Digital ID Throwdown: Good Idea Or Cock Up Waiting To Happen?

00:00 Digital IDs, the whole of the UK has gone nuts because apparently we're going to get a digital ID. What I'm impressed with is the fact that two and a half million people can get behind saying they don't agree with. My esteemed friend Glenn Osco thinks otherwise, and that is why we're going to have a throwdown today. Digital IDs, good or bad, roll theme. Welcome to the Johnny Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches, relationships, and results they deserve. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community at highvalue manproject.com.

00:42 Let's go. This is the Johnny Jensen show. I am the head coach and founder at the High Value Man Project. And we'd like to do this podcast at least, I say at least. I had a little gap last week whilst I was building out the school group, but at least once a week, sometimes twice a week, with guests, episodes, solo episodes from me, the wrap-up from Glenn and I. And today's episode is a little sort of, it was an email, a message, a WhatsApp poke in the eye almost actually from Glenn saying, digital IDs, we have got to talk about this. Well, I saw you posting something I can't remember where because you're fucking all the socials.

01:27 What socials are you on again, Johnny? Pretty much all of them, yeah. Excellent. Well, I saw it on one of the amazing socials that everyone should be following. And you were, yeah, very unhappy with the fact that the government have introduced a new act to look at digital ID. And I was like, well, hang on, this is my world. And this is something I have been desperate for the government to get some balls about and actually do for about 20 years. So we should probably have a chat. I think my actual words were, you can stick, Starma, you can stick your digital ID up your ass. I think that was my actual word. Which I think was echoed by many people in Parliament.

02:05 So yeah, I'm sure you're not alone in thinking that. But hopefully we can have a chat today. I can hear like some of the things that have got your goat about it, share some other things and see if we can come up with a happy medium. Yeah. And like the good thing about this conversation, right, there's loads of mad shit going on in the world right now, which I think that this kind of dialogue is getting squeezed out. You know, like all the other week when it was the whatever, was it Trust Britain or Proud of Britain or whatever the Tommy Robinson marches and stuff? But it was just really interesting to me that there was a shitload of people, right?

02:47 There's no way all of those people considered themselves far-right racist, right? There's some sort of 200,000 people in London. It depends on which. Just over 100, but yeah. Okay, right. So no good. No good. You are the, I'll be the fake news. You be the. Well, anyway, where are you getting your news from? Did you go and count them? I don't know. Someone actually did. Someone did some crowd fluid dynamics and actually measured the crowd space and density and said it's about 110. Did you see that AI photo, which was the Mao with the Sean's Elysee at the top of it? No, I didn't. That's brilliant.

03:25 So for our international listeners, the bit of, I guess for less educated British listeners as well, the bit of road in front of Buckingham Palace, you know, Charles's Gaff, previously Lizzie's Gaff. On public occasions, you get a good old bunch of British people either happily or angrily up there waving flags. So there was an AI photo, loads of people crammed in, union jacks, all over the place. And then, and then I guess they did it on purpose. At the end, instead of the, what's it called, Arches Gate or Soldier's Gate? It's got something there. Yeah, Budrafalgo Square. Admiralty Gate. Admiralty Arch. Yes, Admiralty Arch.

04:04 There you go. Someone goes, they haven't even noticed it's the Sean's Elysee rather than the thing, right? So, and to me, when you looked at the picture, it didn't look quite right. But everyone's like, look at all the people, look at all the people. And the reason I'm sharing this is that the world's gone mad. There's literally made-up stuff everywhere, in particular coming out of America's president's mouth. And I guess no one knows quite what to believe. So it's really interesting here that I could be this sort of like digital ID. No way am I trusting our government, Conservative, Labour, Libs, anybody, to implement a system as, I don't know, as embedded into our lives.

04:51 Why would I possibly put that in the hands of civil servants and politicians who could right from the outset balls it up? it up and even if they managed to get past the actual delivering it who's to say they wouldn't then go oh you know we said it was for this well we're now we're going to make it for this this and this as well and then somewhere else down the line it could either get hacked and abused by whoever in the world that didn't like us at the time or the government of the time could decide that it's a bit expensive to run so they're going to flog it to oh I know let's flog it to that Chinese company that looks like a good idea um or or I'll tell you that the the movie that came to mind right Demolition Man you know that's a great movie I adore that movie it's one of

05:37 those ones where nobody gives it the the appreciation it deserves demolition man absolutely brilliant right no no I've got to get this right first of all where Sylvester Sloan gets like cryogenically frozen and wakes up like because he killed too many people yeah he wakes up decades later and every time he swears um this ticket comes out and finds him and stuff but in that world everyone's controlled by the fact that everyone knows where everyone's moving around and going and stuff so that's because someone should have just explained the three seashells to him if you haven't watched this movie you need to watch the movie and if someone can explain the three seashells to me i'm all ears that's a good movie there's got to be a top 10 for us top 10 movies that no one puts in their top 10.

06:21 as an aside johnny this isn't for now this is for the wrap-up but i do want to talk movie club with you um because i i'm convinced that movie club is going to be far more fun than book club uh well yeah no doubt uh as much as i love listening to books because as we know i listen more than read um uh yeah who doesn't love a good movie by the way book i'm finishing up at the moment alchemy rory sutherland bloody brilliant i like rory sutherland um he's all about behavior change and i'm hoping that the government can get him on board and try and change people's behaviors when it comes to digital id and attitudes because the man's a genius okay truly he is actually if anyone could come up with

07:03 a random reason why we would all flip-flop on to uh the idea that actually this is a great idea right let's let's go for it so here we are now for everybody listening like we have not set out uh a rules of engagement here right we're not going to take 10 paces and then turn around and um i've just run through some of the sort of like my headline concerns i actually asked chat gpt to give me some uh uh as we know ai will give you what what you ask it right so i told it i was concerned and i was aware that there have been a number of global incidents where digital ids have uh absolutely fallen flat on their face and we should all be terribly scared about it um and so that's kind of where i'm coming from along along the other points and then glenn here just explain to people glenn you said to you this is my wheelhouse or whatever just explain to people because i'm a i feel a little bit like david and goliath here i feel a little bit like rowdy roddy piper versus andre the giant okay because this is your world

07:58 you you for all my doubts about delivering public sector digital infrastructure this is actually your world right it's literally what i do and just as an aside never think about david and goliath in the same way because actually david was the favorite goliath big hulking target david was a slingshotter who trained to be able to shoot birds from the sky with a stone uh and he was a basically it's like putting a sniper up against just a big fat man so um yeah david was the the absolute uh advantage in that one and you're telling me the bible abused that story for its own benefit i can't but i'm just i'm setting out simple facts that's all i'm doing you can do your own thinking your own research and hopefully

08:38 that's what i'm going to help people to do today so yeah the reason this is this interests me and it is what i'd say is my wheelhouse um i have spent the last 20 odd years either working inside government or um alongside it delivering digital projects so this whole world of digital enablement digital transformation and uh kind of legacy transformation that's what i do for my my day job that's how i've built a career so i've got a long long history not just from the kind of digital oh we should just do this because it's cool but from the government side of it of actually what's the problem we're trying to solve and how can we do that in a way which doesn't impact on civil liberties

09:18 so yeah this is this is something i've been deeply mentally embedded in for 20 years now uh and i've got lots of opinions but hopefully i'll be able to share some just some basic facts i'm never going to be hyperbole i'm never going to be saying this is the answer to everything but what i'm hoping to do johnny is hear some of your concerns and then just talk through the counterpoint to that that might get you to change your mind okay good so this is digital id throwdown pub banter okay so we're we're you know and actually who's to say there's not gonna be more facts in in this than some of the tosh people are getting from online.

09:58 You said when we were chatting before we came on about the idea that 2.5, I think it is getting up towards 2.5 million people now. I was like, isn't it cool that 2.5 billion people can get behind an idea this quickly and we can't seem to agree on anything else? And then you were like, no, no, that is quite alarming. Why is that quite alarming to you? Because it's wonderful when you have a lot of people who are able to be mobilized and active. I love active citizenry. For a lot of the time I was in public sector, my whole world was community engagement. So getting people together, getting them caring about things that are going to affect their lives. The world is run by people who turn up.

10:35 And some of this is about getting people to turn up when it comes to shaping decisions. This is going to shape the way that politicians think because frankly, most politicians, regardless of what colour rosette they wear, they care about getting elected. Their job is to represent our views. And so the more they know about what those views are, the better. The trouble is, when those views are shaped by lies and misinformation and just misunderstanding, that's when the problem hits. Because if you've got a bunch of, you've got two and a half million people saying, we don't want it because of these reasons. And I'm sitting here saying, yep, that's irrelevant. That's not what they're trying to do. That becomes a problem because then the facts get totally walked over by opinion.

11:18 And you can't change opinions with facts. So we've got to get into a world where people are able to look at information a bit more rationally and to come to their own points of view on that, not just, well, this is something that they fucked up 20 years ago. And so they're never going to get it right now. No, that shouldn't be the way it is. Yeah, but so I think there's a whole concern for me about the tech implementation side and getting it wrong and cost and being abused and what's happening. So let's break that down. What do you mean by? Well, I want to come from a different point, first of all, right? Where has he plucked this idea from? From what I've, I did not read the Labour election

12:01 manifesto. From what I've read and would be led to believe, there was no mention in there of we're going to look to introduce a digital ID in our first term. So how have they plucked this out of the air and it not be something that was part of what could or could not have got them elected in the first place? This is one of the frustrating parts for me about this current government. And I want to be clear, I'm not a conservative. I'm not a Labour fan. I'd criticise whichever side or compliment whichever side. But they are really good at policy and really shit at politics.

12:41 What they've done here is they've taken something that actually has been worked on for, like I say, 25, 30 years. Lots of thinking's been going into this. International research. So many good things have been done in terms of understanding whether this is a good or a bad idea. And then they've decided, oh, we need something that we can say that's going to shut the right wing up. It's going to shut Nigel Farage up. So let's pluck a policy out and pretend this is about immigration. It might have a little bit of impact on immigration, but not much. But they've taken really good policy and attached it to really shit politics.

13:17 And they're using this to kind of change the conversation because the public are getting all riled up because a few homeless people and refugees are trying to find a better life for themselves. So they're not saying, why'd you necks in? We're a better country than that. They're saying we need to be scared of them. And this is a way we can control it. Yeah, I mean, that's what's got my goat about politics right now is no one's fighting a sound, decent cause. I mean, blimey. And that's the problem. You know, if people were to say, this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it.

13:55 And by the way, a lot of you are wrong. And here's why you're wrong. And did you know that actually the sum total of the people in hotels or the cost of bringing them like sorting out the boats is this much, which is like this big size of a flipping grape versus this expense over here, which is, let's call it benefit fraud, which is the size of a flipping grapefruit. Which multi-billion pound issue shall we look at, right? So there is a problem there. And I agree. That's what gets my goat about politics right now. There really is. And the trouble is, and I don't want to get into, or I do want to get into a side debate about immigration and so on, but that's not what we're talking about today.

14:36 Today we're talking about purely digital ID, right? And so what they've done is they've said, well, one of the challenges is allowing, how do we get these people who are relevant and allowed to work in the UK? How do we prove that they're able to work in the UK? And how do we make sure that everything's done above board, they're recorded properly, and paying their taxes and doing all those sorts of things. At the moment, you need ID. You cannot do an official job unless you've got ID. You need some sort of passport or driving license or documentation to say this is who I am. Bits of paper or whatever. You need something to say this is who I am. That's how you get your national insurance number.

15:17 That's how, if you wanted one, you could apply for a passport. You could apply for a bank account. You could apply for all these things. And that's how you're on PAYE or you pay your taxes if you're self-employed. So we already have ID processes and systems spread across dozens of different platforms. You know, the right to work, you've got all the benefits that can be claimed, all of that. It runs off of ID. If you or I didn't have ID, we're not allowed to work. We're not allowed to claim benefits. We're not allowed to do anything. That's just the way it currently runs. The only difference here is they're introducing something which is all of that, but digitally.

15:59 So all the things you already have or already do, they're not replacing it. They want a digital equivalent. So you can have a digital version of your identity that's owned by you, that's stored by you on your phone. It's not stored. I'll talk about decentralized data systems in a minute, but it's not held in some big government vault and one big data center. This is just you on your phone saying, this is who I am. And this is how I can prove I am a real person. And if I've got this, I'm allowed to work. If I haven't got this, I can use my passport or my ID. That's the argument that they're fumbling on this. This is just a digital version of stuff we've already got in place.

16:41 Yeah. And that data for the stuff that is already in place is held in multiple locations in disparate systems that are completely out of date and not fit for purpose. And so, yeah. This is, yeah, this is a massive, massive problem. We run off legacy monolith systems. So a monolith system is basically a big, say like your passport control, border control. Border control is a monolithic system. It's got one big database and that holds all your passport information, all what goes when you go in and out of the country, every bit of information that's on your passport is held at the moment on one system. So if that system has a problem or it goes down, the whole thing fucks up.

17:25 It all goes wrong. Now, that's useless. That's commonplace. Back in the early 2000s, late 90s, that's what was built because they thought, let's build big systems that we can store and control and everything in one system. So we don't have to think about everything should be in one place, which is like putting all of your gold, all of your worldly possessions as a country into one castle. But if someone breaks into that castle, they can nick the lot. They get everything. That's the problem. That's what the old legislation, there was a bit of legislation in 2006 where they started doing this and they just wanted to build one massive monolithic system.

18:06 That's never, ever, ever going to work. The new one is all about microservices and interactions between disparate data sets. Right, because that's some of the points that people have been making. So they've been arguing against digital ID from the perspective of the old system, which you've just said is not what they're talking about. They definitely don't want to. They don't want to be building one big system because that's massively expensive, really complicated. And pretty much from the second that gets built, it's out of date and hard to upgrade, hard to change. As technology evolves, it's next to impossible to evolve because if you make one tiny change to one bit, you don't know the impact it's going to have to the whole. So imagine the best way of doing it is what you don't want to do is build one big thing.

18:50 You want to build things out of Lego. Lots of little Lego kits that all fit together and they can all slot together in different ways. So if you need to upgrade one, you take it off, you throw it away and you replace it with a new one. Yeah, it doesn't affect anything else. It doesn't interact with all the, sorry, it does interact, but it doesn't control or isn't influenced by all the stuff that's still in place. That's a microservices approach in a kind of a basic sense. And what they're talking about doing here is essentially building loads and loads of roads, loads of connectors, building better data sets and introducing these digital versions of what you've already got, your ID, and allowing you to control that.

19:30 And then over time, potentially, if legislation changed, because at the moment it doesn't change, but if legislation changed and it worked, being able to link that to other systems, to be able to link that to other things. Because I don't know about you, but I get sick and tired. of having to remember dozens of different logins and details and different processes to go through to get access to anything out there. That's why they introduced one login. Yeah, I mean, that's part of the problem is, you know, if I take my NHS experience, you know, it's shit. Yeah. Every time. Now, I say every time.

20:09 If I'm sat with an NHS nurse or doctor, right? And it's an emergency, and it generally isn't, right? Because those people are bloody good at what they do and the jobs are valuable and all that sort of stuff. But any part of booking a call, accessing data, getting the information back that I want, having any faith that someone's not going to lose it or break it or get it nicked or leave it on a bus. I mean, I did see someone make a point the other day, like, they can't even get a laptop back to the office without losing it. How do you expect them to get this right? So it's kind of funny, but that sort of sensational kind of comment is going to get Vera and Fippin and Alf, like Afghanistan, like right off their rocker, like, yeah, another thing.

20:55 It really is. And that's why this is a far safer thing. You don't have to worry about laptops. You don't have to worry about equipment getting nicked or lost or left on trains. You also don't have to worry about a fire destroying a load of paperwork. Why? Where is where? Why? This will be in the cloud. This will be in replicated and sort of backed up, secure, probably cloud-sovereign data centers. Now, that means they're in the UK as well. Okay, that's a good point. It's got to be. Yes. But when they sell our nuclear power stations to Chinese firms or they ask the Wi-Fi network to be built on Chinese tech or it's not just, I'm not just anti-Chinese, right?

21:33 But like half the trains running through our country are either French owned or Italian owned or some other random, you know, country owned. But how do we know they're not going to do that? But even that point I challenge myself with because like, why do I have an issue with other countries? My sort of utopian kind of Star Trek kind of version of this is that we are the we are the, you know, the star fleet and, you know, everybody knows who everybody is and we get beamed up. And so our whole body is in the computer. Like, so if I go down the Star Trek route, then, of course, they've got digital ID. No one talked about it like that, but they're all logged and everyone knows where everyone's going.

22:15 You can kind of argue it that way. Yeah, it would be lovely to live in a utopia like that. Sadly, we don't. We still have national borders and boundaries. But one, just to kind of get that, make the point that actually you're thinking about this wrong. There is no other country that's going to buy our ID system because our ID system isn't a thing. It's the way we connect lots of different data. And it's how you can prove things using different data sets. So using your ID, say I want to prove that I am over 18 for whatever reason. Clearly, they won't just be able to look at my face because I've got a boyish charm. But I need some sort of ID to say I'm over 18.

22:56 Now, what people seem to think is happening is we'll build up this big database and now I'll have loads of things. It'll have my birth certificate. I'll have my passport. It'll have all these things that prove who I am. And it will be able to present all of that in one go. Actually, no, that information is already stored in different systems. Passport control, border control already have my passport information. DVLA already have my driver's license. My bank already has my bank details and so on. All these different bits of data are out there. And all I'm going to be able to do is say, right, well, using my ID thing, just prove, don't tell them anything else. It's all pseudonymized, pseudonymized. I can't remember whether it's pseudonymized or pseudo-anonymized, but basically take away my name and bits and pieces.

23:38 Take away, I'm not going to tell you anything else. I'm in control. The only bit of information I'm going to be able to share with, or I'm willing to share with you, is, am I over 18? It will go off. It will check those systems that are already in place, that have already got that and already secure. And it will say, is this person over 18? Yes, it is. There's the proof. Or if it will be saying, I don't know, do I live in Kent? It will check a different database, maybe, and it won't do it yet because local government is way behind the shit line on this. But it will be able to check my council tax or HMRC will have my tax details. It will say, does this person live in Kent? It won't say what's his address. It won't say how old is he. It won't say what's his inside leg measurement.

24:21 It'll say, does this person live in Kent? Yes, he does. There you go. I can prove that. All these bits of data are already out there in loads of different ways. All we're doing is building a tool that is able to link those securely and use minimum viable tech to get the right information. it's okay. So that's a bit like App Store, Apple App Store saying to app developers, if you want to build an app in our market for an iPhone, it needs to comply with these sort of rules. And then you can plug it into the system and have access to the system. So it's not one system completely controlled by everybody.

25:03 It's one like that you can plug something else into if you've been given permission to build something that plugs into it. Yeah. So there'll be a few different things. Now there's a team in government called GDS, the government digital service. They are not blowing smoke. They are widely regarded as the best digital government team in the world. Yes, other countries have done different things and done superb. They're a civil service or they're... They are civil servants, yeah. Okay, right. So they are taking some of the best and their job is to build tools like this and to work with the private sector sometimes to build these, sometimes to build them internally and to basically shape and support the way government does digital.

25:44 And they've set out a whole bunch of standards about how these services need to work. And they're also working with European kind of equivalents as well to look at what they're doing in terms of digital identity and other partners around the world to say, well, who's doing it the best? How can we learn from those and create these standards that then have to be built? They're then using that to build certain tools. So they've already built something called OneLogin. Now, one thing that I hate is having to remember tons of login details to different government systems. It's a nightmare. And the more you remember, the more you have to remember, the more likely it is you're going to forget them. You'll give them all the same password anyway. You'll probably have to write the password down somewhere.

26:26 You'll be constantly resetting. It's a nightmare. They've built a tool called OneLogin, which essentially is a set of protocols which allow any system to use their login system, the login tool, to log into certain government systems. Those systems are really locked down. You cannot use OneLogin to log into something that isn't secure because they are so rigid on cybersecurity. They have to be because this is people's lives and really sensitive information sometimes. But when you use that, it logs you in. It does all, from your perspective, it's easy. It's just a login using one username, one detail. That's it. And you can use your biometrics that you can use on your phone your fingerprints or your face or something like that.

27:09 Or you can tap stuff in and it does all the hard work. It then pings out to verify your identity and do all these things and then brings the right data to you. It does the hard work for you. So from your perspective, it's a piece of piss. Okay. So that's all sounding quite sensible in that respect. Do you think that some people's concerns are the fact that we can be watched and the fact that we, I mean, to a degree, there's like, well, what if I'm 17 and I want to go to the pub? Right. Now I'm really screwed. What if I want to dig my mate's garden and he wants to give me 50 quid?

27:47 Like now, now, how, hang on a minute. Why, why does why does the flipping tax man and everything get to meddle in my every move in my life? I can't even have a crap without it getting analyzed and sent off for some analysis, you know, like I mean, personally, that is a really nice bit of tech and it genuinely exists where they can analyze your P as you're going through. You put a little sensor in the toilet, it analyzes the contents and the chemical makeup of your P and it'll tell you, look, you're at risk of diabetes. You need to do something about that. So I love that. Don't worry, I'm so done with GP services, right? I want to just, I just want to walk up to something. Even if I could just do it on my phone, I want to walk up to it, stick my finger in it. It like pricks it so it's now bleeding and it goes, oh, thank you for that little drop of blood.

28:30 I can tell you that you are all these things. Yeah. So I had a blood test last week. They sent, so first of all, the doctor didn't send me anything. They just sent me one message. They couldn't understand it. It said, one of your blood tests needs to be redone in three months' time. Not which one, not why, none of the other information, right? So then I go into my NHS account, which miraculously I did get into it. And miraculously also, it's there because a couple of years ago, there was nothing there. And then it's just there, just like reams of stuff, like just jargon, just weird nothing. Just like you'd have to, you'd, you'd have to be the blood specialist to actually realize what that was there.

29:07 So I'd take a picture of it all and throw it into chat GPT to get some sense out of it. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. So as an entirely separate thing, large language models are superb for that sort of thing. Yeah. Clearly, with all the caveats of they can make mistakes and so on. But just in terms of being able to translate those sort of technical things, whether it's medical or financial, I mean, how many of you have struggled with tax stuff as well? But yeah, from me, I'm a high trust person. I like the idea of being able to use different data sets to tell you something you don't know. So I would be quite happy to give consent to absolutely everything and say, yeah, you know everything about me.

29:46 Keep knowing everything about me and tell me new stuff. Like predict what I need and tell me, oh, you can get this new benefit. Or did you know about this tax thing? Great. I don't mind that. However, not everyone's like that. And so this is firstly, if you want to be going off and doing cash and handwork, this isn't going to stop that. You were doing that illegally anyway. You'll continue to do it illegally. Also, this isn't mandatory. This isn't saying in work it will be, but it is anyway for ID. But outside of that, in terms of other potential uses for digital ID, it's all voluntary.

30:25 The law says we will not force you. We cannot force you. And if we want to do that, we have to go through the full normal legal process of changing laws. In which point, then, yes, people can mobilize and say what they want and put pressure on their politicians to represent their views. However, there is no statement that said we are making this mandatory for all things. All they're doing is putting a digital version of what's already in place. And so your life won't be affected. And if you haven't got a digital ID for whether you want to log into your GP or whatever, fine, go and do it as you do now. It won't stop you from anything you're already doing. But what about if they then take that and start to abuse it?

31:10 You know, what if it's so there was the example in Canada where they froze lorry drivers' bank accounts. If this is the one I've seen, I've got a list of them here as well. But that was one, it's not even Chat GPT hasn't even put it in the list, but I saw this one. Canadian lorry drivers who refused to have the COVID jab during lockdown had their bank accounts frozen. And that was an example of government control in overdrive. I mean, is that even connected to the topic of digital ID? Not at this stage. And now, firstly, I feel like that was an extreme example. And it was like a world-changing moment and lots of panic about what was going on.

31:55 And so that was, you know, global pandemics feel like a very edge case. However, I get that that proves a theory and it could in extreme situations be used that way. But they did that without national ID cards, digital ID cards. They did that anyway. So how is this different? This won't make it any easier or any like more common to do. It's exactly the same. They do these things already. Now, there is fear that like, is this the thin end of the wedge and are we going to become a surveillance state and all that? But when they introduced seatbelts, they were

32:33 we shouldn't introduce seatbelts. We should, you know, because next thing you know, they'll be telling us that we need to wear helmets and safety equipment and we'll only be able to. Do you remember the advert when the kids like the crash test dummy? Like, exactly. Through the car. I used to love sitting there in my arms on the sit fighting my brother to see who could stand in the back and rest his arms on the two front seats and talk to your dad whilst he was doing ATP. There's always the key position down the country. There's always going to be a fear from some members of society of, oh no, we don't want government to do anything.

33:09 We don't want them to control anything. This is what in the US, it's not democratic and conservative. If there's a third libertarianism of no one should tell me how to do anything, sure, that's fine. That's how they believe. And they're the sort of people who are, well, no, I shouldn't let the government shouldn't allow me to see anything, shouldn't see anything to do with anything because I don't trust them. Well, that's already in place. We need a bit of progress. This is going to make people's lives better. It's going to open up new services and make things more equal for almost all of society. Why are we holding it back just out of fear that something at some point that we can't prove might or might not happen in the next 50 years?

33:50 We'd never get anywhere if that we know that's true. True. Rory Sutherland was talking about in that book, Alchemy. Almost any example of new technology at the point it's introduced doesn't altogether make sense. And he's like, the early cars were not as good as a horse. Sure. Yeah, yeah. The early plane was not a sensible means of transportation. So it's a bloody good book, alchemy. I mean, those kind of reasons do lead me to think, you know, people say, oh, you already give this information to. Apple or Google or bizarrely.

34:33 I almost trust those companies more than I do a government because in my mind, at least I can choose to be with that company or not be with that company. I could have a mobile phone, not have a mobile phone, but I guess you've just argued this is this is opt-in, opt-out. I don't really see opting out because you're going to be almost like a second-class citizen if you opt out. Well, no, they have to make there's a big thing about UC user-centered design and about making sure that this isn't ever going to create that two-tier system of the haves and the have-nots. So, as far as they've said, and as far as any projections have been done, we're not going to go to a world where we get rid of everything that isn't digital, where we get to a world where if you haven't got a smartphone, you're screwed.

35:20 Well, firstly, we don't want to do that because there are some people who won't. I'd argue personally that there's no one who can't, or very few people who can't, but there's a lot of people who won't for whatever reason. They should and will still be able to use all of their paper ID to go and they're the sort of people who won't pay by direct debit. They'll go to a post office to post a check or something like that. Even that is just like getting ridiculous, and it's like someone refusing to use a pen and turning up with a piece of chalk, you know, like it's a bit ridiculous. Those people are out there. So, but the thing is, they'll still be able to do that. If they don't want to give their digital, create a digital ID, they'll still be able to use all the stuff that's already in place.

36:00 If for whatever reason they haven't got a smartphone, I think something like 2 million people in the UK haven't got smartphones. Well, firstly, that's a much smaller number than it used to be and will probably continue to get smaller. However, they can also be able to get a digital card, a card which is just like your driver's license, and that will hold the same sorts of information. Now, how they do that will be slightly different because you can't see a screen and log in and so on, but it'll allow you still to log to access your digital identity and to prove that. And if you're on a terminal, for example, and it says, We want to prove you are who you say you are, you can use that as a digital ID.

36:39 Just like in your passport, you've got a little RFID chip, which is just a little scanny thing which scans your passport without even having to look at your photo. It just pings. It's the same technology used in Oyster cards and contactless payments. This will just be a card which says this card belongs to that person and proves who they are. They are who they say they are. And then for the rest of us, we will have that digital version, which will live on our phones or our devices, locked down biometrically, locked down fully, and all voluntary. So, we've chosen to do it. And also, it will be really, oh, I'm trying to remember what the word is. But it'll be basically, we decide federated access.

37:22 So, we decide, yes, I'll give access to that. No, I won't give access to that. Yes, I'll do these on this. That's the notification setting in your flipping iPhone. Yeah, exactly. But how do we know? How do we know that it's not going to be turned into something else later down the line? Oh, no, it's probably it will. Where's the where's the where's the where's the like where's the backstop? Where's the where's the flipping like I don't know, some evil dictator takes over and wants to, I guess, a bit like a demolition man, like really, like, like who's to say we're not gonna, or um, some kind of weird hunger games type situation where they can just pick and choose, put you lot over there, put you lot over there.

38:06 So, firstly, it will change and evolve because that's technology, that's society, and things move on. And I want it to, because at the moment, Estonia have got the X-Road, they call it, which is how they move data around, which means that even if you're, say, you're from Finland, you're visiting Estonia, you forget your medication, you walk into any pharmacy with your digital ID, you can get your prescription instantly. You don't have to wait for your doctor to send it and do all these things. If you're in India and you want to open a bank account, you can use their tooling to prove who you are. So, it will evolve and there will be more use cases bolted onto it. So, the mistakes that, so the so Estonia, 2017, national ID cards hacked 750,000 cards at risk.

38:53 India, leaks exposed millions of citizens' data sold online for as little as $7. Exclusion issues for poor and elderly. I've got to be honest, I'm not bothered about the exclusion issues, right? It's kind of literally, you know, we wear clothes, we use cutlery, we've got a watch, like we get on a bus. Like, there's like, come on. Okay. So, with those, again, this is that difference between a monolith system where it's all in one and lots of broken down bits and pieces. So, at the way. they were built, and certainly the way that we proposed to build this 20 years ago, was everything would be in that one room. So you broke in, you'd lock it, you'd nick everything. Everything would be exposed.

39:34 Whereas now, imagine it more like all of your data. It's a town. It's an entire town. And every house, whether it's bigger, some houses are bigger, some smaller. A criminal would have to break into every one of those houses, one after another, and piece together an entire town's worth of data. And bearing in mind, as soon as the first one gets broken into, everyone else knows that all the alarms go off and everyone pulls up their drawbridge, double locks their door, the shutters come down, and you're able to say, We're putting the guard dogs out because we know that there's burglars out there at the moment. That's what the system they're talking about and planning on will be like, where lots of federated, lots of little bits of data here, there, and everywhere, which are all as secure as they possibly can be at the moment, will still be separate.

40:20 So even if they manage to somehow break into one house and steal a bunch of data, that data probably won't really get them anywhere. Right. So this is some intense level of scaremongery based on old news. It's like, it's like you're flipping Granny saying, don't trust the Germans, right? Because she lived in the war. It's exactly like that. And we're like, pretty sure the German people are okay. Do you know what I mean? Like, pretty sure we can go to holiday in Germany now. Come on. But it's sadly. And again, I'm trying not to get into the kind of, I won't say which political parties may or may not be more like this, but there are a group of political parties, parties which have been rising over the past 10, 15 years.

41:06 They live off of fear. They live off of saying this government, whichever government it is, is not doing good enough. They're going to ruin you. Be scared of everything they do. We'll sort it out. We'll stop everything. Now, that's easy to do because it's easy to say, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, and not have any evidence to back that up. People, fear sells paper. That's why, you know, you read the papers when there's scary stuff and you don't read it if it says, oh, that project, everything went great. That's not interesting. No media is going to pick that up. But them saying, oh, they're selling your data to the Chinese. They're going to make it so you have to flash your papers before you're allowed to leave the house.

41:49 There's no way of government, no matter how many times they say, that's bullshit. How do you change opinions with facts? Well, yeah. And I think I do think back to the earlier part of this conversation, there is some responsibility to be had there because off the back of a load of car crash situations by Labour and, you know, and obviously he's in charge, Rachel Reeves and stuff. He then goes, I've had an idea. Digital IDs. It's going to solve the immigration thing. Me, as a pretty educated person, goes, you're some sort of lying bastard because I have like you've just pulled a plucked a subject out of the air, which to me looks like you just trying to deflect from a whole load of other things.

42:31 So exactly the point that you were saying at the beginning, it's been, it's, it's, it's a good idea with bad politics around it. But that they should have said then, again, it's more of a public, you know, what's the expression? They're like, you know, basically rolling it out in a friendly way where people feel like they've been considered and they feel informed and then they feel, oh, it would help the NHS, would it? Oh, okay, that's good. It massively would. It would help schools would be more efficient, would it? I was there, more money for schools. Okay. I mean, they flipping sold us Brexit. I definitely did not vote for Brexit, right? But a bunch of people bloody voted for it off the back of a load of lies, which were pretty much immigration, NHS.

43:17 So here he is pretty much justifying digital ID on the same nonsense that those Muppets were justifying Brexit. See, the frustrating thing is in politics, you probably know the phrase. It's called a dead cat. If the conversation isn't going as you like it, the easiest thing to do, throw a dead cat into the middle of the table. People stop talking about whatever you're talking about. And I say, what the fuck are you doing? Why is there a dead cat on the table? Sure, it's a Monty Python. I don't know. I don't know where the phrase came from, but it is. Similar one, similar one. Jump the shark. Do you ever heard jump the shark? Yeah, that's it. That comes from a late happy days episode where Fonzie jumps.

43:59 Wasn't it? Series five. And it still went on for another bunch of series. But yeah. But Cap, sorry, yeah. He's just for people who haven't seen it. Fonzie, who is a childhood hero of mine, I still got a lot of love for Henry Winkle, especially after his little Tottenham skip last year. Yeah, in an episode, he's water skiing behind a boat and. somehow he jumps a shark. So, if you ever hear the experience, the expression, jump the shark, that's where that comes from. We're going to use that a lot in movie club for sure. But okay, but in terms of dead capping, this is this is something uh that the recent couple of incarnations of the the conservative government were superb at.

44:42 Um, whenever they were getting criticized for one thing, Boris Johnson would just say something batship mental and change the subject, and all of a sudden everyone will start talking about something new. Trump is superb at it. If people start digging into any of the things that he's got that are going wrong, he'll just say something mental about Tylenol, and all of a sudden the conversation shifts and they stop talking about exactly. I mean, who to me, all the tariff stuff it was just a massive deflection exercise for something else that he's up to in the background, which I wish. So, clearly, most of us have got no idea what that actually is, but yeah, but I've got, yeah, so again, these are kind of I don't want to, I do desperately want to.

45:18 No, I know, I got it. We'll do that in another another episode. Okay, but with this, yeah, this is this is basically um, Kier Starmer and this government have said we need to change the conversation, try and take control back of the narrative. And we've always wanted to do ID cards, not just this government, successive governments have known actually this is a uh ultimately, if done properly, not like they tried to do it before. That was, I saw, I saw online, in fact, just today and yesterday, they were bringing up that Tony Blair put this forward in his time, and then they were going on about this is some sort of quasi-communist uh thing because Labour, I am definitely not a Labour voter, but that there's some sort of quasi-communist uh

46:02 movement, yeah. There's all these sort of again, how do you debate? How do you say, No, that's bullshit without sounding like you're you're part of the cover-up? Um, but yeah, Tony Blair and uh, I think it was David Blunkett, who was home secretary at the time back in mid-2000s, they put together this plan. They started launching um a digital ID scheme, they uh started make they rolled out 15,000 digital ID cards or ID cards more than digital, um, and they started rolling it out and testing it, but it was really badly done, and it like I say, it was this massive central system which was taking too long, badly built, and it was never going to

46:38 work. And so, when uh Cameron came in with the coalition government, they scrapped it all, but the civil servants behind they did loads of reviews and said these are the reasons it didn't work, this is why it's so bad, and this is how we would do it again. And now they've done things like Gov Verify for every pound they spent on that, it saved two pound. Um, Estonia, they they reckon they've saved not only 134 million hours in terms of saved time. I mean, that's huge, um, but also they've saved two percent of GDP in terms of fraud prevention, two percent of UK GDP, that would be 44 billion pounds. That that would pay for a couple of hospitals and that those side sites

47:20 or 10 flipping exocet drone zapping missiles or whatever. Everyone loves a toy, yeah. Um, okay, oh, Glenn, so okay, so I do feel like um I still, I still, yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe I've maybe I'm maybe I've converted. Well, just think about it, like it's just your wallet. You've got, um, do you use Apple or Google? No, no, but I agree, but I totally everything. I mean, I thought I kind of made this point at the beginning. You know, like I know that everything I pay for, I know that Google Maps tracks me where I go because I use it to do my expenses for work. Um, everything I shop goes through there, all the stuff that I buy online.

48:02 Well, Apple's tracking all the websites I go to, so it literally knows everything that I even I look at, let alone whether I've gone and bought it. Um, what movies and TV I watch because it's all going through my fire stick. I mean, this won't do any of that. No, I get that, but I'm just saying, I'm just saying, in terms of the data I'm giving away, other than what time I have a crap, I don't think there's much that goes on in my life that isn't being tracked. Yeah, and that's we already give all that away and willingly as well to make our lives better. All this is is a way that's going to give away hardly anything. It's going to allow you to just access a few more services more easily and allow you to just not have to worry about where's my ID for this?

48:46 Where's my login details? How do I access this? It just minimum viable technology to really solve some really big issues that are just going to change people's lives. So, where does this end, right? Getting towards like wrapping this up, where does this ding dong end? Because it's difficult. It's difficult to say two and a half million people are stupid and they're just political. You didn't say that, right? Because I know you're more careful with your words than I am, right? But two and a half million people have jumped on a bandwagon and gone, oh, no, digital ID.

49:23 And actually, probably my reasons for saying no are, I think they're well informed, but they're quite reactionary, which is it's a dickhead who's saying it should be done. And I don't trust him because he's balls up so many other things. I think most, from what I can see, most politicians who are in charge say stupid things and balls it up, right? So, um, but there you go. Like, who do they give this? Wouldn't it be great, right? If a slight tangent here, but wouldn't it be great if Britain came out and said, Do you know what? We are the absolute nuts in digital ID. We're the absolute nuts in renewable energy.

50:05 We're the absolute nuts at flipping cell regeneration, you know, pharmaceutical stuff. Like, if a particular government doubled down and said, instead of being this country that's falling apart and we can't even, you know, build a railway these days, we're going to become the center of excellence for so many of these things that are going to change the world in the future. Is that, you know, is there a part of the UK digital tech industry which is that? And if it is, then why is Starmer or someone else like him not heroing the UK tech industry and saying if anyone can build this in the world, it's us.

50:51 And here's the really good reasons to do it. Instead, he says, we're going to do this because it's going to crush immigration, which is some sort of backslap to Farage, the nut job. Yeah, no, the trouble is, there are those strategies. There was a whole new transformation strategy for government. There's digital industrial strategy. DCIT did a brilliant strategy at the start of the year. There's AI strategies. There's stuff around pharma and human and research. There's so many of these things that have been kicked off over the past 18 months that are saying we are bloody good and we're going to continue to be some of, if not the best in the world.

51:32 But that doesn't sell newspapers. They can say it till they're blue in the face, but that does fear sells. Hope doesn't. We went through a period 15 years ago when we were on that pride march and not pride as in LGBT issues, but we were proudest marching forward as a country, really pushing and being bigger and better. And then that got hijacked by fear. By, well, actually, we don't trust anyone else. We need to roll back and just be Trump as well, the antitrust agenda. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why you've heard about the digital ID cards, but you haven't heard potentially about the AI strategy or the life sciences strategies that have been going on.

52:17 Because frankly, they're not as sexy. Yeah. Okay. So Glenn started a petition called Yes to the Digital ID card. There's 10 people who've signed it so far. None of them are AI. They've all got the same surname. It's so much easier. And I did a review in my last workplace. There were 14 people who could say no to something and not a single person who could say yes. It's so much easier to say no. Let's stop doing this. You know what?

52:54 The world is run. Not run. The world is shaped and progressed by those couple of people who say, yeah, we'll give it a try. Well, yeah, that's definitely that. It's having the bollocks to not just the bollocks. That's what the world's missing: charismatic leaders who are passionate and grounded and have got the bollocks to say shut up to people that are talking nonsense. But it's the minority groups that have got the loudest voices and spread the most fear. So, yeah, so where does this end? Does the digital ID happen?

53:31 I hope so. I really hope so. What I fear is it will be watered down and watered down because the right wing will push, push, push, and before you know it, it will just be a side project. However, over the past few years, there's been a whole bunch of things that have sprung up. There's been Gov Verify that cost about 200 million pounds, but it's saved nearly 500 million pounds since it was launched. There's GovWallet, which allows you to basically build up a digital wallet of certain information. There's one login. There's lots of different tools that GDS, this government digital service, have been over time building. Civil servants rather than politicians. have been trying to push this and trying to make things happen.

54:13 Now, clearly, they work for the government, so if the government says no, they have to stop. But actually, there's some of the best governmental digital minds in the world, and that's not me like blowing smoke. They are superb. Allied with some of the best private sector industries in the world. The UK has got some of the best digital companies out there, certainly in terms of consultancy. They are trying to build these tools, they are pushing forward to make these things happen. So, hopefully, this government will continue to push forward and politically say, Yep, no, we're gonna do it like they have with AI. There's lots of opposition to AI from various people. This government has said, you know what? We know there's challenges and risks, but we're going for it.

54:56 We're going to make it happen. I want them to do that with this as well because this could be the thing that unlocks the information that's going to change people's lives, make them able to access services that they would never have been able to access before, faster, access support, access healthcare, all these things down the line. If we want to get to that point, we have to start now. So, yeah, hopefully, it will part go through, and all this rhetorical die down, and the right wing will throw a different dead cat on the table and they can go off talking about that for a little while. Hopefully, the dead cat will actually be like Mr. Farage, like Wallop, rigor mortis on the table.

55:40 Oh, that looks like Mr. Farage. Actually, it is Mr. Farage and close the book on that chapter. Yeah, okay. Um, okay, so in conclusion, I'm much happier about a digital ID on the basis of what you said, Glenn. If we end up with three shells in the bathroom and um, and swear boxes every time I say what's that Peepo William Drawers, as uh don't say fuck our bollocks, oh, digital ID been fine, yeah, okay.

56:18 Can I buy a bottle of Thunderbirds if I'm 16 still? Uh, if you can buy it, pay it with cash, absolutely, or if you if you if you know a guy, if not, just you know, speak to your older brother, okay, good. Well, um, I think you know, if people are listening to Glenn and they want to have some of his expertise in their organization, then you should definitely get in touch with him. I think you're on LinkedIn, aren't you, Glenn? Yeah, I am indeed. I'm the one with the weird surname, so but if you if you search for me on the internet, you've got my details on screen, uh, you can't not find me. Yeah, top man knows his stuff. And uh, the wrap-up, we'll be back. Uh, but before we press record, Glenn and I were having an absolute laugh about his recent trip to LA, uh, stuff going on with our kids, food, fitness, all the usual TV, movies, booze, uh, women, yeah,

57:09 football, all the wrap-up stuff. So, uh, watch this space, we'll be back with a wrap-up. It's been bloody good to see you. If anyone's listening and is interested in all the work we do here at the High Value Man Project, then get yourself over to our new community where all the programs are happening now at highvalumanproject.com forward slash group. We have got your back. Let's go. Thanks for tuning in to the Johnny Jensen show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with fellow dads. Creating the life you deserve starts with you. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community of motivated modern dads at highvalumanproject.com. Let's go.