this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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People's Republic of Britain
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We are also against mandatory physical ID.
Oh, wow! As someone who was born and raised in a country that had IDs for just shy of 100 years - what's the logic behind that?
The point is that it's mandatory. There is currently no mandatory ID in the UK
Yeah, I get that, but is just the case of "we're against it because it's mandatory"? Like, you're not against the concept of an ID, just the fact that it's mandatory?
Why is that? What's malicious about it?
Yes. The government has no business forcing us to use their mandatory ID for tracking us.
"Tracking"? How do you use an ID for tracking?
I mean, sure, digital ID would allow that in some way (although that's already fully possible with other means), but a physical ID?
When it's used to check into museums and use trains and online services just like China
There's a massive gap between "mandatory ID" and "like China", mate.
Most of central Europe has mandatory IDs. Nobody gives a fuck because nobody who checks them has the time to report anything anywhere, even if anybody required anything like that. It's literally only used to check the age of a person 99% of the time.
And nobody checks them when you want to enter a museum.
Like Spain then, where you can't buy a metro ticket without ID
Probably due to taxing laws. Citizens get a discount, tourists don't. Or you get a discount dependant on your age, etc.
Also: the fact that you bought a metro tickets contains zero actionable information for any "agency". Great, you have a ticket. When will you use it, though?
And, again, the entirety of Central Europe has mandatory IDs for decades. Just look at how incompetent the police over there is to see how little it does for "spying" or "controlling the population".
Bah! Poland's communist government imposed upon them by the USSR made the IDs mandatory and they still got toppled by the student and worker underground. Where was this "control" then?
Yes it does. It links my identity to the locations...
My travel through the city is now in a database. It's the sort of thing that a authoritarian state would find very useful to track down dissidents.
I'm not saying that Spain's current government would use it in this way, but they've constructed a system that would be very useful to a future bad actor. It's naive to think governments will always be benign and never abuse such systems.
By the same token you we should be campaigning for everybody being fully anonymous and wearing a mask at all times.
Feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Well I'm certainly against forced face reveal so facial recognition cameras can work. I think privacy is something we need to reclaim.
common case for ID use is when you lost your keys and need to break into your own home