Today it's a mandatory digital ID card to prove you have the right to work but in the future you might have to use it to access the NHS, to rent or buy a home, or to access benefits. It's time to fight back, 'Say No to Digital IDs'. Join the Campaign: action.openrightsgroup.org/join-campaig...

Govt claims requiring all adults in Britain to have “digital ID” will “help control borders” and “illegal immigtation”. That could only be true if police are given powers to require ID, without suspicion of a crime. A 🧵explaining why:

If you've been enjoying ITV's the Hack, read up further on what happened next - the extraordinary trove of damning evidence which emerged in multiple legal cases but which were never tested in court www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

The kids get it.

He can't not know that.

I saw an ad at the airport for a digital CA driver's license pilot program. Not just "No", but "Fuck! No!" Apart from any other reason, don't put your license on your phone that you'd hand unlocked to someone to view it.

I wonder what attracted him to a party led by a massive Putin fan… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"their place in history is settled", says politician revising history to fit his contemporary bigotries.

There is no longer any room for doubt about what kind of people Reform attracts, and they do not have the UK's national interests at heart. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Kind of feels like a big deal that a Reform/Brexit Party former MEP has been convicted of taking bribes to promote Russian interests in Ukraine, and it feels like a bigger deal that this isn’t being treated as the major scandal that it clearly is.

A digital identity scheme (one that allows you to assert your identity, right to work, citizenship, etc.) is a superset of a digital age verification (AV) scheme. If you look at the mess the Government's made of AV, and think they'll do better with digital ID, I've got aTaj Mahal to sell you.

Thread worth reading.

Ok. They’ve pissed me off. I’m back to tell you 3 things about ID cards: 1. Migrants ALREADY HAVE biometric ID cards & govts have been trying to digitise them for years w repeated fuckups & failures causing complete chaos - they don’t work, you do not want that system for you.

We already have unique Identifiers for the NHS and HMRC. Unnecessary to add another. It won’t fix anything. Most enthusiastic supporters are thinking of small (population) Eu countries and those I’ve seen are also white. I’ve also experienced first hand how Singapore uses/abuses its ID cards.

Delighted to assist: “What’s the UK issue with ID cards?” | …the answer is as follows: Britons… alecmuffett.com/article/115209

Because of this (is a tiny thread, but I think it covers it all):

Blair’s institute wants your ID card to link to the NHS. When the report says “the PM should lead”, the report authors seem to mean TBI institute.global/insights/pub...

It’s Labour’s conference week, so the Government is announcing digital ID cards and re-announcing its politically-controlled centralised database of all of your medical notes. medconfidential.org/2025/single-...

shot, chaser.

This is one of two things you really need to know about the ID Card non-policy: it's already been tried, it cost billions, and it delivered absolutely zero benefit. 1/2

Our investigation — also in today’s New Statesman - is based on months on months of research, 29 interviews with current and former TBI staff, FOI disclosures and public documents. Do have a read www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

What could be wrong with this? After all, if you've nothing to hide, you can't possibly object to an agent of the state peering over your shoulder, watching your every move online. All totally fine.

This is the usual bad-faith garbage of a man who plans never to be politically accountable. He should be made to pay overtime for all the NHS staff, like the nurse I've just seen, who are fielding calls and emails asking "what can I take instead of paracetamol? I don't want to catch autism". 😠🙄🤯

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

'Tylenol' is known in the civilised world as Paracetamol 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. Studied 186,000 children whose mothers were treated with paracetamol during pregnancy. news.ki.se/no-link-betw...

Gosh. Even by the debased standards of our new right, this is notably detached from reality.

It was obvious when EU citizens had the terms of their settlement here retrospectively revoked that a precedent was being set and that, in time, the argument would move on to other categories of migrant, always tending towards a purity test of who is ‘indigenous’. Unless resisted.

Anyone shocked that Reform plan to deport immigrants with Indefinite Leave to Remain hasn’t been paying attention. Next it will be stripping citizenship from dual citizens, then deporting them. Who do you think Reform are? This. This is who they are.

Catch Eye hack Richard Brooks tonight on ITV1 in The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money. The documentary tells the story of how some companies with little or no track record in supplying PPE or medical tests were given massive contracts - and made a killing from Covid. 🕙 10:15pm on ITV1 / ITVX

Governor Tim Walz, "If you’ve ever wondered how democracy dies, you’re witnessing it. This is North Korea style stuff" "And it’s being done because this is a weak, thin-skinned man who’s failing as a president" "All of the things he promised are not happening" "This is exactly what dictators do"

Portugal has officially recognised Palestine as a state, becoming the 4th country to do so today (after the UK, Australia & Canada) and the 151st overall. More are expected to follow suit in the coming days, including France, Luxembourg, Andorra, Malta & possibly Belgium, San Marino & New Zealand.

“The people I met at these meetings did not conflate reality with necessity; they believed the world could be made otherwise.”

TRENTE DEUX journalistes tués. En UNE frappe. En d'autres temps, cela aurait fait les gros titres de tous les journaux. Mais qui se préoccupe du Yémen ?

The Foreign Affairs Commission Committee has found that cuts to the FCDO “open the door to malign influence at the UN Security Council”. I wrote about these cuts in March for ⁦‪Byline Times bylinetimes.com/2024/05/01/f...

This thread is really worth a read.

Pause your doomscrolling and listen to this story.

I am not going to be able to return to my job…huh

Israel presses on with Gaza City assault, 34 Palestinians killed reut.rs/3Vnn91D

I wrote this to the (then) Foreign Secretary, William Hague, 14 years ago. The West's careless indifference to Palestinians' lives and self-determination has undoubtedly prolonged conflict in the region, and their situation has worsened immeasurably since then. What a fatal failure of policy.

RDI Chairman @garrykasparov.bsky.social: "Last night, apropos of nothing at all, I was thinking about how in Russia, you can’t go on television and make fun of the president or his favorites."

Using LLMs in this context essentially guarantees that existing biases are maintained and reflected consistently. There’s no longer a way to seek out a “good doctor” if they’re all flattened into using the same poisoned data sets. There is no argument in favor of the ethics of any of this.

What's that thing they call it, when the police act without accountability to the elected legislature?

Every 4 years Ireland's data protection "regulator" writes to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties to say their investigation into shady Real Time Bidding ad networks' surveillance of <everyone> is at a "mature" stage and its release is imminent And surveillance + sale of data to ANYONE goes on

Leur ligne depuis l’entrée dans les années 2000 oui : faire passer la parole de haine comme une « liberté de s’exprimer ». Et ainsi faire exploser le narratif du « Plus jamais ça ».

It is foolish to think that ANY increased restrictions on immigration are going to make this mob go quiet. No policy is going to change the far right mobilization or shift public opinion, because the hostility to migrants is NOT BUILT ON FACTS. We know this, we have observed the pattern for years.

I think the Government should treat this state visit the way Trump treats his "deals", and just tell him it's off.

let me share this one again. important

Robert Redford on Trump: “Instead of a moral compass in the Oval Office, there’s a moral vacuum. Instead of a president who says we’re all in it together, we have a president who’s in it for himself. Instead of words that uplift and unite, we hear words that inflame and divide.”

If you can’t comment on a foreign billionaire calling for your government to be brought down, what is the point of you?