So, I want to contribute to the public consultation about the necessity of digital identities as presented by the UK government.
Can we all squeeze our ridge brains and come up with arguments against the necessity of digital identities please?
It is given that the government(s) as a given has covered the areas of privacy/data protection, fraud, inclusivity of services and security therefore more (or stronger on the previous ones) arguments are required.
Please let's all come together to make a solid argument against the need of digital identities.
Here's the porposal if interested to read the arguments for https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework/the-uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework
We have until 12pm on Thursday 11 March 2021
I think we've seen borne out that "digital" may as well be equated with "eternally fluid", and therefore detrimental to the individual human being who will be subject to the whims of whatever governmental/corporate entities would like to fling at them (the relative ease and universality of update once a change is approved deserves mention here) in order to keep the identity "in place/turned on/in good standing".
In controlling the masses via algorithm, which is what I assume the concept of "digital identity" equates to, we throw out human context and move full-on into whatever biases are programmed into the sea of algorithms that will be doing the judging, categorizing, and attribution of permissions allotted to individual people. Those biases, while baked in, will remain largely invisible to the authorities acting on said permissions and with heavy reliance on the standing of said digital identity, you run the risk of shutting a number of people out of services and/or society as it is currently known.
Centralization of power has never worked out well for individual citizens, and a digital identity would see a power shift like no other. This centralization amplifies the negative impact of a corrupt state or racketeering practices enacted by companies to retain their profits. The enacting of a digital identity, under the most charitable light, assumes that governments, authorities, business, and power act benevolently toward individual people most of or all of the time. In practice, I think we have seen this is decidedly not the case.
It also bears mentioning that the emergence of the "public-private partnerships" proposed as the means of combatting fraud and cyber-crime have put a legitimate face on some of the most blatant corruption we have seen in our time. The proposal mentions regulation and controls upon such -- what will we have given up when the breakdown of said 'regulation and controls' inevitably takes place?