Do We Really Want a Digital Bill of Rights?
Digital ID, don’t you just hate it? I do, probably not for the same reasons as you, but it should be a point of agreement from where we can start. Can we also agree that digital ID is important, immensely wide ranging and that it means so much more than the abominations that are digital ID cards – ‘BritCard’ and their ilk; let’s get that out of the way from the start.
Being able to prove your identity securely and privately share things about yourself online with the consent of both parties, when you want to, not when others demand – the crucial factor – occurs many times a day for vast numbers of us. Get it right and we preserve online privacy and free speech, enable e-commerce and the wider economy, support the rule of law and much, much more. Get it wrong and we open the door to crime against individuals and organisations, hamper the economy and provide a tantalising tool for tyrannical government. So, not too different from where we are today then, I think we can agree.
Digital ID is important, but it is also a mess. A mess that sustains a multi billion-dollar global crime wave. A mess that frustrates and exasperates anyone who has to use a phone or computer and a password. It needs sorting out, but the only thing more of a mess than digital ID is the debate about digital ID. It is stuck on ID cards. We’ve got to get past that. Hats off to the Daily Sceptic for hosting the debate, possibly the only venue doing so, but as to what is being proposed, well that’s another matter.
Take for example Together’s draft Digital Bill of Rights (DBR) getting an airing on DS in July. Article 1 is “Your Right to Choose Digital or Offline Options”. Reading this on the Together website I choose offline, so where do I sign up for Together’s equivalent offline services? I searched in vain. How about donating to its cause? That would come under the next clause: “The Right to Use Cash: You must be able to make purchases with physical cash if you choose.” I choose but I cannot donate by cash, notes and coins, because they only take digital forms of payment and quite a lot of your ID while they are at it.
Together is not the only one not practising what it preaches. Nigel Farage supports the Cash is King campaign but all the while you cannot donate to Reform with notes and coins. But crypto? That’ll do nicely sir. As for cashisfreedom.uk, one of many campaigns against the digitisation of money, you guessed it, you can only donate digitally.
Am I being a pedant? Yes, but in order to illustrate the trouble that we are going to be in if any of these campaigns succeeds and that draft DBR makes it onto the statute books. Because where there are rights there are rights lawyers. If you think I am annoying just imagine what a digital rights lawyer will be like. Actually we already know: quite like a human rights lawyer. The ECHR was drawn up with noble intentions but these days the title human rights lawyer is verging on a term of abuse.
More poorly thought-through rights will mean more vexatious, activist, Lefty lawyers. Together, Reform and the Daily Sceptic to name but a few would all contravene that DBR. You can be sure that activists will be complaining that their newly granted digital rights are being breached, demanding DS employs staff to process imaginary envelopes of coins sent by post for subscriptions and that it prints and circulates a physical paper, even though they wouldn’t be seen dead subscribing or reading it. Who cares! The cost would sink the organisation. Job done.
Why are we even resorting to bills of rights? Sir Roger Scruton complained about the growth of rights, moving from fundamental liberties to extensive claims on the state and other third parties. Is this really a tool of the Right, or are we just aping our opponents? Perhaps it is just my libertarian tendencies, but I don’t see politicians coming up with any good legislation for digital services. Politicians egged on by activists are the geniuses who gave us cookie banners and GDPR. Look at the damage that has done in just the health sector. GDPR rebranded internally within the NHS as Information Governance (IG) has been a gift to the lanyard wearing do-nothing bureaucrats who either can’t be bothered to modernise or see IT as a threat to jobs which must be impeded at all costs and by any means. Little wonder that IT in the NHS is so dreadful and perpetually lagging by decades. Nice work, comrades.
What of the DBR’s other six articles? A grab bag of grievances from de-banking to online anonymity, but not all bad. Statements such as “Your personal data is yours” are spot on but the rejoinder “You decide who can collect it, how it’s used, and when it should be deleted” is lame: you already have those rights. How about being really radical and campaigning for personal data to never be stored after use? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about how your data is being used or have to ask for it to be deleted, it would already be gone. Organisations couldn’t be held to ransom for it. Hapless government employees couldn’t accidentally email it to our enemies. Technically we could do it, an article on this site already discussed how with Web 3.0 and Self Sovereign ID.
We have technical solutions but politically we are nowhere near sorting out this mess. Using our opponents’ bogus rights tactics while simultaneously legislating into existence an enemy army of digital rights lawyers cannot be the answer. As ever, Scruton’s advice should be heeded: hesitate.
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It’s not the tech I’m worried about, nor storing my biometrics even. In an ideal world without corruption, it’s a fine idea. Why not?
But no, in reality I’m worried about the intent. It is inevitable, planned even, that they will be used for evil.
If you use a mobile phone, an email app, and anything like Microsoft OneDrive, then ‘they’ already have everything, and I do mean everything, about you. The 2FA login, where you are logging into something, but then have to have an additional code number sent to you phone pinpoints you exactly, time and position. x,y co-ordinates. As you say, its not about what they know, but what they can use that information for.
Rights are Common Law or Natural, not in anyone’s gift.
What can be given can be taken away.
I have long concluded that beyond the most basic obvious laws (e.g. regarding murder, theft, assault etc) the majority of laws are made to control me rather than help me. They are written by the powerful establishment to protect themselves and control us and if they’re initially intended for our benefit they are quickly twisted around and turned against us.
Law = that which is discovered, eg Common & Natural Law, Precedence… what works best.
Legislation = invented to remove the freedom and protection of Law, for the benefit of those imposing it and their cronies.
“but all the while you cannot donate to Reform with notes and coins.”
Pedantic, I know, but that’s precisely what I do when I attend my local branch meeting. They have a tub for donations on the table and I put cash in it.
I understand the worry about a bill of digital rights, however it would be extremely useful if done well. Else we will be continuously arguing over every bit of legislation rather than testing it against a bill of digital rights.
One website that suggests testing digital ‘progress’ against parameters is continuism.org. Some interesting ideas on this.
I support the #Togerherdeclaration group. It is an organisation bringing the issues regarding digital ID to the table.
At present we are creeping into a world of increasing digital surveillance and control.
For anyone interested this is my response to the government’s consultation on digital ID.
https://open.substack.com/pub/myrauk/p/digital-id-system-the-uk-governments?r=ylgqf&utm_medium=ios
Trouble with making laws, rules or whatever however well intended someone always comes along and manipulates it for their own purpose normally for evil intent i.e. control which of course leads to corruption.
What we need is a reverse cash machine. A machine you put in the cash you wish to send to someone, the machine then adds that sum with a reference number to the recipient’s account.
you get a receipt from the machine with that reference number that only you and the recipient (and his bank account) have knowledge of.
To go the extra yard if the person didn’t have a bank account, you could inform them of the reference number that they could enter at a standard cash machine for that sum.
Nothing of this process would be beyond the technology of a multi story car park payment machine.
For those who whine about opportunity for criminality, that already exists with monetary transactions, online or off, it just offers a bit of privacy in a society of growing surveillance.
“How about being really radical and campaigning for personal data to never be stored after use? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about how your data is being used or have to ask for it to be deleted, it would already be gone.”
This would seem to me to be the best course of action – thereby removing the possibility of data breeches and cyber security would no longer be an issue. The M&S hack would not have been a problem for instance if they did not hold customers data and they would not have to pay for constant cyber security updates. (Would it put a lot of IT workers out of a job though?)
This country can barely run itself. They have no clue how to install a digital id. Try to get an Evisa……😂😂😂😂😂good luck.
Rights are what we used to have before they were codified by political activists – no doubt with the best of intentions. We, the British, thought that because we understood the nuances of the relationship between individuals and the wider nation that everyone else would be likewise. We failed to appreciate the effect of the long period of gestation through which our common culture had passed, forging its qualities through oceans of blood, toil, tears and sweat long before Churchill coined the phrase. As a result we have made political rods for our own backs and achieved nothing, absolutely nothing, for the bulk of the world’s population.
Good points about no offline facilities withTogether and not only that, if you don’t have a smartphone, you have no access to Signal or Telegram, which they tend to use to organise local groups. I don’t have a smartphone because I have EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity). Far too many services, including online ones wrongly assume that everyone has a smartphone. People like me have wired ethernet connections. No Wifi, nothing smart! My take on digital ID is here: https://gillianjamieson.substack.com/p/digital-id-and-ehs-electromagnetic. Still, I like Together and am working on getting them to understand that they are excluding people who don’t have smart phones.