The government must fix the flaw in its digital identity plan

[IwantToRetire]

Sir Keir Starmer has announced plans for a compulsory UK-wide digital ID scheme for the right to work.

Whatever your position on mandatory or voluntary digital identification, one thing is certain: it only has one job to do. If any digital identity system is going to work, it must enable people to prove who they are, and prevent them from falsely proving that they are someone else.
Sex Matters has been sounding the alarm about a flaw in the system since 2022: identifying individuals reliably is not compatible with allowing people to disappear from their old life in one sex and reappear with a new life and a new identity in the opposite sex.

During the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Bill, together with Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, Sex Matters called on the government to solve the problem and explained how. It’s really not difficult: you just need to keep sex data accurate and stop letting people change their records.

Continues at https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/the-government-must-fix-the-flaw-in-its-digital-identity-plan/

We shouldn’t have mandatory digital id, but it needs to be based on legal sex if we do have one

We shouldn’t have mandatory digital id, but it needs to be based on legal sex if we do have one

I have very mixed feelings about it including how do they expect the very poor to have a digital id - not everyone can afford a phone or phone package. I also think it's being introduced for the wrong reasons and it won't stop people being trafficked and they're presenting it as a deterrent.
Any id, passport, driving licence should have someone's sex on it. If they're trans I think it should be TM for females living as men and TW for men living as women.

All creating a different identifier for trans people will do is lead to discrimination. We don’t have self-id and there is a medical and legal process in place to change legal sex, so I don’t see why that wouldn’t work here

There's another flaw: How are they going to deal with the fact that there are approx 1 million people living within the borders of the UK in Northern Ireland, who are Irish citizens and who have the right to be Irish not British. This right is guaranteed by the Good Friday Agreement:

The Belfast Agreement, more often called the Good Friday Agreement, contains within it a commitment by the British and Irish governments to allow the people of Northern Ireland to identify and be accepted as Irish, British, or both, and a right to hold both British and Irish citizenship. This part of the Agreement is often known as the ‘birthright protection’.
The Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty, so both the UK and Irish governments are required under international law to uphold the commitments they made in the Agreement.
Northern Ireland, Citizenship and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement - House of Commons Library

Looking forward to seeing how they UK government squares that circle, without breaching international law!

Digital ID is ideal for trans people. Their legal sex and true sex can both be recorded, and only applications with a genuine need to know one or the other will be permissioned to read it.

I'm not sure under what circumstances ones gender needs to be known rather than ones sex, but if such situations exist, Digital ID is a perfect solution. No falsification required AND no unnecessary outing needed.

So you would bake in inaccuracy, not to say dishonesty, from the start, would you?

Is that any different to French, American, or Zambian citizens who are resident in the UK? (But Irish citizens have the right to vote in the UK, don't they?). Or are you saying that because Ireland has self-id, Marie?

I'd rather have it based on biological sex rather than legal sex

How is legal sex dishonest?

What situations require outing in your opinion?

Any situations where biological sex is signifiacnt, obviously.

What situations in your opinion justify sex segregation but based on legal sex not biological? I can't think of any situations where it is legal rather than true sex that matters where you wouldn't also question the need for segregation in the first place.

if it’s anything other than biological sex (I.e. based on GRC - opposite to real sex) then it’s dishonest.

Someone turning up at A&E saying they’re a man if they’re not - there have been some tragedies/bad medical treatment of ‘transmen’ who didn’t have the sense to tell the medical practitioners they were female.

These IDs will only be mandatory for right to work checks. Do you think biological or legal sex or neither would be required for that check?

Another thread on its way to being derailed. Not sure if it is a name change, or there is a dedicated group working in tandom arriving on threads and making the same comments over and over again.

Sigh.

On the other extreme you also have ‘trans broken arm syndrome’ where healthcare providers blame being transgender for what is wrong with you, so maybe people have a good reason for not outing themselves when it isn’t relevant?

I’m sorry your thread isn’t an echo chamber

In this context, because we know it doesn't always correlate with birth sex, which in some important areas matters infinitely more than "legal sex".

I don't know about broken arm syndrome, but taking opposite sex hormones is hazardous to your health. Who'd have thought it, eh? 🙄

Biological sex would be important for any jobs where biological sex is a requirement, such as when someone requests a female carer, or for jobs such as working in rape crisis centres or refuges. Legal sex should just be called “pretend” sex as it’s irrelevant.

So you think it’s okay for a doctor to just blame a health condition on being transgender without actually investigating?

Your comment makes no sense.

No, it's because of the 1997 Good Friday Agreement which brought to an end nearly 30 years of the Troubles which caused so much death and suffering in Northern Ireland, indeed on both sides of the border. The provisions of that agreement are politically sacrosanct as we saw in all the negotiations dealing with Brexit legalities.

Any post for which the sex of the post-holder is significant must be based on biological sex, as the Supreme Court judgment in April made clear. That's just for starters. I'm sure others can add to that.