this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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I'd love to hear some informed commentary on the legality of this, if it's legal, it's surely an oversight in the law.
Edit : just to be clear, I'm talking about creating the ID, rather than using it.
Of course it's not legal. This is called identity theft.
Using the ID, sure. But what about providing the service?
Depends.
You can argue that it's basically art/political speech. You've done it to draw attention to flaws in the approach and to highlight how ineffectual the current system is, and that if you actually wanted to do make fake IDs you'd take a much less high-profile approach. As such, there's no actual criminal intent required.
Don't know if a judge would buy it though.
Civil disobedience is done with full knowledge you are breaking the law.
Especially a UK one.
Yeah, I think the creator of this is playing with fire personally.
I think it would fall under forgery which is definitely illegal and doesn't require you to use the ID.
Given that many online services currently asking for ID have a proven track record of massive data leaks I'd argue that demanding people upload photos of their ID is complicity in identity theft too.
That would be a bit harder to make stick, but I would agree.
On the criminal side, It’s identity fraud, and also an offence under the Misuse of Computers Act, gaining access to a system unauthorisedly. Civilly, it’s almost certainly a violation of the ToS.