The problem with digital-IDs
The UK government has announced it has dropped its plan to introduce a new mandatory digital-ID system for anyone wanting to work in the UK. It was not alone in wanting to introduce a digital means of identification, with many countries doing so in recent years, including Australia, Egypt, Estonia and Japan. However, the plans were met with widespread opposition in the UK, with concerns over the use of biometric data and having to carry identification to go about daily business.
There has long been opposition to the imposition of compulsory ID in Britain. There was a groundswell of dissent when Margaret Thatcher’s government proposed imposing identity cards in 1989, which reasserted itself again in 2005 when Tony Blair tried to impose biometric digital-ID. Despite this sustained public opposition, Prime Minister Kier Starmer again tried to force biometric digital-ID on an unwilling public in 2025. In response, almost three million Britons signed a petition against the introduction of digital-IDs and public demonstrations were staged against the proposal. This groundswell of opposition was echoed by politicians from across the political spectrum and by human rights organisations, including Open Rights Group, Amnesty International and Big Brother Watch.
They were right to be concerned, because without sufficient safeguards digital-ID systems risk excluding marginalised people, enabling mass surveillance, and making sensitive personal data vulnerable to data hacks.
How do digital IDs work?
Aside from the data protection and rights problems, there are also some practical issues to address. Firstly, the proposed UK digital-ID system would have been smartphone dependent, yet over 1.5million Brits do not own a smartphone and seven million households do not have internet access. In addition, in England, 4.5 million people lack the functional digital literacy needed to navigate digital systems and access rights and entitlements. Those on the lowest incomes are most disadvantaged, with 30 per cent of lower income households unable to afford devices to get online
Imposing a compulsory digital-ID for workers would have excluded the most marginalised and disadvantaged citizens, creating further exclusion and inequalities. This is true for contexts around the world where digitalisation is imposed on populations.
In the last six years, I have studied and published research on digital-ID and other forms of digital public infrastructure in ten countries across Africa, including Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Liberia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Tunisia.
I’ve found that governments often justify digital-ID systems as being in public interest, despite the demand for their establishment most often coming from foreign technology companies, state police and intelligence agencies.
Worryingly, digital ID systems are most often introduced in the absence of legislation that protects fundamental human rights and results in violations.
In the absence of legal framework, digital-IDs violate human rights
Most countries lack an adequate legal framework to ensure that digital-ID systems protect human rights, are warranted, and subject to genuinely independent oversight and transparency protections. In no country has it been established conclusively that the digital exclusion and abrogation of human rights that follows from imposing biometric digital-ID meets the test of being ‘legal, necessary and proportionate’.
To secure initial approval of biometric digital-ID systems, governments assure the public that these IDs will not be compulsory or required to access government services or entitlements such as in the UK, the government has stated that digital ID would not be required for access to healthcare or welfare payments. However, once in place, function creep is used to make it necessary to have biometric digital ID to be able to access banking, travel, healthcare, and other fundamental entitlements and necessities.
Despite rhetoric of inclusion, digital IDs entrench inequality
As a result, some digital-ID projects risk entrenching inequality and mistrust rather than delivering inclusion or equitable development. Additionally, the storage of citizens’ personal data in central registries creates a single point of failure from which sensitive data can be hacked, leaked, sold, or shared with private companies or international agencies.
Despite the rhetoric of inclusion used to sell the idea of biometric digital-ID, in practice it consistently results in exclusions, denial of services for marginalised communities, and non-existing or inadequate mechanisms for remedy or redress. Exclusions without redress created a new class of digitally dispossessed persons deprived of rights and entitlements and without legal recourse.
Recommendations for governments
Overall, I find that imposing a biometric digital-ID on citizens is not necessary, and they are often only introduced by governments to serve the interests of corporations and state surveillance agencies who have lobbied them for it.
Data companies want personal data to be biometrically verified to help profile individuals for micro-targeting of advertising as part of what Professor Zuboff has coined as surveillance capitalism.
Where biometric digital-ID is imposed, legislation that protects human rights must be in place and enforced, including defining legitimate aims, limiting permitted actors, and precise exceptions. Adequate resources must also be provided for robust independent oversight and redress mechanisms. A full assessment of the social impact and human rights risk must also be completed.
Biometric digital-ID should only ever be introduced once those safeguards are in place, and critically, only with the consent and participation of the public. Public engagement and meaningful participation of stakeholders is essential in the design, implementation and evaluation of digital-ID systems.
Ultimately, citizens have the right to assess the risks for themselves, and governments should only consider biometric digital IDs when they are transparent about why they are being introduced, have assessed the social and economic impacts for those unable to access or use them, and have the correct legislative protections in place.
This article was published on the Institute of Development Studies Website on 14th January 2026