Privacy experts have criticized the United Kingdom government plans to create a mobile digital identity wallet application, describing it as “putting older brother in their pocket.”
The wallet and the GOV.UK application are a medium “to simplify access to services and documents,” says the official announcement published on Wednesday, January 21, 2025. Citizens will be able to carry identification documents issued by the Government, such as their Driving license or passport, directly on your phones, similar to how many of us currently store our bank cards.
The plan echoes the EU digital identity wallet scheme that was approved last year despite the criticisms of privacy experts. In the United Kingdom, as in the EU, concerns are the same: greater comfort should not reach the expense of greater surveillance and data security risks.
“Honeypot for hackers”
With the wallet Gov.uk that will be released during the summer, the British will soon be able to scan their identification documents digitally within the application so that it is easier to demonstrate their age or identity as necessary.
The ID Wallet application will also allow citizens to easily administer all their government activities and access public services in one place.
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On December 4, 2024, EU’s digital identity wallet landed in Italy despite privacy concerns, with a local journalist who considers IT wallet as “EU digital cage.” All Italians can now digitally scan your driver’s license and your health card directly from the IO application, if you want to do it, since the service is voluntary when writing.
Despite the benefits, Silkie Carlo, director of the United Kingdom privacy defenders group, Big Brother Watch, refers to the large amount of personal information that will enter the application.
“The government is putting the older brother in his pocket with a new application to access all his identity documents and more,” he warns, warns
The Government ensures that “technology will use security characteristics that are integrated in modern smartphones, including facial recognition controls similar to those used when people pay with a digital bank card.”
However, Carlo is still concerned about the security risks of storing such confidential identifiers information within a single application. She said: “The addition of our facial recognition data makes this expanding identity system incredibly sensitive, intrusive and a honeypot for computer pirates.”
After all, the United Kingdom’s public system has a bad history to keep people’s data safe. In March last year, for example, a ransomware gang pirate the NHS Dumfries and the Galloway digital database and stole 3TB of identification information belonging to both staff and staff.
📱The government is putting Big Brother in your pocket with a new application to access all your identity documents and more “this is a proposal for a digital identification system that covers everything that will have a lot of information about each From us, from taxes to health data, extracted from multiple … pic.twitter.com/nkgkwuf3eqJanuary 21, 2025
As mentioned above, the wallet Gov.uk will be launched in the summer of 2025, for iOS and Android devices. The digital version of the veteran card will be available first, with the mobile driver’s license that follows later in the year. All other identification documents and digital services are expected to be in operation by 2027.
According to the Secretary of Transportation of the United Kingdom, Heidi Alexander, this represents a “change of play” for all British who use their driver’s license as an identification. “Innovation puts power again in people, making everyday interactions faster, easier and safely,” he added.
This is how Carlo de Big Brother Watch feels. Although the United Kingdom government should modernize its identification system and give people digital options, it believes that this approach runs the risk of achieving the opposite of the expected: “It actually reduces our choices and control our own data,” he said Carlo
In general, Carlo believes that this system finally unveils all people who still depend on non -digital identification forms. She said: “Despite our campaign, the government is inexplicably refusing to legally protect the right to use non -digital identification, and has not established if we can control how much of our confidential information will be available through this wallet.”
