AFAIK the digital ID will also be required when getting a new job.

You're still conflating a few things. The UK government wants to require digital ID for employment, with housing etc to follow. People on HN suspect the plan is to combine that with the Online Safety Act internet identification requirements, but no such plans have been announced as far as I'm aware.

In case you missed it, the UK is no longer part of the EU. It is doing this under its own steam, or perhaps that of lobbyists.

I sometimes wonder what people think who previously would have verbally accosted and ridiculed others who warned of this very state of things coming about, being made identifiable online in a country/society where the government has already also rolled out a panopticon of surveillance and clandestine perception and thought control, where privacy does not exist in public either anymore.

It doesn’t really matter either way because the tyranny and authoritarian control will descend upon people regardless; but do they at least have some kind of guilt, maybe shame, or even realize they are also guilty, not just in basically helping their own enemy, the people in charge of the government implementing these things?

Or do they simply in a somewhat typical narcissistic way just hand wave it away and generously absolve themselves of any guilt and responsibility for the misery they are/will be responsible for?

Turns out the “…fools, and even the ambitious…” were also the “…traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely…”. It was a stroke of genius to psychologically and emotionally manipulate and wage war on the minds of the folks who were fools, i.e., the majority in a “democracy” who gleefully voted themselves into a trap under influence of the created reward system that had them getting feedback that told them they are the good people.

I have come across people arguing that it is fine because a lot of European countries have ID cards and its not a problem because "no one is suffering" (to quote one person).

To be clear, the digital wallet app is just a way to manage your government issued eID. Both the wallet app you link to and eID are based on the EIDAS spec. The wallet doesn't supersede or replace your country's apps unless the country opts for that. For example in Belgium, we have a robust selection of apps and the non-phone approach using a USB card reader.

The use-case for age verification is not a law yet, the EC has only produced a blueprint which means that this will probably not be adopted by everyone before EIDAS is fully implemented.

This has to be one of the funniest things I read. People who approved this have to be soft in the head.

Also saw some of my countries government’s webpages have google analytics scripts. I’m guessing they didn’t even get a bribe for that, it is really ..

I think that presenting this as "fait accompli" is incorrect. I don't think actual development even started on anything.

The New Deal used this tactic to (a very simplified description) raise prices on farm products and let farmers get out of poverty during The Great Depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Farm_and_rural_progra...

The EU also used to have wine surpluses like this. I suppose you could make a witty argument that wine will be needed in a crisis.

> Try visiting Czechia sometime

Linked with US and Israel even tighter, now because of let's call it "a family connection".

> OS dev teams MS and RedHat offshored

Their pinnacle achievement is antivirus for Windows and MS Teams.

Poland specifically bought Pegasus from Israelis. There is a parliamentary commission investigating this, everything is public so you can google it. Poland does not develop its own exploits or have domestic spyware firms that target journalists. Unless you have proof to the contrary, what you wrote is not true.

But up to now they didn't ?

I think it helped that things were more tribal back then. Enemies could sack and pillage if opportunity presented itself. That presented peasants/commoners/etc. a disincentive to defect. It's not like an outsider would be friendly to a defector in most cases. This provided a bond to the local warlord/chieftain/etc. Essentially it was a fear-factor to not defect because things would be worse. Plus, these people had few possessions. They basically only had their labor and the clothes on their backs. They had very little power. A population that had tenuous leadership would soon be easy pickings for a neighboring rival to swoop in and potentially make things worse.

> You can't have wealth without power, because then I can come over and take your wealth from you.

So power beats wealth. Easy to see these days with today’s wealthiest people on the planet cowering and paying tributes to Trump.

Also, power is convertible into wealth, as countless politicians have proven, while wealth is not necessarily convertible into power (like Bloomberg’s failed presidential bid has shown).

In conclusion - it’s about power, specifically political power, and the individuals yielding it: the politicians.