In the UK today, digital identity is being quietly prepared for mass deployment, not just as a tool of convenience, but as an infrastructure of control.Two major proposals have recently emerged. The “BritCard”, promoted by Labour-affiliated think tank Labour Together, is mooted as a smartphone-based
Her words hung over the group with a sense of resigned finality. A pause. Then, a slow nod. “Come on,” the woman said. “I’ll walk you to the edge of the grid.”
Her stomach groaned low and mean. Her lips were cracked. She hadn’t eaten in… what, 18 hours? More? Her throat was a desert. Every step felt heavier than the last. But it wasn’t just physical – it was the slow compression of knowing. She wasn’t going to make it.
No phone. No implant. No home. Her apartment was a biometric vault. No keypad, no manual override. Even the building’s emergency access required verified ID. Her digital key had been tied to her phone, and now that was somewhere on the streets or hacked and resold by now. She couldn’t even buzz herself in. It was like her life had folded in on itself, encrypted. Leaving her locked out of her own reality.
Three days to become someone the world recognised again. Three days to choose. Her principles. Or her child. And the terrifying part was, she wanted both.
Her daughter was on the other side of that glass. They wouldn’t let her in. And she, no matter how fast she ran, no matter how hard she cried, was just a ghost without an ID. A nobody. A danger. A potential anyone. A malfunction. A broken node in the network of digital trust.
Would it surprise you to know that choosing between left and right is not a real choice when you vote? Many people instinctively, or through experience, come to this realisation. Perhaps if we understood why our vote seems to do so little we might choose differently and could change politics wholesale. Your vote could make a difference, but only if you get beyond rhetoric and look instead at what is actually happening.
If ID cards become mandatory we will lose much of our remaining liberty. Only law-abiding citizens lose out.
Which set of rogues to trust with our safety? The unknown demonised suspect terrorists, or the known corrupt self serving government? Shall I toss a coin?
Lovers of freedom might forget the levers of power are the problem, not the solution. Rather than raising their voice against the levers, they grab for them, to use them to prevent other people using them.