ID cards to be introduced. What do you feel. ?

[Fishingboatbobbingnight]

I have worked in serious organised crime for two decades. This is one of the best bits of news I have read in a long while. I have also been involved in ‘small boat’ arrivals. The reason people will by pass several safe EU countries to get to the UK is ‘I can get lost if I don’t get asylum’ ‘UK has no ID cards’ . It’s a no brainer .. why why has it taken so long. ? If you want to have the services your country has to offer - through most of the world - from healthcare to the library- you need to show you are a bona-fida citizen. However , for some unfathomable reason , the flag waving right wingers are always the one to oppose ..is it because they are scared it will work and leave their thinly veiled racism floundering ?

Yes to ID cards = YANBU
No to ID cards = YABU

Madness. Have you read 1984 lately?

Funnily enough, I was going to post such a response... what if I want to have sex in the kitchen? 😆

However I do think @NuovaPilbeam is likely to be very much alone in not minding government cameras in their private property.

Seriously? What about NI people who DON'T have/need the Irish Services card but have an Irish passport, not a British one, and quite frankly do not want a 'Brit' card. There's a very good chance that this will break the terms of the Good Friday Agreement anyway.

Mind you, the Welsh and English merrily voted for Brexit in their droves without giving a single thought to implications for N.Ire and the border and what it might mean for the sustaining of peace, so I don't suppose this government give much of a shit either.

Well, they haven't happened yet! Give it time. Wish I was wrong.

But why would the cameras in homes have anything to do with digital ID checks?

The government is not interested in watching us all in our homes 😂

Well I think you are wrong until proven otherwise.

It’s at 728k now

Too late then.

Good Friday Agreement issues excepted, it would be relatively simple to create an NI card that is valid in the rest of the UK.

Like I said earlier, the CTA rights of all Irish citizens would need to be protected in any case.

You can't just except GFA issues though, since they're rather a big part of the problem!

Laptops, phones, things like Siri and Alexa have the capability to monitor us already. Not many people seem bothered by that. Not much of a leap for a "concerned" state to implement something more efficient and centralised, in the name of reducing domestic or child abuse for example. And why would we possibly object to that?

I'll tell you why, because all it takes is for language to be considered harmful, for goal posts of "normal" interaction to be changed for whatever reason. You say Dystopian, plenty of things already feel Dystopian.

Consider the addition of "future risk of emotional harm" added to the categories of child abuse in the SS lexicon. Have you ever considered how elastic that concept is? And how open to potential authoritarian over reach?

AI models are already being used to "predict" crime, to identify risk posed by individuals and patterns in particular areas. Sounds great until there's an error or bias in the data being used to achieve that.

We don’t know what the specific issues are yet, if any. Assumptions are being made.

Entirely cashless society next, then they've really got us by the short and curlies.

Well no, we already know what some of them are. That the GFA isn't optional and we can't have a solution that's GFA aside is not an assumption. Requiring people in NI to have a UK state issued ID is going to be opposed by some of them. I presume we all know that to be a fact too? There isn't currently a direct Irish equivalent, which is also a fact. The Irish Public Services Card, which has been mentioned as a possibility, is for use in accessing services in somewhere other than the UK, with it own legal system and requirements.

I can't really see what insurmountable issues there would be.

In France every resident is required to have some form of official ID. If you are a French citizen you are required to have a French national ID card. If you are a non EU citizen you are required to have a French resident's card. If you are an EU citizen you must have a national ID card or passport issued by your own country.

Mutual recognition of Irish ID would solve the problem, surely?

And why a digital ID would be necessary if a government wanted to do all these things?

I'd be hugely in favour of this.

It's extremely commonplace in other countries and works fine. I also think it will help streamline and simplify accessing government support and services, and I'm always pleased with less complicated processes.

Whilst I expect most will have the ID in digital form, I would be hugely surprised if there isn't also a non-digital version/representation of the ID which will help those that cannot access digital means. Likewise, I highly expect the ID card will not need to be on you/present at all times but will be requested when you, for example, get a new job, go to hospital etc.

I have nothing to hide as well. I am a law abiding citizen. However I do not want to be tracked or on a government database - this is a slippery slope to government control.

I didn’t think it was possible to hate Kier Starmer and Labour more than I already did. They have proved me wrong again!

Depends what you mean by solve the problem.

This subdiscussion started because a poster pointed out there's a good chance NI will have to be exempt. The status quo is indeed mutual recognition of Irish passports, and yes that works well enough as things stand. It would continue to work if NI were exempt, but obviously that then means the need for some recognition of people from NI in the rest of the UK that isn't the digital ID card. A two tier system, basically. There isn't a direct Irish equivalent of what's being proposed in the UK, so even the IPSC is something different because it's about what services a person is able to access in ROI.

NI is a very politically and constitutionally specific place, so comparisons to other places that are as different as France don't particularly assist.

This is about state control and communism, no more, no less.

But why would NI need to be exempt?

Our 1st minister said it's ludicrous and goes against the Good Friday Agreement.
So there's that.

'excepted' yes, we're all well aware of the mainland attitude to the GFA and NI in general, like 'excepted' is some little thing. I never really got the lack of interest, given that it was British soldiers who were on the streets of NI and could be again.
Anyway, would it be relatively simple? Would it be created and indeed have they even FUCKING thought about that? I doubt it, certainly hasn't been mentioned...
I wonder how may exceptions they will be before the whole thing falls apart.

Why does it go against the GFA? Specifically.