Digital ID Cards - Imagine

Please! I invite you to come back in time with me to when I was not sixty-four but twenty-four.

Fresh out of university with a first-class honours in computer science, awarded special commendation and a prize for outstanding achievement. I was on top of my game, hand firmly on the tiller of my small craft, charting a course to make a better world armed with the ruthless efficiency of my newfound craft.

I was sitting in the smart living room of a townhouse just a stone’s throw from a world-leading Cambridge hospital. Around me sat the board of a newly founded company, created to provide efficient tools for the new science of genetic analysis, diagnosing everything from Down’s syndrome to cancer. We were going to make the world healthier, from cradle to crypt.

Before business, the custom was coffee and cake. *Yabalkov sladkish*, a moist sponge with grated apples, cinnamon, sometimes walnuts. Delicious. A Bulgarian favourite.

I don’t recall how the subject of digital identity cards came up, but I remember my own enthusiasm as I launched into all the benefits such efficiency could bring.

Nadya, short for Nadezhda, meaning hope, sat across the table. Usually, she smiled when I waxed lyrical about technology, perhaps enjoying the exuberance of youth. But this time, her face drained from rosy to ashen. She rose, gathered the plates, and with quiet fury called me a fool.

“You have never been asked ‘Papers, please’ at a checkpoint.”

The silence that followed was heavy, and the meeting moved on.

At first I bristled. How dare she call me a fool? Whatever her experience, surely it was politics, not technology, that had caused it. We lived in a liberal democracy. We voted. We had a say. Right?

But her words stayed with me longer than the taste of that *sladkish*.

I later learned Nadya's story. Bulgaria, once aligned with Nazi Germany, switched sides when the Red Army arrived. The Communist Party consolidated power, nationalising land, seizing property, branding factory owners like Nadya’s family “class enemies.” Overnight, they lost everything. They were lucky to escape to the UK. Others were not so lucky, many were imprisoned, many sent to forced labour camps.

For Nadya, “papers, please” was not efficiency. It was interrogation, detention, or worse.

Digital ID is about efficiency. And efficiency, in the wrong hands, becomes ruthless efficiency.

Right now, it is being sold as a way to make life easier, or to stop immigrants “stealing what is rightfully yours.” Just as leaving the EU was sold as giving the NHS £350 million a week. Just as “Take Back Control” or “Make America Great Again” were sold as patriotism and family values. They all end with power, efficient power, falling into the hands of an elite. And too many people follow along willingly.

At that same Cambridge table we discussed microchips in the hand. No keys, no wallet, no queues, wave your hand and doors open, tills ring, bank balances adjust. Who could resist thousands, if not millions, wouldn't should Tesco or Walmart offer 5% off and no waiting?

People already have done this in chique bars in LA! The convenience is seductive. The efficiency irresistible. Until the wind changes direction.

We live in a liberal democracy. If we’ve nothing to hide, we’ve nothing to fear. Right?

But history whispers otherwise. Who could believe armed forces would detain people on the street for their skin colour or surname? Who could believe antifascists (Antifa) would be branded enemies of the state? Who could believe Jews, Hindus, or Muslims persecuted for their faith in a modern democracy? Who could believe abortion rights protesters targeted? Who could believe terrorism laws used against someone waving a Palestine Action flag? And yet, here we are.

I would never have believed Trump, Putin, Gaza, Ukraine, Yvette Cooper subverting parliamentary process. I would never have believed half the things we now accept as reality. And yet here we are.

Digital IDs promise efficiency and power. And the next UK government could well be led by Nigel Farage, who would love nothing more than stoking fear and racism beneath a waving Union Jack. Digital IDs in his hands would be as ruthlessly efficient as machine guns and tanks. Perhaps they won’t be pointed at you at first. Nadya, too, as a child, could never have imagined that “Papers, please” would one day mean her family fleeing for their lives.

I have been, by heritage or choice, a Jew, an atheist, a philosophical materialist, a BDSM practitioner, fiercely feminist, LGBTQ+ positive, pro-vaccine, pro-science, anti-gun. Tell me which of these identities would not be condemned somewhere in the world today? Shockingly, many in the United States right now.

So no, I don’t think digital IDs are worth it. I don’t believe human migration, the innate urge of Homo sapiens to move towards lands with more to offer, is the great enemy that nationalists claim. And even if it were, I would still prefer to live in an uncomfortable but shared world than a comfortable one where half feast while half starve, no matter the colour of their skin or the fairy tales they believe.

The real issues we face are vast and global: wealth inequality, failing education, broken housing, artificial intelligence, and pandemics. None of these will be solved by building walls or assigning numbers to people. Our salvation lies in tearing barriers down, not erecting them.

Digital IDs are not salvation. They are nothing more than a ruthlessly efficient means to separate, to control, to divide.

But well,  enough of that. Michael on a rant again. Perhaps it is time for you to take a slice of cake, *yabalkov sladkish*, switch on the radio, and hum along to John Lennon’s *Imagine*. We know not to take it too literally, yet there is something powerful in imagining no borders, no digital IDs, no walls between us, only the stubborn hope that we might choose connection over control.

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"Nadya" is a name change. It was another Bulgarian name.

UK Gov Petition Do not introduce Digital ID cards