By her own admission, the UK Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, aims to create a digital identity Panopticon using AI and technology to constantly monitor citizens. The UK government’s digital identity system will use biometric data, such as facial recognition, to create unique identity tokens, enabling real-time monitoring and predictive analysis of individual behaviour. To establish the official UK digital identity Panopticon, the government and its partners do not require us to adopt any new forms of digital identity. Though it is trying to manipulate us into submitting our biometric authentication token to its GOV.UK digital identity wallet. And once we are manipulated into adopting our digital identities, they will be made interoperable across the whole of the UK economy.

Though the official UK digital identity Panopticon will supposedly only target criminals, in order to identify them, from among millions of British citizens, the state will spy on everybody all of the time. To be clear: The UK government’s official position is to use AI as the “eyes of the state” and to set its gaze firmly “on you at all times.” This is the openly stated purpose of the official UK digital identity Panopticon.

As things stand, the biometric data – facial recognition images – of 45 million British passport holders and, overlapping that number, 55 million drivers, are set to form the biometric authentication tokens that will single out our individual digital identities within the envisaged digital identity data lakes. AI can then use our identity token to isolate our individual behavioural patterns, detect anomalies, and predict whatever the state deems to be a risk associated with our behaviour. The real-time
speed of AI pattern recognition enables the constant monitoring of our activity. The state can then deploy AI to execute predetermined conditional smart contracts
to instantly restrict or withhold our access to goods and services – or worse.