Check It Out: Digital ID - a dress rehearsal for more to come
By Joan Janzen
There’s an inspirational saying that goes “Life is not a dress rehearsal”. However the UK’s recent announcement of a digital ID has been described as a dress rehearsal of more to come.
Governments around the world want digital ID for a number of reasons. Centralized identity is basically a universal passport for the digital world, and biometrics make identity theft much more difficult. It’s efficient and will save governments time and money by eliminating paper work. The primary function of digital ID is having all your personal documents in a central source instead of having to produce them individually.
However the features that provide convenience are also the same features that can be abused for power. A headline of a September, 2025 article by Patrick Johnson reads: “Vietnam shuts down millions of bank accounts over biometric rules.”
It was not a dress rehearsal, but a live event when Vietnam erased 86 million bank accounts of non-compliant citizens who refused digital ID. At the same time the world listened as the Prime Minister of the UK announced they will make a new free of charge digital ID mandatory for the right to work.
A pastor by the name of Vlad Savchuck weighed in on the subject on a recent podcast. “It’s a dress rehearsal for more. We will begin to see more and more of this … where people are preconditioned to accept government controlled systems. Finances are going to become more centralized and information will not only be stored but owned and controlled and regulated by government,” he explained. “When government holds our money, travel, social media, health and even our ability to speak freely, it opens the door for control and punishment at the flip of a switch,” he observed. He advised people to recognize the danger of centralized power when it comes to freedom, privacy and faith.
Michelle Rempel and Sean Schnell discussed what this means for Canada on a recent podcast. Michelle observed the UK has the same problem we have in Canada: high levels of temporary foreign workers through a variety of streams. “Instead of reforming immigration they want to impose restrictions on civil liberties to solve the problem,” she said.
A former UK Prime Minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg claims digital ID will make no difference in eliminating people from working in the country illegally. “Every so often firms are fined, but they find it worth their while for the low wages they can pay these people. And the workers think it’s better to be in this country on a low wage than to be in their country,” he said on social media. However he said what it will do is change the public’s relationship with the state.
“We believe we should be entitled to have the state as our servant, not as our master. But the government believes they can lead our lives for us better than we can do it for ourselves,” he observed. He listed that as the first reason digital ID is a bad idea.
He claimed the second reason is the public’s loss of confidence in the police. “We are a country where the police knock on your door to tell you you’ve said something rude online, even arresting people for praying. This undermined confidence in policing in this country in a very damaging way,” he reported.
“Once this is in it will be amazingly easy to add information to it and to try and direct and nudge us to do things that are thought to be good for us. It will be increasingly easy to maintain records,” he said. He described it as a “one-stop shop for the government”. The government would have information on your employment, taxes, benefits, and health records.
“They could put it all together to exercise control because you’re not doing what the state wants,” he surmised.
Jacob said he prefers his records to be kept separately, because separation enhances freedom. “The government is doing this for reasons that don’t make sense, but the truth is it’s doing it because it wants control,” he observed. “The ID card is the absolute epitome of power being taken.” He described it as a real threat to liberties in order to solve a problem to which it will make absolutely no difference.
Michelle Rempel noted, the current UK Prime Minister claims fair and pragmatic people want digital ID. Therefore, if you don’t want it, you are considered unfair and not pragmatic. “In Canada it’s the same concept; you’re not fair minded if you have questions about something. If you’re not supporting their policies, you’re not supporting Canada,” she said.
“It’s very important that we oppose it and that we maintain our freedom to get on with our lives. To live in a way that we choose, not in a way that the state chooses,” the former UK Prime Minister concluded.
Meanwhile in Canada, Sean Schnell advised, “We need to put Canadians on guard for policies as they happen in other countries to be sure it doesn’t happen here.”