be much more efficient to blacklist you for hurty tweets, rather than send plod round. This is not an episode of “Black Mirror” but a realistic peek of the future.

Big Brother Watch also warn digital ID will become a honeypot for hackers. And if not hackers, what about the state’s own incompetence? The government says digital ID, I hear Afghan data breach.

While the new announcements frame digital ID as a tool to make it tougher to work illegally, without mentioning internet restrictions, do you trust them? And if you’ve been living under a rock for the past year and still trust them, do you trust the next government? Should a government have this much control?

In case I have not made the case clearly enough, let me explain what happens when programmable digital ID meets programmable money. If Brit Card and Brit Coin meet and cosy up, they will spawn baby Brit Cage, your totalitarian hell.

Several years ago, the Bank of England called on ministers to decide whether a central bank digital currency (CBDC) should be programmable, essentially giving the issuer complete control over how money is spent. Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the Bank, said:

‘You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.’

The analogy is perfect. Think of your money as being pocket money. Not earnt, yours, to do with as you will, but pocket money to be given, taken away, or otherwise controlled. Imagine your your fuel purchase being restricted if you have spent many carbon credits. Or your ability to travel overseas being turned off if you aren’t up to date with vaccinations. Or your savings expiring in two weeks to boost spending and the economy. The options are almost endless.

O’Brien’s vision was limited only by the technology Orwell perceived at the time. If the State mandates digital ID, your digital footprint will be used to control you. Every step could be monitored, scored, and acted upon. Combined with programmable money, this system could dictate not just what you can buy or where you can travel, but potentially what you can and can’t say, where you can work, and how you live. The UK government is poised to hand itself tools of unprecedented oversight and enforcement. We must resist becoming a checkpoint society in which freedom is rationed by the state.