Why You Should Be Worried About Digital ID - Silkie Carlo
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Summary
Silky Carlo is the head of Big Brother Watch, a group dedicated to fighting the government's plans to introduce a digital ID across the whole of the UK. She tells us what digital IDs are, why they're a bad idea, and why you should fight them.
Transcript
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We are that close to a situation where you basically need a digital ID to go online.
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The right to work is the first one, then the right to rent, banking, education, childcare,
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voting. Five billion was wasted last time this country tried to introduce digital IDs. That's
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about 50 times the amount of the border security command. Very, very clearly this isn't about
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immigration. The Starmer government has just introduced mass bank spying powers on the
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premise of rooting out welfare fraud. The Home Office right now is supporting essentially an
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expansion of live facial recognition across multiple police forces. The time to really put
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up a fight is now. Relax, relax. This isn't an ad. If you're not a fan of ads, but love
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Silky Carlo, welcome back to the show. We love you so much. So it's a pity that basically we
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only get you on when the government is about to do something really evil. But you are obviously
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the head of Big Brother Watch and you work on stuff like digital ID, which the government
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is just announced they're going to introduce without imposing our own views on it. Tell us
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what are digital IDs and what your concern about them is. Digital ID is going to be a mandatory
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digital identifier that we all have to have in this country, basically an entry on a government
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database, which is the seed for something very, very different in this country. We've never had to
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carry ID of any type, not since the Second World War. In peacetime have we had to carry ID papers in
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this country. But now we will have to, and it will have to be digital. And it will be the beginning
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of a massive digital record about every citizen in this country. So I think the questions now and
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the conversation now is about how far will that grow? How much data will be on it? Where and when
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will we need to present it? And how might it be used in a way that it effectively becomes like a
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license, like a permit, that it can be taken away or required for certain things? The government has
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said in the first instance it will be required in order to work. But already we've heard from ministers
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over recent days about the numerous other ways in which you will have to have a digital ID to live
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your life. Such as? So the right to work is the first one, then the right to rent. So that you
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would have to show your landlord your digital ID. Hang on, sorry, your right to live somewhere.
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Yeah. It's going to be tied to your digital ID. To make sure you're not an illegal immigrant, mate.
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Yeah, I mean, exactly. And the other thing that's notable about that is that this is an ID that
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you don't only need to show to the state, but you also need to show it to other peers, to civilians,
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because it's for these kinds of, you know, to your boss, to your landlord, to a bouncer. And so the
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other types of uses that have already been mentioned, including on the government's own website,
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are banking, education, childcare, voting. So the possibilities are endless and numerous. And as you
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say, they really go to the very basics of living your everyday life. If you didn't have one, then
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immediately you won't be able to work. Silky, so a lot of arguments have been made about why this is
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actually a good thing. Now, one of them is illegal immigration. In fact, the government is leading
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with that, which I think is complete rubbish for reasons that we'll get into. I don't think it's going
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to do anything to stop illegal immigration. But there are countries which have digital ID. There are people
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who say, actually, it's super helpful, super convenient, it's super easy, it makes things safe.
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We know who everyone is. You know, some of these things was out dystopian already. But also, there are
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some benefits on that. I think anything that is, almost anything that is oppressive can have some
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benefits. And especially if you're a prime minister who wants to build a really big state and have lots
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of information about people and know where they are and what they're doing, you could frame that as a
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benefit and say that it's a good thing. And certainly for individuals to have a digital ID
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of some type, that could be beneficial. If you choose to, you can get them in the private sector,
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some people get them from their governments. I think what's very, very different is the idea
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of a digital ID system being imposed on the entire population and then made mandatory,
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made as a gateway in order to live your life, in order to work and rent, collect benefits and
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everything else. It is also important to say in a lot of the examples that have been thrown around
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recently about the other countries that use digital ID, what's overlooked is that they are
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linked to human rights abuses everywhere, actually, and also to cyber security incidents.
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So Estonia, for example, is always brought up as the example, completely different to Britain,
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very small population. And it has what they call the world's first digital government. So it's kind
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of like a digital experiment, quite dystopian, if you ask me. But even there, there was a cyber
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security, sorry, there was a security flaw with their digital ID system. And three quarters of a
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million people lost access to their digital ID, which then stopped them from doing things because
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of the security flaw, which, of course, can upend your whole life. If you look at India, for example,
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and the biometric ID system that they have there, there are countless deaths that have been
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associated with the digital ID, because of connectivity problems. And again, basically,
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technical problems with the whole system, and the way that it's been used to then lock people off
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of the services that they're otherwise entitled to. And I think there is, you know, you can't always
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compare these countries with the UK, but there are some lessons to be learned. If you think about,
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for example, going to see the doctor or going to the NHS, at the moment, it's free at the point of
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use, you just go and you do it. And that saves people's lives. The more barriers that you start
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putting up with things like digital ID, in a country where millions of people will never,
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it doesn't matter what Starmer says, will never have one, whether they choose not to or because
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they can't. All of that language about access that the government use, we're making it easier for
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people, we're giving people access. No, what they're actually doing is putting up a barrier,
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and then saying certain people can come through and everyone else will be left behind. So certainly
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not the case. If you look around the rest of the world, this works perfectly everywhere else.
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If someone says that to you already, I just think that they're lying or they're misinformed.
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The thing that really worries me, Silky, is if you had told me this in 2019 or 2018,
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I wouldn't have been as worried or as suspicious of government. But after COVID,
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after lockdowns, after people were getting arrested for going to the beach, I'm like,
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under no circumstances. I mean, think about a COVID type situation. What would that involve
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with digital ID? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think already we know that, God forbid,
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if there's another pandemic, this mandatory digital ID becomes a mandatory vaccine ID.
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Starmer already supported that during the pandemic. And of course, the Johnson government
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introduced them. And that's what we had. We also had contact tracing where everyone had to
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use a QR code to go to the pub. Basically, you had to use it to scan in and create a log of all of
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your social interactions and everything that you were doing. Apply that context with a digital ID,
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and suddenly you've got something that's not just about getting a job, but actually that creates a
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very, very comprehensive record of everything that you're doing. And again, is used like a permit.
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If you don't have the right vaccine status, you're not going to school, you're not going,
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you're not travelling, you're not, you know, whatever the conditions are. And I think that's
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a realistic concern. I think something that a huge portion of the public is very, very alive to that
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risk. And so we should be. Every future moral panic that this country faces will have digital ID
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present itself in some format as the solution. If you also think about the moral panics we have
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online, and this is where I really worry about how digital ID will play out because we see so many
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moral panics about the internet. We will see digital ID introduced as a solution. Children online and
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their safety, age gating the internet, making sure that people can only see certain content,
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you know, if they're this or that age. It's a nightmare. Already under the Online Safety Act,
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we have now age requirements, ID requirements for the internet. We are that close to a situation where
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you basically need a digital ID to go online. And of course, when this is introduced, the answer will be,
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why aren't we using digital IDs for access to the internet when there's a pandemic? Why aren't we
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using it to scan people's vaccine status? And so we're going to see this very, very quickly spiral out
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of control, I think. And I don't think it's just, you know, I don't want to put too many conditions on
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what I'm saying. But just to be absolutely clear, it won't be acceptable for anyone to say that raising
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these risks makes you a conspiracy theorist. We have to put that idea to bed. Because what we are
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actually saying is this is a politically and historically informed risk assessment, basically,
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of what's coming. And we've been through that experience just in the last few years with COVID.
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Well, absolutely. And the other thing that really worries me is this word safety, Silky, because we can
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see the more we've gone through this period of time, we know that words are being used in one context,
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but they mean something else. For instance, safety. This is a safe space. No, it's not a safe space.
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It just means you don't want your ideas to be challenged. So when people go safety, will that
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mean people who have the wrong opinions aren't allowed in a particular space? Will it actually
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mean, like you say, a vaccine, if you haven't taken your vaccines? Will it mean, for instance,
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if you attended a particular protest, does that therefore mean that that is the wrong type of protest?
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You are far right. Oh, maybe you don't get a doctor's appointment or maybe you can't travel.
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I think in the context of identity wars and the kind of cultural divisions that we have,
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introducing an identity card is a really bad idea. And also there is an assault on anonymity,
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online in particular. And we've seen, yet again, I was reading this weekend, people
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being visited by the police for saying fairly ordinary things, certainly things you'd hear in
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any pub. So I absolutely fear that, for example, your online activity will be linked to a digital
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ID. Or certainly there will be people calling for that. And many of those people are in the Labour
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Party. You know, it's actually the department that worked on the Online Safety Act, the
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Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, is now going to be running the digital ID. So the
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same department that has been calling for ID requirements online, on the internet, on social
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media, will now be developing the digital ID. In fact, the same individual, I think, will be in
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charge of the same of this project. So I think that that is a very, very rational concern that we
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could see this bleed into many different areas. Well, it's inevitable. And look, I'm not the
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smartest guy in the world, but even I can imagine a hundred different scenarios when I can make a
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bulletproof argument why this digital ID must be used. I mean, Francis gave one of them. If you are
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attending a protest in central London, you need to scan in through the barrier so that we know who
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everybody is to ensure everyone's safety. Who can argue against that? And then you've got everyone
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who attended a protest. Then you can be extra judicious about monitoring their online activity,
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making sure they haven't tweeted something wrong in the last five years, and on and on it goes. And
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that's just one example. But we could apply that principle to hundreds of things. And suddenly,
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you essentially create a compliance ladder where people have to do what the government thinks is the
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right thing to do in order to live their lives. And I just, I don't understand, that's not the
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British attitude to liberty, as far as I understand this country. Completely. This is a completely
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un-British idea. I think we should talk more about that, especially given that Starmer has introduced it
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on the pretext of patriotism, which is a joke. But on this point about protests and free speech as well,
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I think you're absolutely right. And a relevant thing that's happening that I've spoken to you guys about
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before, is the introduction of live facial recognition cameras, which are being used much,
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much more in this country now. The Home Office right now is supporting essentially an expansion
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of live facial recognition across multiple police forces. And we will see that being used at some
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protests as well. The reason that's relevant is the digital ID is linked to your facial biometric.
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The government has said that already. So effectively, your barcode, in terms of the state having a record
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on you, is your face. So at the same time as a facial biometric digital ID is being made mandatory for
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every single person in the country, cameras are being introduced that scan your facial biometric.
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So yes, I mean, again, you can't call anyone a conspiracy theorist for saying two plus two equals four.
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And so we can see that these things, these bits of surveillance architecture put together do create
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an enormous, very dystopian surveillance state. I do think it's likely that we could see things like
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that used at protests and in ways that, yeah, as you say, risk, judge people's risk to give them entry into
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Yeah. So I was just going to say, because what we're effectively talking about here is a Chinese social
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It's something that people have worried about. I've worried about it. And I'm worried about it for a really long time.
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Um, I think in what form we, we get this kind of mass surveillance system, I think it will differ,
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but I think also that the, the, the product of it has some similarities nonetheless. If you have a softer
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system, if you have a system where individuals know that they are being watched and recorded and data
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about them is being collected and it can be judged, we change the way that we behave. And I would challenge
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anyone to say that they don't now think twice about the way that they behave online, for example, and the
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things that they post, because already we have quite, the culture has gone to a place where you worry that
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what your employer or, uh, a future employer or, or the police might think about some of the things you
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tweet, um, because of the kind of, um, punitive culture that we've, um, that we, that we've built. Um, so I think
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already people feel, feel watched and the police themselves and the more bits of surveillance you
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add on, um, the worse that becomes, whether it falls into a full blown Chinese style, um, social
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kind of credit system, who knows, but it feels, it feels less laughable today, doesn't it? Then it
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Well, this is why I really want to unpack and address your point. You've mentioned a couple of
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times, you know, we're not conspiracy theorists here. And I want to really address this because
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none, understanding why digital ID and this entire infrastructure is dangerous does not require
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an ounce of conspiratorialism whatsoever. You just have to apply basic logic. The people who are
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doing this, it's Keir Starmer and behind him, we know this is being pushed by the Tony Blair Institute.
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Tony Blair tried to push ID cards through 20 years ago. And the reason is, and Tony Blair will tell you
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himself, he's a technocrat. That means he believes that government, big government, the introduction
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of government information about everybody aggregating data, using that combined with AI is a way to
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drive humanity forward. He will say so himself, you don't need to be conspiratorial. So they believe
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that if they could have as much information and data about everybody in a centralized location,
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they can make things better. That's so you don't have to be conspiratorial and think there's some,
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you know, there's pedo lizards running the world trying to make this happen. You just have to look at
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it logically and imagine that you are a person who views the world in that way. And then it all
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makes perfect sense. Of course, you'd want more data. Of course, you'd want a centralized database.
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Of course, you'd want to, do you remember the nudge unit? You want to shape human behavior
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through government. Yeah. And this is a great way to do that. Yeah. Already, I mean, that's what,
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although the briefing has been, this is only for the right to work, which is laughable.
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Many ministers in government are saying exactly that, that it's the bedrock of the modern states,
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that this is going to revolutionize people's relationship with government. I've also seen
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a letter that was sent from the government round to... I mean, they're not wrong.
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Yeah, absolutely right. But that's what I mean, though. But if you, you know, they are saying it
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in their own words. But sometimes when you reflect it back, it's calm down. It's just for your right
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to work, which it's really not. You only have to look at what they're actually saying about the
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plans. I've seen a letter that was circulated in Parliament to members of Parliament, a letter from
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the government about the plans, which says all of these things as well. It lists multiple departments
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in government that could use this. And it talks about completely changing the relationship between
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individuals and the government. That is what this is designed to do. And I think many members of
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the public don't like it. And I don't like it, because we see what's coming. What's coming is a
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very different way of governing the population. Some might even call it population control.
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And like you say, if you're someone that is in favour of a big state, and nudging people and
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controlling people and hoarding masses of data on them, then of course, it's a rational thing.
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If you want to live in a free country in a democracy, then it's a very, very dangerous thing,
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because people are going to have less power. And the more I've always said it is why I work on
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surveillance issues and free speech, the more that you are watched, the more data that is collected
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on you, the less power that you have. When we are then turned from being individuals who are
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born free on the land and then have all of our rights and freedoms just by virtue of being born
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here, when that's turned into actually you need to carry a licence, now you need a permit. Now you
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only get those things if you're carrying your digital ID and telling the government where you are and
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what you're doing and where you want to work and where you want to rent, then you're not really free
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anymore. You have privileges, and those privileges can be taken away. A digital ID can't be taken
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The biggest red flag for me, and again, if people maybe are not as interested in these issues as
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the three of us and haven't paid as much attention, or maybe they naturally trust the government more
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than us, despite what we've seen in the last five years, I respect that. People can have a different
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opinion, but I just ask them to look at the facts of this. The biggest red flag for me with all of
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this is they're blatantly lying. They're just lying. They're saying this will help to deal with illegal
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immigration. And their argument is, we'll be able to identify illegal immigrants when they apply for
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a job or when they try to ransom it. But we know who the illegal immigrants are, a lot of them,
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and they're still in this country. So knowing who they are is not going to help us deal with that
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problem. I think that I completely agree that a massive red flag on this, and the reason that I
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think it's gone down so badly with the public is that we are being blatantly lied to. And, you know,
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the premise that this is being sold on is that it will stop people from working illegally in this
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country. No one can explain, and we've seen Keir Starmer try, how that is the case. Somebody who comes
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here, undocumented, and then works for £20, £30 cash a day in the local barbers or whatever, is not
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going to be stopped by a digital ID. And already in this country, actually, every employer has a legal
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duty to check someone's right to work. Already, it's quite onerous, really. And the same with landlords.
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You're supposed to check somebody's passport or their national insurance number or their visa. So if you're
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not already doing that, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that a digital ID will suddenly make you
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decide you're going to do checks on all of your employees. It's for the birds. And even ministers
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that have been sent out to try and defend this in the press have basically said, well, we know it's
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not a silver bullet, which is just code for, yeah, we know it doesn't work. And that's not the reason.
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There was one junior minister that went out a few days ago, and when questioned about how on earth do
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you think it's going to have anything to do with illegal immigration, he actually said, well, of course,
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it's got lots of other uses, but we don't want to talk about that now because the public will be sceptical,
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he said. He said, we're not going to boil the ocean now, were his exact words, because the public would be
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sceptical. They're just saying the quiet bit out loud. Anyone who looks at this seriously for more than two
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seconds can see it's got absolutely nothing to do with stopping boats, smashing gangs, or any of the other
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phrases that the government trots out. And I think what's so galling about it is that
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Keir Starmer has exploited working class people's concerns about those issues and treated us like
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we're really stupid to try and sell in something that's actually really oppressive and affects all
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of us, all of our rights and all of our liberties. And so I don't see how you can talk about patriotic
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renewal when you're treating your country like they're idiots. And he's getting the backlash
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Do you think part of the problem is as well for people who are ambivalent or don't really see the
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problems that might come with this type of documentation is the fact that they've never
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grown up or seen an authoritarian society? If you think the UK is the norm and that's how societies
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have always been, then really you're not going to see the impending threat of authoritarianism at
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Maybe, but we lived through Covid, didn't we? So, I mean, we kind of have lived through some
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kind of type of authoritarianism. But I think there's something else, I think there's something
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that speaks directly to British culture here and about the way that we do actually cherish liberty
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and freedom. And in a way, whilst we do have the fight of our lives on our hands in terms of getting
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rid of digital ID, what's quite encouraging is that millions of people have said, no, we see this for
00:24:19.940
what it is. We don't trust the government, we don't carry papers, and we won't be carrying digital IDs.
00:24:26.600
And it's because we have never been a population that lives on licence to authorities. The authorities
00:24:31.840
work for us. We don't have to prove ourselves to anyone unless we've done something wrong.
00:24:36.640
And that's the kind of whole notion that underpins our society of the, you know, the free-born
00:24:40.980
Englishmen that just, we just live our lives freely until we incur on someone else's freedom.
00:24:45.620
Other countries that have IDs are countries that have more, like, permission-based systems of rule
00:24:52.900
and law that we don't have. We have common law freedoms. And so I do think it has, you know,
00:24:59.440
Keir Starmer has united the public, but just not at all in the way that he thought. Actually,
00:25:03.800
he's united the public against him. He's managed to tap into national values by demonstrating his
00:25:11.340
But do you think as well, how much of this do you think, Silky, is a government
00:25:16.340
they've been in power just over a year. It's a complete shambles. I mean, people are quite open.
00:25:21.820
This is one of the worst, most incompetent governments. I mean, even worse than many of
00:25:26.800
the Tory governments. How much of this do you think is a government realising they don't have any power
00:25:33.240
and they're going to do whatever they can to hold on to what little power they have left?
00:25:36.860
It does seem like a very desperate power grab. But I'm not sure that it will ever see, you know,
00:25:44.580
if we're successful, certainly, I don't know that it will ever see the light of day. What really
00:25:48.580
worries me about it is that it seems to suggest that there are people around Starmer that have
00:25:54.540
an enormous amount of influence that's unchecked. Anyone in Westminster, I'm pretty sure anyone in the
00:26:01.260
country could have heard this idea put on the table and said, don't do that. Don't do that. Now,
00:26:07.960
you're just on the back of a summer of scandals. You've got the lowest approval ratings of any
00:26:14.380
prime minister for decades, I think. And now you want to introduce something, a requirement on every
00:26:23.500
single member of the public, something that affects each and every one of our lives, that millions of
00:26:28.520
people won't be able to have, you know, just every single ingredient for it. You've also got the
00:26:32.120
historical echoes of Blair, the £5 billion of public money that was wasted on the biometric ID
00:26:42.440
scheme two decades ago. Starmer would have to be absolutely insane to put this down on the table now,
00:26:48.500
and yet he has. So clearly there's a political judgement failure, but it suggests that there are
00:26:52.720
people around him who have managed to convince him that this is a good idea. And of course,
00:26:58.240
we mentioned the Tony Blair Institute. There's also Labour Together, a think tank that was a pro-Starma
00:27:03.960
think tank that's very influential. And big tech funding that swims around those think tanks and
00:27:12.840
institutions from companies that would stand to earn many, many, many, many millions of pounds from
00:27:20.680
being involved in a mandatory digital ID system. So to me, and I think many others, this does smack of
00:27:30.700
big tech lobbying, basically, against all rational political judgement. It's very, very hard to think
00:27:37.800
of any other reason that this would be pushed at this point in time. Even Andy Burnham, who was the
00:27:47.540
ID cards minister under Blair, has said that this is, he doesn't support this, and this is the wrong
00:27:54.820
time, and this is a really bad idea. Well, one of the things we've done, and by the way, I've never
00:28:00.140
heard you talk as much about politicians as critically, because you're someone who's apolitical, and you
00:28:04.520
really try and stay out of it. And one thing I really do want to emphasise is how much this is not a
00:28:11.500
left-right issue. And the example that I always give to people is, if you are on the left, and you
00:28:16.980
believe that the evil Farage is about to take over and ruin everything, why on earth would you want to
00:28:22.900
give him and his party this much power to monitor and control what people say and do and where they
00:28:30.560
go? The idea that you would recognise that there's a political system in which your political opponents
00:28:37.020
will at some point be in charge, and you give them this sort of power over your lives, this doesn't
00:28:43.220
make any sense to me. It's an utter madness. There are very, very few issues in this country that could
00:28:49.420
unite Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage, and ID cards is one of them. The left of the Labour Party,
00:28:56.240
if we look at who, the kind of political sands on this, the left of the Labour Party, the Greens,
00:29:01.340
Lib Dems, Reform, Conservatives, SNP, Plaid, everyone pretty much except Starmer and Starmerites
00:29:11.680
are against the digital ID proposal. So yeah, it's dead in the water. The problem is, from a public
00:29:19.880
point of view, the problem is that, of course, the numbers that they've got in Parliament mean that
00:29:24.920
almost certainly this will survive a Commons vote. And so despite the fact that absolutely no one wants
00:29:31.320
this, there is a real, real, real risk that this will pass into law in the next couple of years.
00:29:39.260
So what can we do right now? I mean, the petition, I haven't checked it as of this morning. We're
00:29:43.640
recording this a few days before it goes out. I imagine it's over well over two million now.
00:29:49.020
There's well over two million people have signed the official government, the petition on the
00:29:56.040
government website. We have a petition that has over 100,000 signatures. So yeah, combined,
00:30:01.980
we're probably looking at towards three million signatures on a petition against. And I think
00:30:07.760
now is the time for people, for anyone who cares about this issue, for anyone that doesn't want to
00:30:11.580
be having to carry a QR code, a digital barcode in order to live their lives. If you don't want your
00:30:19.020
children to do that, if you want to have any semblance of a free and open society, now is a
00:30:24.040
time to stand up and be counted. It's really not a time to sit out. And so I'd ask anyone who cares
00:30:30.280
about this to support groups like Big Brother Watch, join the campaign, sign up for our newsletters on
00:30:35.920
this, because this is just the beginning. And it's going to be a bit of a rocky couple of years.
00:30:40.180
Campaigners have done it before. You know, if you think about during the Blair years, this was
00:30:45.520
introduced, I mean, digital IDs are introduced every couple of years on the pretext of something
00:30:49.320
or other. But, you know, a couple of years ago, sorry, a couple of decades ago, this was on the
00:30:55.820
pretext of counterterrorism. And Blair was, you know, this massively popular prime minister, and still
00:31:01.560
the civil liberties campaign has won the argument at the end of the day, and got the Identity Cards
00:31:07.840
Act overturned. We can do it again, we've got to. So I'd ask people to support Big Brother Watch,
00:31:13.180
get involved in the campaign, and hopefully make digital IDs history.
00:31:17.100
Absolutely. And this is a really important moment. I think there's, you know, people have busy lives,
00:31:22.980
they've got families, they've got kids, they've got jobs and other things. But one of the reasons we
00:31:27.040
were so glad to have you on, and we've been talking about this ourselves, I just think people don't,
00:31:32.960
that you see this in the polling numbers, we're told that, you know, about half the country support
00:31:36.820
digital IDs. I don't believe that once they understand what it means. A lot of people,
00:31:42.700
as I would be if we were not doing this work, quite, you know, we're not well informed about
00:31:49.740
these issues, because they're complicated, and not that sexy, etc. But actually, they really,
00:31:57.880
really matter. And I think if people are more informed about it, you will see that the attitudes
00:32:01.880
change significantly. And it might make it through the commons, or even that is, you know, potentially
00:32:07.620
questionable. But you will, I think you will inevitably see a lot of pushback against it.
00:32:12.260
And by the time it comes to actually making it into law, I don't think this government is going
00:32:16.020
to be in charge anymore. That's the thing. So they've said that they want this to be mandatory
00:32:20.720
by 2029. It's not that far away, you know, by the end of their term, that apparently, all of us here
00:32:28.180
in this room would have our digital IDs in our pockets. And that will be required by law. So, you know,
00:32:34.960
I think, yeah, I think there's a big question mark about whether they can actually make that
00:32:40.020
reality. But we can't be complacent about it, because the numbers in Parliament really aren't
00:32:45.240
in our in our favour. I think though, with anything, when you've got half of the public
00:32:50.200
who oppose this, it's unlike any other issue, because it's half, that's half of the public who
00:32:56.820
then are saying potentially that they're not going to carry a digital ID, then suddenly, it's not
00:33:00.540
a mandatory national system, is it? So I think actually those numbers are massively
00:33:05.720
in our favour. If even a fraction of that half of the public that doesn't like this
00:33:10.940
decides to stand up and be counted, then we'll win.
00:33:14.480
No, I'm saying now, I will not carry this. This is not acceptable.
00:33:20.400
I think I'll be fine. And that's the point, actually. Those of us who do have that ability
00:33:24.560
to not be restricted by this, have a duty to say right now, I'm not participating in this.
00:33:32.440
I think one of the things that campaign groups like us will be important for is we need to
00:33:38.540
People who are going to work and their bosses are saying, look, there's nothing I can do
00:33:41.380
if you don't have your digital ID. You know, we did that during COVID as well. We looked
00:33:45.480
after people that were being shut out of their jobs and other places because of vaccine
00:33:53.900
We're against this sort of thing. We don't need them. It's absolutely ludicrous that a
1.00
00:33:57.960
British passport is not enough for an employer to prove that you're British and that you have
00:34:02.620
the right to work. You've got to have Starmer's ID card. It's absolute rubbish. So it's another
00:34:07.580
reason that, you know, for groups like us really need more strength right now to deal with what's
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I mean, the other thing that there's an odd whiff about this, you go, oh, so who's going to be in
00:35:21.000
charge of implementing it? Oh, it's you and Blair, Tony Blair's son.
00:35:25.560
I don't know. I mean, I've heard, I've read about those rumours, but I don't know yet. They're at such
00:35:31.060
an early stage. I don't know that anyone's contracted at all. But one thing is for sure that the companies
00:35:38.280
who are front in line to be contracted are, many of them are the same companies that give vast amounts
00:35:46.600
of funding to the Tony Blair Institute, Labour Together, and some of the people around the Starmer
00:35:52.320
administration. So that is definitely something to look out for. And I know there are lots of
00:35:59.260
And I think one of the things that we haven't talked about yet, but we really should be, is
00:36:03.260
they're going to harvest all this data. How secure is it going to be in a city like London,
00:36:09.460
where every six days you get your phone nicked by someone on a bike, and basically it's going to be
00:36:14.140
on an app. Somebody smart is going to come up with something where they're just going to wipe it
00:36:18.440
and or they're just, well, they're going to be able to take your ID.
00:36:21.460
I think it's a massive risk that if we're carrying around something so sensitive on our phones,
00:36:27.220
what happens when your phone breaks, gets lost, stolen. And then there's a whole other layer of
00:36:32.540
security risks, which is that national security these days basically is cyber security.
00:36:38.000
The Ministry of Defence in this country has been hacked, I think, over 40 times in the past decade.
00:36:45.480
We lost information about some of our spies and people who've been working undercover in Afghanistan
00:36:55.660
thanks to cyber security risks. If we can't protect their data, how are we going to protect the,
00:37:03.800
I mean, it'll be well over 100 million people's data, because bear in mind, it's not just Brits
00:37:08.840
who are going to have a Brit card. It's actually anyone living or working in the country.
00:37:14.960
So it's going to be an astronomically sized database. That's happening at the same time
00:37:22.100
as the government is developing something called a national data library, which is basically a centre
00:37:30.180
for processing masses of data collected about the population and introducing AI in more and more areas
00:37:38.500
of government. So it does seem very, very likely that, again, a digital ID will become basically
00:37:44.240
a barcode that gains access to a set of reams of your information that then will very likely be
00:37:52.300
processed by different private contractors or arms of government. Who knows? But if we look at the how
00:37:59.820
what's happened with the NHS, which is a massive trove of data, already we've had the likes of Google
00:38:05.960
gaining unlawfully access to parts of NHS data and processing that with AI. This is like some of the
00:38:14.580
most valuable data anywhere in the world. So it's sort of inevitable that our data will be
00:38:23.020
hoarded and processed in that way. And in ways that we won't have any control over. That's the problem.
00:38:28.240
It's a mandatory system. If Starmer was saying he wants people to opt into this, everyone's going to
00:38:32.100
love it. Come and get your digital ID. Let's see how that pans out. But the whole point is that we
00:38:39.040
And what's interesting as well is when we interviewed a professor of AI and ethics from Oxford University,
00:38:44.300
her name is Carissa Valise, it was a brilliant interview. She said that China are actually rolling
00:38:49.560
back some of their data harvesting because they realise it's a national security threat.
00:38:55.760
Yeah. Because if you if you get hacked, then enemies can then use that, manipulate it or do whatever they want.
00:39:03.200
Sorry to interject, by the way. I know a lot of people think about data breaches as like this big hacking
00:39:08.740
operation of multi-million dollars from some evil. No, it's like a civil servant lifts his fucking laptop
0.99
00:39:14.640
on a train. And then that's that's what the data breaches actually look like.
0.99
00:39:18.580
And we can do. They can do. Yeah. In fact, it was something almost exactly like that that happens in the
00:39:25.280
noughties that was critical to the downfall of Blair's ID scheme because people just didn't trust it
00:39:31.620
because the government kept losing masses of data. And it happens all the time. Yeah. And especially
00:39:36.600
now in the context that we're living in where, you know, we do face really serious cybersecurity risks
00:39:42.980
from the likes of China and Russia. This will be that there will basically be a target over this
00:39:49.520
database. And if it is compromised, then the consequences could be really, really grave for
00:39:56.600
for the whole country, to be honest, but also for individuals. The fact that our biometric data will
00:40:04.040
be on there potentially with everything from tax, health, where you live, work, enormous amounts of
00:40:10.760
data about you. But underpinned by that biometric, it's really serious. You can't that's information you
00:40:16.940
can't change. It's not like if you lose a password, you quickly change your password and then try and
00:40:21.340
protect everything again. You can't change your face. You can't change your fingerprints. So it
00:40:26.220
really means that the risks here are elevated massively. And it's also coming down to competency
00:40:31.600
as well. If people are watching this and they're like, I don't know what side of the fence to fall on
00:40:36.220
with this particular thing. Do you trust this government to be able to do anything effectively or
00:40:41.280
competently? We don't have a border. Let's just be honest about that. We don't. People flood in.
0.97
00:40:45.860
We go we're trying to deport people. I think the first flight that we for people to be deported
00:40:51.500
from this country left empty. How do you expect them to run this? Well, and and an IT program that
00:40:58.640
the government running anything, you know, as you say, people always question the competence of
00:41:03.840
government, especially at the moment. But the government running an IT project. No, that that it's
00:41:10.140
always, always plagued with really serious issues and cost the country billions of pounds as well.
00:41:16.520
It's something else. It just hasn't been factored in here. How much is it going to cost?
00:41:20.220
You know, the country just simply doesn't have the money to waste on this going absolutely
00:41:24.380
nowhere. I think the border security command costs about 100 million pounds. There's a budget of about
00:41:31.700
100 million pounds. Well, five billion was wasted last time this country tried to introduce digital
00:41:38.300
IDs. That's about 50 times the amount of the border security command. Very, very clearly,
00:41:43.220
this isn't about immigration. So again, I think if somebody's struggling to kind of choose a side on
00:41:48.860
this issue, the starting point is the government's lying to you. This isn't being introduced in order
00:41:54.400
to root out people working illegally in this country. So the next question is, why is it being
0.99
00:42:01.020
introduced? And how is it going to impact your life? And I think those are some of the things that
00:42:06.420
obviously we're talking about today. I think they're things to be really worried about.
00:42:10.160
Do you think it's a very cynical ploy by Starmer as a way to actually try and sell this to people who
00:42:15.580
are very concerned and quite rightly so about illegal immigration? I think it's appalling. I think it's a
1.00
00:42:21.540
disgraceful way to treat the public. Keir Starmer is treating the public like we're complete idiots.
1.00
00:42:29.600
He's used the pretext to rehash a very old policy that's really unpopular. And he's thought that by
1.00
00:42:35.500
tapping into these concerns, and then talking about patriotism, that he could sell it into the public in
00:42:41.860
a new way. That's backfired. Instead, everyone's looking at him and saying, you're clearly not telling
00:42:46.300
the truth. It's clearly not about that. So you've shown two things. One is that you've got absolutely no
00:42:50.460
idea what to do about people working illegally in the country. And second, is that you don't
00:42:55.340
understand patriotism at all. You don't understand British values, because this is about as un-British
0.92
00:42:59.980
as it gets. We've always rejected ID cards, and we're going to reject them this time around.
00:43:04.880
Well, that's the hope here for me politically. And look, you know, Francis says it's the worst
00:43:09.680
government in history. I actually don't think that's true. I don't think they're particularly
00:43:13.140
incompetent more than the Tories or whatever. And I said this at the time when the election happened.
00:43:18.180
I did an article in a video about it. And the point I was making is Britain's problems are
00:43:23.000
structural in nature. They were going to be very difficult to solve no matter who's in charge.
00:43:27.400
Starmer is very, very unpopular because he hasn't made an impact on those issues. But I just do not
00:43:33.640
understand the electoral logic behind this. It's suicidal. Absolutely. And if they want to try this,
00:43:40.060
I think we will make this his poll tax. It could well be the end of his premiership if he actually
00:43:47.520
goes for this. But the problem is he's committed to it now. So he's either in a position where he
00:43:53.560
has to go all out and then it will become his poll tax or he has to do a U-turn, which will also not
00:43:59.120
be great. Yeah. It's a weird time. That's why I think we can't be complacent about it. It's quite
00:44:06.100
clear the writing's on the wall. This has bombed in the worst possible way. Any policy that affects
00:44:12.340
every single individual member of the public that half of them are saying no to is going to be a
00:44:17.620
disaster. But he's in it now. He's made the commitment. And they've put a time frame on it.
00:44:22.060
They've said that by 2029, each and every one of us will have to have this digital ID. So it does mean
00:44:29.460
really that if we are to defeat it, which I think we can and we will, the way in which that happens
00:44:36.120
will probably be one of the nails in the coffin for Starmer, because it really threatens his
00:44:41.460
premiership. Especially since he's introduced this policy at Labour conference, when the conference
00:44:47.880
is supposed to be about his survival and about the survival of the government. And the flagship policy
00:44:53.080
is giving us all a digital ID. He's shown how completely out of touch he is with the public.
00:44:59.120
He's tried to lie to the public. It hasn't gone down well. And I think he will reap the consequences,
00:45:05.000
but it won't come easily for us as campaigners. Well, we're going to have to make sure that doesn't
00:45:09.840
happen. One of the things I just find, you've highlighted a couple of times already, just how
00:45:15.160
extraordinary the deceit is in this all. Because you've got a large number of people who, as Francis
00:45:21.680
says, rightly are frustrated with the fact that we have an open border. It's not because they hate
00:45:26.700
immigrants. It's just like countries need borders. It's a basic requirement of statehood.
00:45:30.700
And that is being used, that legitimate concern that people have expressed for a long time,
00:45:37.360
which is driving the rise of reform that Labour are so concerned about. That is being used in a
00:45:43.240
way that they're not actually going to fix the problem. Instead, they're going to deliver this
00:45:46.900
authoritarian policy that will be in our lives. Much like, you know, we are now, a lot of people,
00:45:52.800
I think, realizing that many of the reasons the country is screwed up in the ways that it's
00:45:56.640
screwed up is because of the Blair government 20 years ago that introduced a bunch of legislation
00:46:01.060
that we're still living the consequences of. So you're going to get an abortive Starmer government
00:46:05.940
that's in power for a couple of years, whose only legacy is to do these shenanigans. And we are then
00:46:11.960
left, if they are successful, with this crap on the statute book.
0.88
00:46:16.020
Yeah, I think part of the reason that people are flooding to reform is because they don't trust
0.96
00:46:21.520
politicians anymore. And they just want something new. And it seems anti-establishment. That's kind of
00:46:26.340
the read that some people have. And this policy actually demonstrates, yet again, that the public
00:46:37.920
is being lied to by people who think that they can treat us like we're completely ignorant and born
0.93
00:46:45.820
yesterday and the public aren't buying it. I think there was some weird irony about the fact that
00:46:55.060
Starmer introduced this in a speech about patriotic renewal, he was saying. And he was talking about
00:47:00.060
reform quite directly and saying that he was talking about working class people having the
00:47:05.860
politics of grievance. And he was implying that a lot of this grievance that people have is
00:47:10.260
manufactured, which I think is. And then minutes later, he said, so we're going to have a digital
00:47:18.000
ID to stop the boats. So I think he has built up a caricature of the working class and saying that
00:47:25.480
the things that working class people care about aren't really real. But let me borrow one of those,
0.87
00:47:31.260
stopping the boats. And there you go. Here's the policy we've been trying to do for the past couple
00:47:35.420
of decades. It's really, I think it's really, really appalling. If people felt before they didn't
00:47:41.460
know what Starmer stands for, I think maybe they know now. And it's basically some sort of bland
00:47:48.500
Blairite policies and corporate interests. I think that's what this feels like. It feels like
00:47:53.960
population management doesn't really feel like someone that's got an aspiration for the country
00:47:58.440
that understands the things that ordinary people care about or the values that we live by.
00:48:04.380
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00:49:30.300
Do you remember when we were kids, Silky, and we said something that people didn't like and went,
00:49:36.480
oh, it's a free country, what are you going to do? Nobody says that anymore, do they?
00:49:41.420
It feels much less free, doesn't it? Yeah, no, absolutely. And like you say, if this does go
00:49:48.320
ahead, if we do have mandatory digital IDs, it will be one of the legacies of the Starmer government
00:49:54.140
that we then continue to live with. It's not something... The harms that are caused by something like
00:49:59.500
a mandatory digital ID scheme are long-lasting and irreversible. We have to be really clear about
00:50:05.120
that. You don't introduce something like this and then six months later have it taken away and
00:50:10.540
everyone deletes their digital ID. It doesn't happen. If this is rolled out, it's something that
00:50:15.560
the British public are going to have to live with. If it's something we have to live with, it is
00:50:19.400
something that will expand and grow in all of the ways that we've discussed, from the internet
00:50:23.400
to benefits, health, AI being used to process the data. If you just look at the flow of the tide in
00:50:32.520
politics towards all of these areas, digital ID will become the thing that gets caught up and that
00:50:38.680
gets expanded every single time. In fact, the question will be, why aren't we using the digital
00:50:45.880
IDs for this? Let's say, let's start with, it's going to be used for the right to work.
00:50:50.480
Currently, they're looking at somebody's citizenship and immigration status. Why aren't
00:50:58.180
they looking at their benefit status? That's an oversight, isn't it? Shouldn't we look at their
00:51:02.100
benefit status? If we're looking at their benefit status, shouldn't we look at their bank accounts
00:51:05.860
and see actually what money's in the bank accounts? Again, let's look at this in concert.
00:51:11.180
The Starmer government has just introduced mass bank spying powers on the premise of rooting out
00:51:16.040
welfare fraud. The work and pensions... Can I just pause you there? What does mass
00:51:21.040
banking spying powers, what does that actually mean in the realities of it, the practicalities?
00:51:27.800
So the Starmer government has just introduced a new law that means that private banks have to
00:51:33.520
search data about all of us, basically root through our bank statements all the time,
00:51:38.540
in order to flag people that they think might be receiving a benefit that shouldn't be receiving a
00:51:44.680
benefit. And given how complex the benefit system is, that's obviously destined for disaster.
00:51:52.300
But that's millions and millions of our bank statements being rooted through for government
00:51:59.040
administration purposes, basically. So we're seeing expansions of surveillance in multiple
00:52:04.100
different areas of life. That's on the premise of rooting out welfare fraud. The work and pensions
00:52:09.680
secretary has said in the days after the announcement about digital IDs, we can use this
00:52:16.340
for welfare fraud too. It's something that Blair said years ago. So soon then you've got, it's not
00:52:22.580
just about the right to work, it's also about benefits. When it's about benefits, it's about banking.
00:52:28.560
Again, the government webpage has already spoken about digital IDs being used for private banking too.
00:52:32.800
And then when you've got benefits work and banking, you probably should have health because that relates
00:52:39.400
to your benefits as well. And so the force, the impetus will be, why aren't you using the digital ID for
00:52:49.420
these other areas? It's an oversight, isn't it? And so that's how it will expand.
00:52:54.420
We could cut theft from supermarkets by making sure everyone taps in at the entrance, couldn't we?
00:52:58.700
Sure. Right? You can't come in unless you've scanned your digital ID. You know, we've got a lot of people
00:53:04.320
stealing stuff from shops, right? Because the police aren't enforcing the law. So we could solve that
00:53:09.660
with digital ID. And on and on and on and on it goes. Because once you have the infrastructure,
00:53:15.420
you are not going to run out of reasons to use it.
00:53:17.820
Yeah. I think with all of this, if you don't make the case for liberty, you just give way to
00:53:22.400
authoritarianism. The time to make case for liberty is now. Because this is the opening of the floodgates,
00:53:30.340
the introduction of a mandatory digital ID. That's the point of no return. Once we've got one,
00:53:36.100
fighting its expansion will be very, very difficult. But the time to really put up a fight is now,
00:53:41.240
so that we never have a mandatory digital ID in this country. Because if we do, what's inevitable is
00:53:46.420
that it will spiral into many, many areas of our life. And it will become a permit. And it will
00:53:50.160
become something that is used not to help people gain access to stuff, but to stop people from
00:53:55.440
doing stuff that the government doesn't want them to do. And also as well, just, and I think this is
00:53:59.740
an important point to raise. Let's go back again to COVID. Do you remember the trucker protests?
00:54:04.580
In Canada, yeah. In Canada. Do you remember when they froze bank accounts? Exactly.
00:54:08.500
I mean, if it's linked to your bank account, and you're doing something that the government finds
00:54:12.360
affects the safety of others, and we've spoken about how nebulous that term is. Well, I mean,
00:54:17.940
it's one step away from freezing bank accounts, isn't it? Yes. Well, that's, and look, we,
00:54:22.380
Boris Johnson sat in your seat right there when we interviewed him. And in the sub-stack section,
00:54:28.220
which we're about to do with you, where our supporters get to ask our guests questions,
00:54:32.680
we talked about COVID. And I said to him, look, you are, you were this libertarian prime minister.
00:54:38.720
And yet you did all of these things. And do you know what he said? He said, well,
00:54:42.160
this is what the public wanted. Now, I remember the public, quite a lot of the public wanted people
00:54:47.860
who weren't vaccinated not to be allowed to go to the hospital, not to get a doctor's appointment.
00:54:53.640
So if you were in a situation where the public demands something, and you've got a class of
00:54:58.660
politicians who will do whatever it is the public demands, because the media has lied to them
00:55:02.560
endlessly, what you're going to end up in, if you've got this system, is people denied all kinds of
00:55:08.140
things, not just banking. You know, you attended a protest, or you didn't get vaccinated, or you did
00:55:12.620
this, or you did that. Well, why should you get a doctor's appointment on our brilliant NHS?
00:55:17.900
What, do you deserve that? No. We've tracked your behavior. You tweeted three times about
00:55:22.400
how the NHS isn't as good as it should be. It's, it's, people, you made the point about
00:55:28.540
conspiratorial. I really don't think this is conspiratorial at all. This is not hard to imagine
00:55:33.200
when you look at the last five years that we all lived through.
00:55:36.480
Yeah. I don't think we should be squeamish about pointing out the risks whatsoever.
00:55:40.600
Because at this point, we have lived through that period. And also, we just, we just cannot
00:55:46.300
assess something like this without applying the political knowledge that we have and historical
00:55:52.680
knowledge that we have. And Johnson, the fact that the Johnson government introduced COVID IDs is
00:56:00.180
a perfect example. You had somebody that professed to be a libertarian, who's now saying in light of
00:56:05.440
Starmer's announcement that he will never carry a digital ID. And yet, when he was in government,
00:56:10.660
he basically did introduce one himself. People know that governments kind of follow the tide of
00:56:20.220
public opinion, which, by the way, is not, you know, there are elements to which opinion can be
00:56:25.220
guided and manufactured as well, of course. And I think that's why people don't trust this,
00:56:31.640
and people aren't going to buy it. And millions and millions of people, you're one, I'm one.
00:56:42.040
Well, on that happy note, Cirque, it's always great to have you on the show. Please keep up
00:56:45.160
your good work at Big Brother Watch. We're big fans of yours. It's always great to have you on the
00:56:49.180
show. We're going to ask you a bunch of questions from our supporters in a second. But before we do,
00:56:54.380
what do you think is the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be?
00:56:56.920
I think what no one's talking about is the massive expansion of surveillance in other areas at the
00:57:03.600
moment that, put together with the digital ID, we should be really worried about. The massive
00:57:07.660
expansion of live facial recognition cameras across the country, and mass banks buying powers
00:57:13.600
as well that have been introduced by the Starmer government. So this is a government that's expanding
00:57:18.520
surveillance in lots of different areas. And so when we talk about digital ID, it's important to
00:57:24.720
think about the other things that are happening and how these might link together.
00:57:28.520
Silky, thank you very much. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where we ask Silky your questions.
00:57:34.600
At what point do these increasingly authoritarian laws spill over to no longer being a free country?
00:57:40.380
And what point is the tipping point at which we all say no more?