More than 2.8 million Britons signed a petition on Wednesday calling on the British government to roll back the mandatory digital ID system, saying it will lead to ‘mass surveillance and digital control’.
The ID scheme, called ‘Brit Card’ and announced last week by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, will be rolled out in August 2029 in a bid by the Labor government to crack down on illegal immigration, saying it would prevent anyone who does not do so from working in Britain.
But critics of the plan argue that its impact on illegal immigration will not be significant enough to offset the privacy concerns it poses.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers his speech during the Labor Party conference at ACC Liverpool on September 30, 2025 in Liverpool, England. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
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But according to one security expert, digital ID is actually not nearly as worrying as most opponents of the system think.
“When you give your digital ID to a trusting party, they don’t ping to a central database,” he continued. “They look at the digital ID you presented and can use cryptography to determine the authenticity of the digital document.”
Starr, whose company works with governments around the world to provide decentralized digital ID options, said the controversy surrounding digital ID comes down to poor conception and a lack of understanding.
The technology guru said he believes Britain has handled the rollout of digital ID the wrong way by making it mandatory and releasing few details about the system itself.
Starr argued that governments have the right to know who their citizens are and that countries, including the US, already have systems in place that track their populations, including by issuing social security numbers – a system the US has relied on since 1936.
When asked about concerns about a government’s ability to enforce mass surveillance with the ease the technology could provide, even if that isn’t the original intent, Starr said the bottom line is that those personal privacy protections need to be in place from the start.
A Harmons supermarket employee demonstrates as she scans a QR code (R) from a customer’s phone (L) to verify his age when making a beer purchase at a Harmons supermarket on August 4, 2021 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (George Frey/Getty Images)
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“We value personal freedom in a way that other countries don’t, and generally speaking, individuals don’t want the federal government working in their affairs every day,” Starr explained in reference to the American public. “The fear people have about digital identity is that it is a surveillance capability.”
Starr explained that some are concerned that every time a digital ID is used, it will then alert or “call home” a government tracking system — a concern that privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have marked.
“It’s not about the technology, it’s about managing fear and managing what is actually deployed,” he added, noting that safeguards can be put in place to counter these concerns.
Even though there is no federal version of a digital ID, more than a dozen states have already started issuing mobile driver’s licenses.
A federal version of a digital ID would theoretically only include an individual’s information that the government already has access to, including details such as passport information.
But there’s another big problem people are identifying when it comes to digital IDs: how can we ensure that personal information is protected from identity theft, which has become a major problem in recent years amid massive cyber breaches.
A person scans and downloads an app to begin the process of converting their physical driver’s license to an official digital version that can be stored on a cell phone at a Harmons convenience store on August 4, 2021 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (George Frey/Getty Images)
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According to Starr, the “architecture of digital identity” differs from centralized databases used by institutions such as hospitals, which have proven vulnerable to cyber attacks and data breaches.
Decentralized systems, as in the case of a digital ID, make hacking “almost impossible” because “the only way to hack a million IDs is to hack a million phones,” he explained.
“There are solutions. It’s not a technology problem, it’s an education problem, it’s an anxiety problem,” Starr said. “They are also poorly thought out solutions that open the door to bad behavior.”
