https://institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/to...

I have (that I remember, probably more):

National Insurance Number

NHS Number

Unique Taxpayer Reference number

A student loan Customer Reference Number account number

A passport number

A government gateway ID number

A driving license number

An account with the land registry

I myself have experienced being between housing, and wasn't able to access my digital ID without an address, which I could only get if I could access my e-banking and pay deposit for my new place, but I needed digital ID to access the bank. It got resolved. But its a completely avoidable chaos that mainly is an issue for those with the least resources.

I also understand the privacy argument that arises from consolidating all these systems, and I'm generally pro-privacy, including in some extreme cases. However, this service makes life so much easier across many dimensions of daily life, and I think it's worth it. I can only hope that the GOV.UK login achieves a fraction of this.

When people talk about a national ID system, they're often talking about some form of "authorization", i.e. proving that you are entitled to certain things.

There currently isn't a system in the UK that can definitively prove that you have access to every service. For example, even being a British citizen and having a British passport doesn't automatically entitle you to access the NHS.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/identity-proofing...

(Don't expect this to solve multi-computer-system NHS though, ha! That's been tried and failed how many times, for how many billions? At least we have the app now, such as it is, I suppose.)

Each service would issue you a different one.

It's not so bad now, but it's extremely irritating to have a number as the user id as when you run a business or two, you end up with more, and then you have no idea which is which.

There are alternative implementations but I'm not aware of anyone that uses them.

It's more like we've slipped into this solution out of pure convenience than having made a deliberate choice.

These are always digital in the UK too. When I did my mortgage application I had to go to my bank, ask them to print me out a statement and then stamp it to 'verify' that it was real.

IE during WW2 Holland kept such meticulous records on its citizens that it indirectly leads to the greatest numbers of imprisoned ethnic groups ( because the information was there , easily accessible by the invading forces.

I think thats a good example of how too much info results in vulnerability for citizens.

I dont have an opinion on this just sharing what I think is a good example.

The implementation of an E-ID could just not good. In Switzerland people voted against E-ID already once and I believe now everyone agrees nowadays that it would have been an bad bad implementation back then (too much reliance on external companies). The same was true e.g. for Covid Certificates. The different implementations around Europe had different qualities and e.g. Switzerland ended up with one of the better (or maybe best) ones, where the identity of people were protected.

Let's just take the example of voting. It is already hard to explain to people that voting works as intended. Look e.g. at the US were I've the impression people do not trust regular voting anymore, despite having people from other countries checking if voting works correctly in the US. But overall it is a system almost everyone is able to understand. But the moment you bring cryptography into the game it's over. 99% will never ever understand why they should trust this. And honestly I feel with them. There are a lot of software people here and we all know how awful our whole industry cares about security overall and how critical software components depend sometimes on a few people. At least the whole implementation should be open source, everything else should not be tolerable.

What I have the impression most people fear, is not the E-ID itself, it is how it will be misused. Suddenly websites will now request verification for dubious reasons. While it is not the case with a regular ID, it will be trivial to do so in the future. The same with mass surveillance, it was not practical before internet, now it is, so governments do it. I think here comes one of the main arguments against it people would bring up, there is no simple instrument for people how they can fight back in case they dont like to identify with their E-ID.

To some degree there is mistrust in government (in Switzerland less then in Europe I believe) for very valid reasons. But still e.g. in Switzerland they had records of many people years ago. After the whole topic came to the surface it was a debacle and new laws were created to explicitly forbid this. E.g. in Switzerland it is not allowed by law to just store some information because are from the left-wing or right-wing (just regular left-wing/right-wing, not extremist), just as one example of something simple. Despite of this government still started to do again. Several newspaper requested this information, which now has to given out, and found it, despite being against the law, the government is doing it again. This kind of thing you can find for other European countries as well, and for the US I assume I don't even have to start.

Then what about people without Internet? At the 38C3 in germany last year was a presentation about this topic (Don't remember the full name, just that is is somehwere on https://media.ccc.de/c/38c3): that we always think it is just the old people, but this is not true.

Sure you could argue, that people give away they privacy willingly anyway, but I'm not sure if this a good reason to argue against all the suspicious some people have.

Here an article from a Online newspaper in Switzerland, tough its German: https://www.republik.ch/2025/08/29/ein-klares-jein-zur-e-id

At least in Switzerland I believe, if they just slightly would change the law it would benefit everyone. E.g. that in case an internet page expects an E-ID, that first it needs to through (a probably costly) evaluation what data is really, really needed, with many privacy experts at the table, to always reduce it to the absolut minimum (the E-ID has this feature to be even better than an ID regarding this). Additionally that there must be e.g. always a possibility to somehow call and have a possibility to do it without E-ID.