Those European countries that have a system of Digital ID have strong democracies and are able to push back against media that is trying to ferment unrest.
Um, no. Poland doesn't have a strong democracy, for a start. It's a very fragile one, and it only just held because of the incompetence of the last government.
As said above, ID cards exist elsewhere without people being stopped on the street and forced to show their ID.
I've never been stopped and asked to show ID in Poland in nearly 20 years. It happened twice to me in the UK between the age of 18-22, once for singing loudly in the park late at night with my friends and a second time 'because you're hanging out in the park at night'. Well, yes, it was the middle of summer on a very warm evening and we were drinking beer, which isn't a crime.
And how long will it take the criminal community to forge (almost) perfect identity cards ?
This shows a staggering ignorance about how identity cards work nowadays. If I want to verify someone's identity card, I can use the Polish mObywatel service which confirms if an ID card is valid or not. Combined with the digital ID card, it's foolproof, and forging won't help in the slightest because I can see both the real-time digital ID and the issued physical ID card.
The more interesting thing is just how easy it is to forge documentation that shows that you're a British citizen. Take my wife: she has no discernible accent, she sounds like she comes from somewhere in the SE of England, and she practically lives in the Anglosphere due to work and personal life. If she had a fake birth certificate that proclaimed her to be born to British parents in the UK, it's very unlikely that anyone would actually know any better, especially if she travelled in and out of the CTA through Dublin on her Polish documents. Without any sort of ID system, she can simply produce a forged birth certificate along with her NI number and employers will be none the wiser.
Imagine the police stop her, and she says that she doesn't have a passport or driving licence. She gives her details, but even her name is just a normal British name to anyone checking. The police are effectively unable to verify themselves if she's actually a Brit or not, and the combination of a birth certificate + utility bills is ridiculously insecure.
I'm not saying that we would do it, but the point remains: the UK has no effective way of knowing who someone really is. Of course, a Nigerian immigrant with a thick accent is going to be pulled aside, but who is going to question a person with a London-ish middle class accent with a British name about their nationality? Londoners would be able to tell that something is off, but for instance, I couldn't tell you as a Scot as to the difference between an Essex, North London, South London and Kent accent. For me, it's all Laaahndan and that's it.
While they are most commonly used inside the EU and EFTA, some non EU countries will accept EU/EFTA ID cards as well, under some exception. I think Turkey will accept Romanian ones for group tours only and Albania as well.
They're valid for travel throughout Europe, with the exception of travel to the UK, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. You can even enter Gibraltar with them.
www.theregister.com
