The Government wants to digitise all UK Government-issued ID cards in a new GOV.UK Wallet app. Privacy campaigners are ringing the alarm about the impact of these proposals on our rights and freedoms. Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said:
“This is a proposal for an all-encompassing digital ID system that will hold a huge amount of information on each of us from tax to health data, drawn from multiple government departments. It has the hallmarks of the nightmare database state envisaged with Blair’s failed ID card system, only in mobile, digital form. The addition of our facial recognition data makes this sprawling identity system incredibly sensitive, intrusive and a honeypot for hackers.
The Government should modernise and give people digital options with identity documents, but this approach risks actually narrowing our choices and control over our own data. That’s because, despite our campaign, the Government is inexplicably refusing to legally protect the right to use non-digital ID, and hasn’t set out whether we can control how much of our sensitive information will be available via this wallet.
Without such basic protections, this smacks of a mandatory ID system in all but name, disadvantaging the millions of people in this country who rely on physical documents and letters, and cannot or choose not to use digital identity systems.”