[felixhammerl]

I find it strange that folks in the US and UK, given that these are championing modern dragnet surveillance, would recoil at the idea of government issued ID, thus forcing everyone to come up with error-prone workarounds enabling identity fraud. As a German, the idea of a bill proving anything at all is just wild.

[zahllos]

It makes no sense, but this:

> In many parts of the world (including the US & U.K.) the idea of central government holding an accessible database of everyone’s identifies, and mandating participation, is cultural and political suicide.

Is a very true statement. I am British but I live in Switzerland. If I want to do anything here, I send a copy of my residency permit. Bank statements wouldn't count.

The UK actually did experiment with ID cards under the Blair/Brown government. I never had one, they were only issued in a trial area. There was a campaign against it: https://www.no2id.net/ and the Cameron government (2010-brexit) scrapped the ID cards. The law was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006 .

One of the main objections was to the national identity register, which would contain biometrics and not need the card in order to query.

I'm on the fence about this. On the one hand, I'm not sure I trust the UK government to run any kind of IT scheme - they tend to pick huge consultancies, waste enormous sums of money and the result is late, 6x the price and doesn't actually work. Also the biometrics thing seems excessive. On the other hand, there are plenty of centralised databases already and if you ever want to drive a car, at least one of them prints out an ID-0 sized card with your photo on it. I would also, honestly, prefer an identity card over proving my identity with easily forged bank statements.

[kwhitefoot]

> n Switzerland. If I want to do anything here, I send a copy of my residency permit.

Even that would not fly in Norway. You have to close the loop with a trusted intermediary like BankID by providing a notarised copy of your ID then you can log in to other institutions using BankID's log in service.

[avianlyric]

> the idea of a bill proving anything at all is just wild.

It’s a little more complicated than that. KYC requirements aren’t that lax, but there are multiple ways of proving ID. Proof of address in the form of a bill is just one of many components that are used in tandem to prove identity. Rest assured you can’t open a bank account with just a utility bill.

[cameronh90]

As a Brit, I think the lack of ID* is fairly silly nowadays, however it's an orthogonal issue to the surveillance one.

Abuses of government power that the average person might experience here tend to come from lower levels like the civil service, police, tax office, immigration or councils. ID card databases could make that easier as they tend to be more accessible (of course, otherwise they'd not be useful). The other thing we don't want is for it to be easy for companies to demand ID for basic things knowing that everyone will have one, or future governments to be able to make carrying an ID card mandatory when in public, and for police - or anyone else - to demand to be able to see it. That situation is often derided as a Nazi Germany "papers please" police state. The idea of needing a permission slip from a state authority to breathe the pure English air is a line the majority of people would absolutely not want to cross at this point in time.

The secret services aren't something that most people think about. We don't typically worry about being mistakenly or maliciously classified as an enemy of the state. Unlike being maliciously classified as an enemy of a local councillor, which is fairly common. Also, you can be pretty sure your secret services are doing exactly the same things as ours, irrespective of what your law or constitution says.

(* Physical ID cards are a bit old fashioned though. We're planning on replacing physical driving licenses, non-citizen residence permits, etc. with digital versions. I suspect we'll end up with a national digital identity system by default without ever having a physical ID card. Some people are worried that will lead to another Windrush situation, however.)