For many, it's a goal to avoid having a national ID, for privacy-from-the-government reasons. The ACLU has a decent writeup about the issue: https://www.aclu.org/other/5-problems-national-id-cards

Similar to constant surveillance, the psychological implications of mandatory ID are horrifying. It tips the scale from "You are born free, but you must fulfill certain obligations to cooperate with others" to "You exist first and foremost through the lens of the government. You are not permitted to live outside the bureaucratic abstraction of you."

Well then easy solution: you refrain from opting in into personal ID cards, but you're responsible for all fraudular and other activity that is done under your name and could have been prevented by having an ID card lock down your identity.

Holding victims civilly liable for fraud is not a fair or liberal alternative to government monitoring. Should I also have no recourse when my house is burglarized if I fail to install cameras that send a feed to the police?

> Should I also have no recourse when my house is burglarized if I fail to install cameras that send a feed to the police?

That comparison is wrong on multiple levels:

1) you may be automatically at fault already when not doing what the government is requiring you to do for public safety reasons (for example, your car has a rusty brake pipe, you do not do the yearly mandatory checkup, pipe explodes, car crashes into something)

2) contrary to a feed to the police, showing your federal ID card at a bank or car dealership when applying for a loan does not cause the government to know you were at the bank or the car dealership. Therefore it is not surveillance.

Go cry about it to Rousseau. If you want to continue enjoy the benefits of a modern society, to some small degree, you are going to have to play its little games.

> "You exist first and foremost through the lens of the government. You are not permitted to live outside the bureaucratic abstraction of you."

Aren't we already at that point?

Sort of, but generally not on the minute-to-minute basis that is being forced to carry government identification at all times. And in cases where that may de facto be the case, e.g. being a minority near a border, that's already abhorrent. That whole paradigm should be reversed rather than further generalized.

> being a minority near a border, that's already abhorrent.

That's abhorrent because they are targeted which force them to carry it.

Isn't driver license a government identification anyway? Sure no one is forced to have it, but that won't change much if everyone had it.

I'm not arguing about forcing carrying it either. Just about whether it would be bad if it existed.

That's not the case in the UK - we don't have any single government issued identity document/card that everyone has to have.

The UK is a special case and will not be "Europe" for long besides. Homogenisation of rules can take a while, especially when there is a cultural aversion to them. In this case I'd say there simply has not been enough time for this to happen.

Barring a rather spectacular feat of engineering, the UK won't be relocating itself from Europe any time soon (much to the chagrin of those who seem to want to plonk us next to Singapore ...)

Ireland also does not have mandatory ID, nor do the Nordic countries. I don't think it's as clear cut as you make it out to be.

The Irish (PSC) Public Services Card is getting close to being a de facto ID card at this point.

Agreed - it's turned out to be a privacy and security fiasco. Hopefully, the ICCL challenges will put an end to it.

England will not be less a part of Europe just because she leaves the EU. The EU was never perfectly cohesive to start with [0], and is made up of extremely disparate nations and cultures. Plus, England never adopted the Euro (which is probably for good reason, seeing as interest rates are now even further down because the ECB can't properly conduct monetary policy).

The EU was never comparable to, say, America in terms of unity. Europe had too much history for it to work perfectly - every one was on what had been at some point some one else's land.

[0] https://europedirectemn.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/treaties...

"The EU was never perfectly cohesive to start with"

You could say that about the UK - which lost a significant chunk last century and could well lose rather more this century.

But your identity is verified through some means when opening an account, even if there is no unique document, no?

Example https://www.tsb.co.uk/current-accounts/faqs/identity/

Yes it is. Electoral roll.

For which to get on you need an address to live at. For which to get one, you need a bank account (at least, but in 99.9% cases this alone is not enough), otherwise no agency is going to give rent you a house.

> For which to get on you need an address to live at. For which to get one, you need a bank account (at least, but in 99.9% cases this alone is not enough), otherwise no agency is going to give rent you a house.

At what age do you become eligible for the electoral roll? At least in the states most people register to vote before they leave the house of their parents.

Can't find a quick answer on gov.uk, but I somewhat loosely recall that they let you register when you're 16.

One of many basic cultural differences between the UK and the EU. In the EU you must give up your biometrics (fingerprint) by law. Doesn't surprise me that they are leaving.

I think surveillance techniques and invasion of privacy are often spearheaded by the UK. I remember the CCTV cameras where everywhere long before other countries leveraged them at that scale.

Then great for the EU. God willing, y'all will roll back some of that stuff if she leaves.

Please show which law this is, I've never had to give my biometrics to anyone but the US government when visiting there.

All the UK passports and non-national resident ID cards are facial biometric.

> In the EU you must give up your biometrics (fingerprint) by law

Generic and incorrect statement

Also, I'm not an UK citizen and I'm forced to give up my biometrics (face) whenever flying out of an UK airport. Or when flying into the US.