[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.)