Children as young as 13 could be forced to have digital ID cards under ‘sinister’ strategies to expand the role of the state in people’s lives.
A petition against digital ID signed by nearly three million people has been ignored by ministers who promised to press ahead with imposing them before the election.
In a formal response, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the government would introduce ID cards for everyone aged 16 and over by the time of the next election.
And, in a significant extension of the scheme, the department said ministers will now consult on bringing in so-called ‘Brit Cards’ for children as young as 13.
The response also indicates that the scheme will extend far beyond the original proposal to tackle illegal working, with ID cards potentially required to access an expansive range of public services.
It states that digital ID will eventually become people’s ‘boarding pass to government’.
Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said digital ID was ‘fast becoming a digital permit required to live our everyday lives’.
She added: ‘Starmer has sold his Orwellian digital ID scheme to the public on the lie that it will only be used to stop illegal working, but now the truth, buried in the small print, is becoming clear.
‘We now know that digital IDs could be the backbone of a surveillance state and used for everything from tax and pensions to banking and education.
‘The prospects of enrolling even children into this sprawling biometric system is sinister, unjustified and prompts the chilling question of just what he thinks the ID will be used for in the future.
‘No one voted for this, and millions of people who have signed the petition against it are simply being ignored.’
Conservative MP Greg Smith warned that the scale of the government’s plans had ‘sinister implications for the future’.
‘Digital ID opens up a Pandora’s Box for big state, intrusive government,’ he said. ‘This raises big questions about what they might be used for in the future. Why on earth are they suggesting children need them? Could they be told to produce them to go to school?
‘We risk ending up with a situation where the law-abiding majority face more state interference in their lives while the illegal migrants, who this is supposedly aimed at, carry on ignoring the rules as they do at the moment.’
Sir Keir Starmer defended the plan, saying the government could not ‘shirk’ from tackling illegal immigration.
Speaking at a press conference in Mumbai, the Prime Minister said: ‘On digital ID, let me be really clear – we have made a commitment to do whatever we can to stop people arriving illegally in the UK. One of the issues is the ability people have to work in our economy illegally. We have to do something about that – we can’t shirk that. We had a strong manifesto commitment to deal with it.
‘The vast majority of people in the UK wants it gripped and we need to therefore take the measures necessary to grip it.’
Sir Keir said digital ID would also trigger ‘great benefits’ for the public in speeding up access to public services.
A public petition stating ‘Do not introduce digital ID cards’ has now been signed by more than 2.8 million people and will be discussed by MPs in the forthcoming weeks.
The government’s response states that the system will be introduced before the next election, with people required to produce their digital ID when they take a new job to demonstrate they have the right to work in this country.
It implies that the document will probably be required in the future to access a variety of government services, such as filing taxes and receiving benefits.
‘People in the UK already know and trust digital credentials held in their phone wallets to use in their everyday lives, from paying for things to storing boarding passes,’ the response states. ‘The new system will be built on similar technology and be your boarding pass to government.’
The response, however, maintains that the police cannot require anyone to present a digital ID card and that not having one will not be a crime.
This is going to happen whether we like it or not. Once digital IDs are introduced, it might be implemented slowly, but then it will become more stringent, where if you don’t have an ID card to produce, you will be excluded from society.
Everything our government does is a scamdemic. It’s like a trial run to see what the sheep will put up with.
Even on our computers, when we go onto some web pages. You are asked by a robot to verify that you are human! And we just go along with it like bleating sheep.
What people don’t realise is that all this data already exists in the background and has done ever since digitisation occurred with the spread of computers. We should have probably put our foot down then, but people just didn’t realise until it was too late.
At the moment, data exists, but cannot be used to restrict your normal life or hinder basic human rights. With digital ID, we will have no rights based upon whatever fashionable algorithm there is that week, because what will be acceptable one week will not be the following week. Not only that, your data can and will be easily hacked.
This is all extremely creepy, and it’s so obvious what they’re attempting to achieve. What has become of this once great country? It is so sad, especially as some still seem to be so oblivious to it, particularly the younger generation with no life experience, who are getting their information from TikTok, et cetera.
Digital IDs are just a dystopian way of controlling your life, and it will be the cage that you live in!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 