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by stroebs 255 days ago
Having grown up in South Africa, having a physical document to prove who you are, along with an identity number is just so normalised. When I moved to the UK later in life, I found it absolutely bizarre that there’s no mechanism to uniquely identify yourself to the government, or any other entity that deals with your personal/financial/health identity. It’s just a combination of name and address, which anyone can access with ease.

Digital identity is on the slightly more controlling side of this, but the article focuses entirely on the cynical perspective without considering the positives.
3 comments
dekken_ 255 days ago
> identify yourself to the government

"The government" is not an abstraction, it's bunch of people, fallible people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart, so really, why should they have much to do with the every day existence of the public?

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octo888 255 days ago
Other than finding it bizarre has it actually negatively affected your life? I'm not talking 10 minutes of extra admin once a year hah

What are those positives you allude to?

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Forhan 255 days ago
I'm in South Africa and working for an Australian company. I still find it weird that they don't have ID numbers, instead we make use of a name + surname + DoB combination. I didn't even know it was like that in the UK as well or anywhere else to be honest, I always just assumed everyone makes use of government issued ID's.
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