Brian Wheele
The government is facing questions over whether the system at the heart of its plans for digital ID can be trusted to keep people's personal data secure.
Digital ID will be made available to all UK citizens and legal residents but will only be mandatory for employment, under the government's proposals.
Full details of how the system will work have yet to be announced but Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has insisted it "will have security at its core".
It will be based on two government-built systems - Gov.uk One Login and Gov.uk Wallet.
One Login is a single account for accessing public services online, which the government says more than 12 million people have already signed up to.
By this time next year that might be as many as 20 million, as people registering as company directors will have to verify their identity through One Login from 18 November.
Gov.UK Wallet has not yet been launched but it could eventually allow citizens to store their digital ID - including name, date of birth, nationality and residence status, and a photo - on their smartphones.
Users will need a Gov.UK One Login to access the wallet.
Last month, the government launched a digital identity card for military veterans to test the concept.
The government hopes to avoid security issues by keeping the personal details to be accessed through One Login in individual government departments rather than in a single, centralised database.
But veteran civil liberties campaigner and Conservative MP David Davis has raised concerns about potential flaws in the design and implementation of One Login that he says could leave it - and the new digital ID scheme - vulnerable to hackers.
Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate earlier this month, he said: "What will happen when this system comes into effect is that the entire population's entire data will be open to malevolent actors - foreign nations, ransomware criminal
No comments:
Post a Comment