As of Wednesday, over 2.8 million individuals in the U.K. have signed a petition urging the government to revoke its mandatory Digital ID initiative, citing fears it will lead to “mass surveillance and digital control.”
The “Brit Card” ID program, unveiled last week by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is scheduled for implementation by August 2029. The Labour government’s objective is to combat illegal immigration by prohibiting anyone without a digital ID from employment within the U.K.
However, critics contend that the program’s impact on illegal immigration will not be significant enough to justify the privacy risks it introduces.
The White House confirmed to Fox News Digital that President Biden is not currently considering such a contentious measure to control immigration, despite his stated commitment to tackling illegal immigration and strengthening security across U.S. cities.
Conversely, one security expert suggests that digital ID technology is considerably less worrying than many opponents perceive.
“When the government issues a digital ID, they’re issuing it to the individual. That means, just like your paper ID sits in your physical wallet, your digital ID sits in your digital wallet, it’s not stored at a central location,” Eric Starr, founder and CEO of Ultrapass Identity Corp, explained to Fox News Digital.
“When you pass your digital ID to a relying party, they don’t ping a central database,” he continued. “They look at the digital ID you’ve presented, and through cryptography, can determine the authenticity of the digital document.”
Starr, whose firm assists governments worldwide with decentralized digital ID solutions, believes the controversy surrounding digital ID stems from inadequate conceptualization and a lack of understanding.
The technology specialist expressed his view that the U.K. mishandled its digital ID rollout by making it compulsory and providing scant details about the system itself.
Starr maintained that governments have a right to know their citizens’ identities, and nations, including the U.S., already employ systems to track their populations, such as the Social Security Number system, which the U.S. has used since 1936.
When questioned about concerns regarding a government’s potential for mass surveillance through the ease a digital ID could offer, even if unintended, Starr emphasized the necessity of embedding personal privacy protections from the outset.
“We care deeply about personal freedom in ways that other countries don’t think about it, and generally speaking, individuals don’t want the federal government in their business every day,” Starr clarified, referring to the American public. “The fear that people have about digital identity is that it’s a surveillance opportunity.”
Starr explained that some worry every use of a digital ID might notify, or “phone home,” a government tracking system – a concern echoed by privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It’s not about the technology, but managing fear and managing what actually gets deployed,” he added, noting that safeguards can be implemented to address these concerns.
Although there isn’t a federal digital ID in the U.S., more than a dozen states have already started issuing mobile driver’s licenses.
A federal digital ID, in theory, would only contain an individual’s information that the government already possesses, such as passport details.
However, another significant concern people raise about digital IDs is how to protect personal information from identity theft, which has become a considerable issue in recent years amid numerous cyberattacks.
According to Starr, the “architecture of digital identity” differs from centralized databases used by entities like hospitals, which have proven vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches.
Decentralized systems, as with a digital ID, render hacking “nearly impossible” because “the only way to hack a million IDs is to hack a million phones,” he elaborated.
“There are solutions. It’s not a technology issue, it’s an education issue, it’s a fear issue,” Starr concluded. “It’s also poorly conceived solutions that open the door for bad behavior.”