Each time, our findings were dismissed as edge cases, localised lapses that affected a miniscule percentage of users. But these percentages add up over time and result in millions of individual miscarriages of justice when scaled up to 1.4 billion people.
In 2020, we reported on how the Indian government was using Aadhar as the starting point to build an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to provide a "360 degree view" of the lives of every Indian citizen. The capabilities of such a database, which is not yet complete, are so terrifying that even the Indian bureaucrat who first proposed it told our reporter that he feared its misuse.
Our investigations into Aadhar revealed that once such a system is implemented, it is almost impossible to prevent its proliferation into every interaction between the state and the resident, which turns each failed transaction into a potential criminal breach.
This is what happened in India with Aadhar, and this is the idealised state of Brit Card. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said as much at a Fringe event at the Labour conference.
Once the scheme is rolled out, pressure will build to link your Brit Card to your other IDs such as your NHS number, and when your ID glitches at the pharmacy, it is a relatively trivial task to build a system that flags this transaction to the Home Office to open an inquiry into your resident status. Imagine the postmaster scandal, except where every one of us is a few failed biometrics away from being postmastered.
Politicians know that national IDs are hugely unpopular, which is why they invariably start with a scape-goat to sell the system to a sceptical public. These scapegoats offer a glimpse into the insecurities hidden in the national psyche. In India, Aadhar was sold to middle-class India as a technological balm to the widespread perception of corruption.
In the UK, the Starmer government has tapped into the well-trodden myth that migrants are drawn to the UK in search of work to roll out compulsory work IDs as the first step to a national ID card. The Brit Card press release claims: "This will stop those with no right to be here from being able to find work, curbing their prospect of earning money, one of the key "pull factors" for people who come to the UK illegally". A wide body of work finds no evidence to support this claim.
As a documented immigrant, I already have a digital work ID. Those who employ undocumented workers will simply continue to do so, but will now have an excuse to pay them even less. The people who will struggle are ordinary citizens of the UK who will suddenly find that a chance bureaucratic lapse has meant they are undocumented aliens in their own country.
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