Digital IDs and biometric data: Welcome to Labour’s tech dystopia

The approval of digital IDs heralds is heralding in a tech dystopia, and Labour is welcoming it, writes director of Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo in today’s Notebook

Labour approves digital IDs

The “two-click killer” – a phrase that encapsulates the offensively flippant way in which our Prime Minister depicted the indescribably evil Southport murderer as little more than a technology problem.

His inevitable solution – tighter internet controls – are just as reductive : a one-click policy, seemingly always at the tip of the fingers of ministers who lack the political or intellectual will to genuinely enquire into the deep and complex problems in British society.

Age checks for restricted items are important and already conducted by online retailers and couriers. But any mistake on an Amazon delivery of a knife – an object available in every kitchen in the country – to a young man who was days away from turning 18 anyway, can merit barely a footnote in explaining his extraordinarily barbaric behaviour.

To trot out soundbite policies that provide absolutely no remedy to address the extreme ultra-violence that a minority of sadistic, disturbed men seem hell-bent on inflicting against mostly women and girls is an insult to the general public.

In fact, it has been one of the most dystopian weeks for the Labour government on technology – which vowed to introduce digital IDs (starting with driving licenses) in new all-encompassing “digital wallets” on our phones. Our new government app will hold masses of information on each of us from tax to health data, drawn from multiple departments. It has the hallmarks of the dreaded database state envisaged with Blair’s failed ID system – only digital and with the addition of our biometric facial recognition data, making it the perfect Orwellian nightmare.

This new digital ID system would be less worrying if it were genuinely optional. But, in the Data Bill debated in parliament yesterday, the government is inexplicably refusing to legally protect our right to use non-digital ID.

The government is creeping towards a mandatory digital ID system, in all but name.

Do you want police prosecutions left to AI?

Yesterday’s Data Bill will also open the floodgates to more AI decisions being made about serious aspects of our lives by the government and private companies – from who gets organ transplants and who police decide to prosecute or let go, to who to hire and fire and who to give a loan to. The Bill significantly reduces current safeguards – including our right to even know these automated decisions are taking place. From a government aiming to transform British society with AI, diluting the few rights we have is an alarming start.

The Bank Spying Bill

That’s not all – the government just introduced powers to automate spying on our bank accounts too.

The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error & Recovery) Bill (aka Bank Spying Bill ) will force our banks to spy on us, all the time, on the premise of looking for potential indicators of welfare fraud or errors – including the government’s own errors. Unrecovered overpayments could result in your (newly digital) driving licenses being suspended.

The government already has extensive powers to go after genuine fraudsters. This will simply turn Britain’s once-compassionate welfare system into a digital surveillance system.

Quote of the week

“In a world without digital privacy, even if you have done nothing wrong other than think different, you begin to censor yourself. Not entirely at first. Just a little, bit by bit. To risk less, to hope less, to imagine less, to dare less, to create less, to try less, to talk less, to think less. The chilling effect of digital surveillance is profound, and it touches everything.”

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

Grab your Orwellian coins!

Fittingly, the Royal Mint has just released a special £2 coin in homage to 1984 author George Orwell. The coin features a suitably sinister all-seeing eye embossed with the words ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’. The commemorative coin won’t be in general circulation – in fact, the Royal Mint is charging £17.50 for it.

Never mind, coins could soon be a thing of the past anyway. Because the government has just published new design plans for a CBDC, a ‘central bank digital currency’ or digital pound. Issued by the Bank of England and HM Treasury, the government would hold a central record of how each person spends or saves their digital pounds, which could even be programmable – coded with rules about how we can and can’t spend them. So grab your Orwell £2 coins whilst you can!