Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is again promoting a controversial plan to give every British citizen a digital ID. This would entail the utilization of new biometric technology to store a person’s passport, driving license, tax records, qualifications, and their right to work status.
Sir Tony had previously attempted to introduce ID cards during his time as Prime Minister.
Tony Blair and former Conservative lawmaker William Hague have stated that a major transformation of the government with regards to technology is necessary in order to keep up with the ever-changing world.
However, there was backlash from their demands with Sir Jake Berry calling it a “creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave.”
Blair and Hague revealed their plot in an article for The Times, in which they said “politics must change radically because the world is changing radically.
“We are living through a 21st-century technology revolution as huge in its implications as the 19th-century industrial revolution.”
The duo alleged that current politicians were “in danger of conducting a 20th-century fight at the margins of tax and spending policy when the issue is how we harness this new revolution to reimagine the state and public services.”
The duo demand digital IDs for every citizen – they also called for “a national health infrastructure that uses data to improve care and keep costs down, and sovereign AI systems backed by supercomputing capabilities.”
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 Blair highlighted how countries “as small as Estonia and as large as India’ are moving towards digital IDs.
“If you look at the biometric technology that allows you to do digital ID today, it can overcome many of these problems,’ Blair said.
Big Brother Watch condemned Blair for pushing for a digital identity system.
Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said: “Sir Tony and Lord Hague are absolutely right about the need for the UK to take leadership in technological innovation, but this means protecting people’s rights and privacy, not reviving failed proposals for an intrusive mass digital identity system and a database state.”
Carlo added: “A sprawling digital identity system of the type described by Sir Tony and Lord Hague is utterly retrograde and would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK. The public has consistently opposed mandatory ID systems and there is absolutely nothing to suggest the public would want or support such a digital ID system now.”
Blair recently called for global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to push national governments to introduce “digital infrastructure” that monitors who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t.
