After saying, on his accession to power, that he would scrap Keir Starmer’s rightly-hated digital ID scheme, Andy Burnham’s government has U-turned and doubled down.

Ministers are considering making UK citizens produce passport ID or a driving licence just to be able to access social media, the Times reported.

The move is being framed as a way to clamp down on children using social media as the government prepares to announce plans for an under-16s ban on platforms.

ID plan to safeguard children is a trojan horse

Around eight million Britons do not have passports, which currently cost at least £102. More than 14 million do not have a driving licence.

The betrayal forms part of the UK establishment’s war on privacy. Bans on children accessing social media have failed wherever they have been introduced, including in Australia which piloted the idea. Some 85% of Australian children still access social media despite the ban there and often do so in ways that make them less safe.

So the ‘child ban’ does not protect children and the government knows it, but it plans to force adults to prove they are adults, imposing ID checks by the back door.

This is a deep betrayal and open war on the freedom of UK people to communicate, organise and resist in privacy.

Enshittification

Maya Thomas, of the privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said:

Children deserve real online protections, not a sweeping surveillance scheme that has failed across the world and will introduce new risks to their safety.

This is not a policy for children, but one that effects every single adult using social media in the country.

The Government’s requirement that all of us show a passport or driving licence to open a social media account is a national ID scheme by the back door.

It would spell the death of whistle-blower, dissident and similar anonymous accounts that enrich democracy, and severely widen the scope for invasive social media surveillance.

The Government must urgently rethink this dangerous plan to build a sprawling, discriminatory digital ID system, and focus instead on supporting genuine child safety online.

Burnham is again showing that he has no intention of being any better than his predecessor in the government’s war on UK rights and freedoms. Indeed, he is clearly determined to go further and to be just as dishonest to achieve it.

Featured image via Boris Hamer/ Pexels

By Skwawkbox

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