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Information has been stolen from the UK government in a new cyber-attack that is believed to have had its origin in China.
The BBC tells us:
“Government data has been stolen in a hack though officials believe the risk to individuals is “low”, a minister has said.
“Trade Minister Chris Bryant told BBC Breakfast “an investigation is ongoing” into the hack, adding that the security gap was “closed pretty quickly”.
“A Chinese affiliated group is suspected of being behind the attack, but Bryant said investigators “simply don’t know as yet” who is responsible.
“That data is understood to have been on systems operated on the Home Office’s behalf by the Foreign Office, whose staff detected the incident.
“It comes after the Sun newspaper reported that hackers affiliated to the Chinese state accessed the data in October with information possibly including visa details targeted.
““Government facilities are always going to be potentially targeted,” Bryant said on Friday.
“We are working through the consequences of what this is.””
The revelation raises an obvious question at this time: Why are we being asked to believe the government is a safe custodian of our information for digital ID cards (for example)?
An honest future-direction message
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The answer is depressing: Because the claim rests on assertion rather than evidence – and the evidence increasingly points the other way.
What the BBC report inadvertently illustrates is not a one-off failure, but a pattern. Government departments outsource data handling across multiple agencies and contractors, operate on legacy systems bolted onto newer digital layers, and then reassure the public after breaches occur that the “risk is low” and the gap has been “closed”.
Those phrases recur so often they have become ritualistic.
They are not proof of competence; they are damage-control language.
The key problem for digital ID proposals is not simply that hacks occur – any large data holder will be targeted. The problem is that the UK government repeatedly demonstrates three structural weaknesses:
Fragmentation of responsibility
In this case the data sat on systems operated on the Home Office’s behalf by the Foreign Office.
That diffusion allows ministers to avoid clear accountability while multiplying attack surfaces.
A digital ID system would centralise far more sensitive data, but would still be administered through the same tangled web of departments, agencies and private contractors.
Normalisation of failure
Ministers now openly describe state-level cyber espionage as “part of modern life”.
That is an extraordinary admission.
If large-scale foreign intrusion is treated as inevitable, then the promise that digital identity data will be kept secure is already hollow.
The government cannot simultaneously argue that breaches are unavoidable and that citizens should trust it with a single, unified digital identity tied to their movements, entitlements and legal status.
Asymmetry of consequences
When government systems are breached, the costs fall on the public, not on ministers.
Individuals cannot opt out, cannot meaningfully audit how their data is used, and have little recourse beyond being told the risk is “low”.
Yet digital ID would dramatically raise the stakes.
A compromised passport database is serious; a compromised digital ID system is existential for anyone dependent on it to prove who they are, work, rent, access services or cross borders.
The credibility gap
In addition, the same state that insists it must hoard data for efficiency and security has presided over repeated losses of personal information, from HMRC to the Home Office to the Electoral Commission.
Each time, assurances follow. Each time, another breach eventually occurs.
Trust is not rebuilt by repetition of reassurance; it is rebuilt by demonstrable improvement, transparency and restraint.
None of those are currently evident.
So when the government asks the public to accept that it will be a safe custodian of digital ID data, it is not asking for informed consent.
It is asking for faith that future systems will somehow be immune to the failures of those currently in use, and faith that a state struggling to defend its own infrastructure can safely centralise the most sensitive data citizens possess.
On the evidence available, that faith is not warranted.
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UK government data is hacked AGAIN. Why should we trust it with a digital ID system?
Share this post:
Information has been stolen from the UK government in a new cyber-attack that is believed to have had its origin in China.
The BBC tells us:
“Government data has been stolen in a hack though officials believe the risk to individuals is “low”, a minister has said.
“Trade Minister Chris Bryant told BBC Breakfast “an investigation is ongoing” into the hack, adding that the security gap was “closed pretty quickly”.
“A Chinese affiliated group is suspected of being behind the attack, but Bryant said investigators “simply don’t know as yet” who is responsible.
“That data is understood to have been on systems operated on the Home Office’s behalf by the Foreign Office, whose staff detected the incident.
“It comes after the Sun newspaper reported that hackers affiliated to the Chinese state accessed the data in October with information possibly including visa details targeted.
““Government facilities are always going to be potentially targeted,” Bryant said on Friday.
“We are working through the consequences of what this is.””
The revelation raises an obvious question at this time: Why are we being asked to believe the government is a safe custodian of our information for digital ID cards (for example)?
The answer is depressing: Because the claim rests on assertion rather than evidence – and the evidence increasingly points the other way.
What the BBC report inadvertently illustrates is not a one-off failure, but a pattern. Government departments outsource data handling across multiple agencies and contractors, operate on legacy systems bolted onto newer digital layers, and then reassure the public after breaches occur that the “risk is low” and the gap has been “closed”.
Those phrases recur so often they have become ritualistic.
They are not proof of competence; they are damage-control language.
The key problem for digital ID proposals is not simply that hacks occur – any large data holder will be targeted. The problem is that the UK government repeatedly demonstrates three structural weaknesses:
Fragmentation of responsibility
In this case the data sat on systems operated on the Home Office’s behalf by the Foreign Office.
That diffusion allows ministers to avoid clear accountability while multiplying attack surfaces.
A digital ID system would centralise far more sensitive data, but would still be administered through the same tangled web of departments, agencies and private contractors.
Normalisation of failure
Ministers now openly describe state-level cyber espionage as “part of modern life”.
That is an extraordinary admission.
If large-scale foreign intrusion is treated as inevitable, then the promise that digital identity data will be kept secure is already hollow.
The government cannot simultaneously argue that breaches are unavoidable and that citizens should trust it with a single, unified digital identity tied to their movements, entitlements and legal status.
Asymmetry of consequences
When government systems are breached, the costs fall on the public, not on ministers.
Individuals cannot opt out, cannot meaningfully audit how their data is used, and have little recourse beyond being told the risk is “low”.
Yet digital ID would dramatically raise the stakes.
A compromised passport database is serious; a compromised digital ID system is existential for anyone dependent on it to prove who they are, work, rent, access services or cross borders.
The credibility gap
In addition, the same state that insists it must hoard data for efficiency and security has presided over repeated losses of personal information, from HMRC to the Home Office to the Electoral Commission.
Each time, assurances follow. Each time, another breach eventually occurs.
Trust is not rebuilt by repetition of reassurance; it is rebuilt by demonstrable improvement, transparency and restraint.
None of those are currently evident.
So when the government asks the public to accept that it will be a safe custodian of digital ID data, it is not asking for informed consent.
It is asking for faith that future systems will somehow be immune to the failures of those currently in use, and faith that a state struggling to defend its own infrastructure can safely centralise the most sensitive data citizens possess.
On the evidence available, that faith is not warranted.
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