Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
use-their-id.comHi HN - I made a site that takes a UK postcode, grabs the local MP's information and generates an AI mockup of what their ID might look like.
It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force.
edit - My open AI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Kier Starmer's constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime.
As someone who was involved in the original guerilla digital activism that spawned the third-person URL format for independent UK government-watching websites (ie "Write to Them", "They Work for You"), I applaud your on-topic brand extension, Tim :)
Thanks Danny - it was indeed following 'They Work For You' - I'm a big fan of that site.
Thanks for your activism Danny - by coincidence I'm wearing an ancient NTK tshirt today, from a simpler era of the internet.
Do please take a moment to consider which MPs carry the burden here. It's mainly a single flavour. Mention it on the doorstep next time.
https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1926
I'm not sure what this recent vote is about. The original Online Safety Act was introduced and passed by the Tories in 2023 (although it's only coming into effect now, obviously.)
So the Tories, who created this awful bill in the first place, are now voting against it? Clown country.
That happens all over the place, conservatives pass a time bomb bill, they lose control of congress/house, time bomb is about to become effective, they now fight to overturn it and place the blame on the current ruling folks.
Except this bill was first introduced in March 2022, when the Tories hadn't imploded and there was no strong reason to expect they'd lose the next election.
It wasn't a "time bomb". They introduced this legislation because they wanted it.
This isn’t one of those cases. It was a well intentioned Bill that passed with Labour’s support but was very badly planned and written. Hell, it wouldn’t even have helped counter the misinformation being spread last summer and this summer to try and instigate more race riots!
“Well intentioned” hahahaha yeah right, good one.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
If that were true, why do laws get amended when politicians see impacts they don't like? A famous example that college students are taught at A-Level Law is the law on bigamy where it stated "a married person who gets married again." This isn't possible (in the UK, you can only get married to one person at a time), so the court had to rewrite the legislation on the fly to get the intended effect.
Labour thought Tory version was not going far enough.
Labour appear to be talking about wanting to repeal the OSA judging by this morning's news: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/jul/29/uk-pol...
Nigel Farage isn't part of Labour.
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Many such cases
In the UK on this specific topic, "both sides" is as true as ever. This is very obvious when looking at the bigger picture instead of just a single vote. I wish it wasn't, if only it was indeed just one side.
What a fucking mess.
Labour voted in conservative policy. Conservatives voted against it. Reform, whilst all over the news for being against it, voted for it.
There's an excellent (volunteer-run) [website](https://www.partijgedrag.nl/index.php) about Dutch politics that will ask your opinion on a bunch of historic chamber proposals (for/against/skip) and use that to show your alignment to different parties by comparing your answers with actual party votes. It has definitely swayed my vote a few times.
I suppose such a tool might not work in a first-past-the-post voting system, but in my case it certainly has certainly helped to see what politicians actually vote like rather than just trusting the promises. If you live in a country with easily accessible digital records of votes/bills/proposals, I imagine you could throw something similar together and help quite a few people.
I think it's fun when the elected government doesn't do what the people who elected them want. Like a middle finger to democracy.
UK is a monarchy. More so now than ever before. They all just chasing their peerages.
> I think it's fun when the elected government doesn't do what the people who elected them want.
I can't think of a country that does have people largely in agreement with the governments actions, lately.
Or perhaps, for any given country, one can find a collection of loud voices detailing how 'the people' disagree with what's happening. But whether they meaningfully do is hard to establish.
I imagine a lot of Brits agree with the incoming rules, whether they are effective or not. You find that here in Aus too - a lot of Australians vehemently agree with the protectionist laws, because the intent of them is to protect children. And to many of them it doesn't matter what the real outcome is, because you want to protect children don't you? And this law is to protect children, QED.
"Alexa, summarise the last 15+ years of UK politics in two sentences."
s/UK//
I mean, the last 15 years were mostly Tories and the public kept voting them in. I’m glad I’m not a politician because I have no sympathy for Brexit voters who voted Tory in 2019, claim “I know what a voted for,” and now complain about how much poorer and full of immigrants the country now is. It was all there in the 2019 Conservative manifesto they voted for!
Wtf are you talking about? The Conservatives promised to reduce immigration in 2019. Instead they increased it to its highest ever levels by far, hence why they got thrown out of office.
Have you ever met or spoken to a Conservative voter in your entire life?
They promised a policy (Brexit) in a form that would replace immigration from European countries with immigration from non-white countries.
In fact, the Tories did NOT promise to reduce immigration. They promised 2 things that are guaranteed to increase immigration:
- 50,000 extra nurses (including foreign recruitment)
- A points-based system, you can find articles talking about how this increases immigration
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50524262
> They promised 2 things that are guaranteed to increase immigration
> A points-based system, you can find articles talking about how this increases immigration
Firstly, I don't think they actually introduced one of those, did they? And secondly, how is that guaranteed to increase immigration?
The UK media and some of politicians at the time were all talking about an Australian-style points system. As someone pretty intimately acquainted with the Australian system, people (including ex-PM Teresa May) didn't seem to understand that under the Australian system -
- The government sets a minimum number of points under which you won't even be considered.
- The government set a maximum number of visas they will grant under the scheme each year
- The people with the best points are invited to apply for those visas
So with this setup the 'paper' minimum might be 65 points, but the effective threshhold is often 95 points to actually be invited to apply.
Yet in the UK the picture was painted as if you set a points threshhold and that's it, anyone with more than that gets a visa and you can't possibly control the numbers. It seemed like a total misunderstanding of the scheme.
They also said things like "And Australia has proportionally even higher migration than the UK under that scheme!", which is true, but again that's because the government has decided to set the amounts of visas at that level and sets them higher or lower, or adjusts which skills get more points, according to perceived need for skilled people. Aus has higher migration under their points scheme as a choice. The UK could have chosen to limit skilled visas under a similar program to a much lower level.
As far as I could tell, all of the articles and talking points at the time entirely ignored this.
> Firstly, I don't think they actually introduced one of those, did they?
The fact they didn't introduce it doesn't change the fact that adding 50,000 nurses required an increase in immigration. I went back and re-read the article, they also promised more childcare places. Guess what? That also requires more immigration.
In fact, I just read the manifesto itself and they also added a "fast-track NHS visa," so we have a clear "let's increase immigration" policy right in your face! Page 22, hilariously right next to where they promise "numbers will come down."
> They also said things like "And Australia has proportionally even higher migration than the UK under that scheme!", which is true, but again that's because the government has decided to set the amounts of visas at that level and sets them higher or lower
You're correct, the government can choose to give out less visas, and they hinted that they would in the manifest (page 22). But if you read the rest of the manifesto, you realise quickly that the two goals can't be achieved at the same time. It's like promising to cure cancer by shooting the patient.
Look, we can argue about this until the cows come home but, if you voted Tory because you thought they would bring immigration numbers down, then you should have read their manifesto. The fact that they were never able to do this was right there!
Going back to "I voted for Brexit," then complaining about Brexit. Well, that's also something that there's no excuse for. In December 2019, the deal that was to be agreed was known. If you didn't like what it said about fishing or whatever, well, tough shit. You agreed to it when you put your tick in the box for Conservative.
---
Manifesto: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/...
It's Daily Mail policy, and they're the permanent government. With the help of the Home Office, who keep writing anti-encryption bills.
> Reform, whilst all over the news for being against it, voted for it.
Just as a slight correction – the only "Reform MP" that voted for it is James McMurdock, but he's no longer a Reform MP and I'm not sure why he is still listed as one here.
Most Reform MPs did not vote at all!
Neither did a lot of conservatives and labour, interestingly.
Greens and Lib Dems voted no, which raises my opinion of them.
Agreed its a mess.
Any abstention is at best in the same column as the ayes here. Arguably worse.
This is misleading. Labour's only objection was that the policy was not going far enough!
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Clamping down on freedoms is not conservative policy.
Crap like Communications Act 2003 and Ofcom has been Labour policy for decades.
Clamping down on freedoms has been the raison d'être of "conservative" parties across the world my entire life
Both "conservatism" and "freedoms" mean a lot of different things even within anglophone countries, not to mention the obvious fact that political actors of any color never strictly follow their foundational ideology. This makes me believe that speaking for the whole world is a bit too daring, and your statement is purely emotional.
this is still absolutely true, but there have been some rumblings of change in recent years. "left wing" values have partially shifted from trying to provide equal freedoms for everyone, to trying to provide freedoms for perceived-as marginalised groups, often at the expense of freedoms for lesser marginalised groups. if you're part of a lesser marginalised group and you don't subscribe to that particular ideology, this is going to feel very much the same as having your freedoms clamped down upon, and conservatives have pounced upon that as a stick to beat their enemies with, and to be fair, have come some way themselves wrt to gay rights and perhaps drug prohibition and some other things. taking a step back though, conservatives, particularly in the UK, are by no means libertarians, and in the UK essentially sired the "left wing" values that they hate so much. when did the revolution start? 2010-15ish?
Conservatives clamping down on freedoms is only half of the story. They proclaim to be the strongest defender of freedom while they're at it.
Here's the Conservative policy for the Online Safety Act 2023, during the Sunak government:
* https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/notes/division/3/in...
Here's the Conservative white paper on Online Harms from 2019, during the May government:
* https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-whi...
To be fair, u/jojobas wrote "conservative" (little-c), not "Conservative".
However they did also specifically reference the Labour government’s policy, so it’s reasonable to assume they were speaking in a UK context and simply forgot to capitalise it.
I would read the 2019 Conservative manifesto, then. Crushing democracy and judicial oversight was very much Tory policy.
Laughable. Allow me to introduce you to the anti protest legislation brought into law by Suella Braverman.
Conservatism isn't libertarianism. Conservative parties across the world, including in the anglosphere, often advocate for laws that limit freedom but accomplish ulterior conservative goals.
freedom isn't just freedom. it's freedom for. conservatives tend to favour freedom for businesses. freedom for the establishment. freedom for the rich. you would hope that progressives favour freedom for everyone, but nowadays the louder voices on the left have sometimes been over-invested in freedom for culturally marginalised groups and under-invested in freedom for economically marginalised groups
> nowadays the louder voices on the left have sometimes been over-invested in freedom for culturally marginalised groups and under-invested in freedom for economically marginalised groups
That's just marketing from the right to discourage people with average income to vote left ("they want to give all your money to the immigrants!"). The only people the left doesn't want freedom for is those who are actively trying to take it away.
The bigger issue is that the left hasn't really existed in most countries for a long time, like the UK. "new labour" betrayed their heritage and adopted conservative points of view. Leaders who are trying to bring it back like Corbyn are ridiculed and marginalised.
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The Conservatives aren't a conservative party.
Both Conservatives and Labour serve the same corporate interests. Divide et impera.
Wow this shows labour has too many MPs and the impacts of voting for labour
The alternative (4 more years of Tories) was still worse.
Yes, I know. still much worse
Unintended side effect, UK MPs can now watch as much porn as they want with plausible deniability.
I don’t know about this law specifically, but every other law attacking the internet or encryption has attempted to exempt people in government.
That defeats the point of the legislation since it creates a gaping wide backdoor to exploit official people, who are now the most valuable targets because of that exemption.
Never mind the matter of providing a rule for the people and making the people who made the rule immune to it.
Have they researched how many of these "age check" companies are actually run by Russian intelligence services?
Unless they're being filmed while watching it because they watched it in parliament: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/neil-parish-b...
Chinese Netizens are very familiar with Xi Jinping's national ID number precisely for this reason :-)
ID verification is enforced on all Chinese websites. People figured out they can just use Xi's ID number.
This is not true. A) personal ID numbers are not publicly available (you could certainly get your hands on some, but I doubt a lot would know Xi's ID), and B) more importantly, nowadays ID verification in China uses more sophisticated methods, e.g. in order to not be restricted when playing games, users need to prove they are over 18. The user would permit the game to verify through a payment provider such as Alipay (I don't think one would even need to give their ID to the game, as it is handled by Alipay which has done KYC already).
Although I suspect such ... "innovations" ... would soon get to the western world including UK.
lol on a much lighter note, for many years I used to use 111-111-1111 as a general phone number for CVS card discounts. It stopped working several years ago though.
This reminds me: I've noticed that Starbucks now requires a few pieces of information to use their WiFi network. One is email and they are doing some sort of validation which will reject emails like whoopsileanedonxxxxxxxx@aol.com but will accept other, legit AOL emails. How are they deciding what is/not a valid email? Are they using a compiled list of emails that have been seen in the wild? What if it's a brand new address, though? Presumably AOL isn't exposing a service for them to use in realtime. I haven't tested this extensively or with other providers.
It's obvious that they care (to some extent) that they're getting valid emails, so why not use a basic regex on the FE and an OTP which gets sent to the provided address?
They can connect to a mail server and pretend that they are going to send a message and the server would reject the invalid recipient email.
> why not use a basic regex on the FE and an OTP which gets sent to the provided address?
I can't prove I control an email in order to use your wifi, if I can't use your wifi.
Use *@example.com, it usually works.
As a Canadian I was lost and confused when visiting the States (in the before time) and a gas pump asked for my zip code. So I put in the one and only zip code I know. I bet you can guess.
I used to use that one too, but you're supposed to put the 3 numerical digits of your postal code followed by 00. (I have no idea how you're supposed to know that though.)
Glad you could come visit from Beverly Hills ;)
EDIT: actually, depending on your age and what you watched on TV, maybe you were visiting from Boston?
Did it work?
Ubow Tubu Wobun Thrube Fubor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHjMEwZt5OE
XXX-867-5309 still works everywhere I try it, where "XXX" is the local area code.
I used 888-888-8888 at Target yesterday. Shhh.
Lookup the stores phone number of maps. That usually works.
> ID verification is enforced on all Chinese websites.
Is that really true? So search engines? News sites? Pseudo-anonymous discussion forums?
Don't listen to the sibling commenter who doesn't know what they're talking about.
No, you don't need ID verification to use search engine or read news in China.
However, sites that depend on user-generated content (like forums) would ask for at least your phone number.
How easily can a burner be used?
Are sim cards easily swapped?
> Are sim cards easily swapped?
Very easily. Apple even specifically introduced dual-sim iPhone for China.
> How easily can a burner be used?
You need to bring your ID to a telecom to get a phone number legally. But I don't know if there is a black market for burner sims.
(Last time I've been there was a few years ago so take it with a grain of salt.)
Burner sims have been a thing of the past in China for quite some time. The official rationale I believe is to curb telecom fraud, which in turn left China and started doing their business in southeast Asia.
> Very easily. Apple even specifically introduced dual-sim iPhone for China.
Because they don't support eSIMs there.
Not sure about now. It was before the covid. Keep in mind everything is done via weechat anyway now days.
Anyone from behind the great wall care to comment? Is HN event reachable from behind the great wall with out Tor?
There is no such thing as "burner". Phone number is very hard to get and requires ID verification and sorts
It's very easy to get. As a visitor, I got one in the airport for $20. "ID verification" is stretching it, but like so many things in China it requires the vendor to take a photo of your ID, and unusually also to take a photo of you and submit it to the telecom website.
Have you tried to use it to register for any website? It likely won't work.
You can have "read" access anonymously (with a big asterisk, see the end), but as soon as you need "write" access, the service provider (the website etc) is legally required to verify your ID. It's why there's no pseudo-anonymous discussion forum in China, at least legally.
Source: https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-11/07/content_5129723.htm
> Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China, Article 24: When network operators provide users with network access, domain name registration services, fixed-line and mobile phone network access procedures, or provide users with information publishing, instant messaging and other services, they shall require users to provide real identity information when signing an agreement with the user or confirming the provision of services. If the user does not provide real identity information, the network operator shall not provide the relevant services to the user.
The big asterisk: there's no anonymous internet service in China, you have to ID yourself to get access to the internet (article 24), and the service provider are required to keep record of you (IP and everything) (article 21), and they are also required to cooperate with the authority (no surprise here) (article 28). And using VPN or Tor is likely illegal (article 27).
No, but some features are locked until you do. For example, you can join voice chat rooms on Xiaohongshu, but can’t turn on your camera until you verify ID. You can join others’ broadcasts but you can’t create your own, etc
Yes. You need an ID to use the internet.
What about visitors?
Roaming is VPN. And if you want fast one outside firewall you can grab HK esim like soSIM. And this one only needs any passport photo w/o face verification.
You don't need an ID just to use the internet in China...
Stop talking nonsense.
I like the spirit but wouldn't this run afoul of one or two laws? Identity fraud or some such?
I'm not in the UK, so I don't have any idea about their laws, but I'd be shocked to find this was above board. Your FAQ claims it's a parody site and claims "The ID number isn't valid and you can't use the card for anything real." but you've just confirmed here it can indeed be used for real things (discord, reddit).
Your domain registration is UK-based, so, be careful!
What does the online safety act actually say about this? It's only supposed to be age verification, and if you are actually old enough does it matter how you proved it?
Many of the age verification services explicitly promise not to retain photos!
If you can fool discords implementation with a video game character they can't actually be checking very well?
Which actually does not refute GPs query. Breaking a Masterlock or Abus is the same in the eye of the law.
I certainly agree!
However, I doubt that's a strong legal argument.
What law is being broken here exactly?
It's certainly illegal to make fake IDs, but I don't know if that applies to just generating an image rather than fully forging a physical copy. And anyway these images look nothing like the real IDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_licence_in_the_United_...
Hmm, yeah. It’s almost as if they deliberately made them look less like the real ID’s, because I have little doubt that openai would be perfectly capable of generating that image.
Another thing to think about is that this is just passthrough from an AI model. If it's illegal to make a website that spits out fake IDs, then OpenAI is illegal until they filter them.
I'm not sure that argument would hold up legally. You could use an image editing site to create IDs and counterfeit currency as well, but such sites are legal.
Photoshop does not allow you to edit currency images.
https://go.photoshelter.com/brands/blog/photographers/blog/t...
This is only for images of money with a specific digital watermark; it doesn't detect the EURion constellation, so you can take your own and work with it just fine.
Your link is a 404 for me.
https://go.photoshelter.com/photographers/blog/this-is-what-...
Thank you!
I agree, the UK Police wouldn't typically let you get away with "it's just a joke". This would constitute a mixture of identity theft, fake ID and misuse of computers.
It's literally just sticking the MPs name into an AI and asking for it to generate a mock ID for them. None of their real data is being used (e.g. their face, their DoB, the address) and the mock IDs wouldn't fool anyone for a second. I'd love if someone who understands the law would weigh in though
I don't think "It was actually ChatGPT that committed the crime, not me" would fly in a British court.
That's an interesting question, though.
We hold that LLMs are incapable of generating copyrighted images, so it's not just a tool - if it was just a tool then the author would be able to copyright the images. The courts recognise that an LLM is capable of generating things in its own right (which is why they're not copyrightable - copyrights only protect human works).
So it follows that an LLM must be able to create images itself, separate from the human prompter.
Whether that's enough to absolve the human of the crime, though - IANAL, and I suspect it would take the House of Lords to rule on it definitively.
You're overthinking it. You're building on your own definition of what a tool is, but courts are likely to find that a person who used an AI with a specific type of prompt were using it as a tool and are responsible for the clearly stated intent behind their use.
Whether that's actually legal in this case I don't know, but I'm pretty sure courts won't conclude "welp, it was the AI, not the user" in a case like this.
Does the AI has access to newspapers? If John Doe is a MP, then he is probably the most famous Joe Doe in the last 5 years and the AI may grab his photo from a newspaper. I don't know about the national ID in UK, but here in Argentina the national ID number is public. A lot of public documents include "John Doe (DNI 23.456.789)", and the are sites where you can search it (the DB has problems with almost coalitions, so you may get a number 23.456.789 from one "John X. Doe" that is a 50yo in Buenos Aires and another "John Y. Doe" with number 59.876.653 that is a 3yo in Ushuaia, so in many cases it's easy to guess)
^coalitions^collisions
It does use their face
the law is pretty fickle that way. It's illegal to rob a bank no matter how badly you bungle it. Saying afterwards "but my gun was clearly made of plastic" probably won't get you completely off the hook if you actually threatened someone with it and asked for money (this site is literally titled Use Your Local MP's ID - it's expressing an intent).
It's better to be safe than sorry. For your own best interest, I would shut down the site and delete this post.
Comply in advance. It's the #1 way to make illegal laws work!
“Don’t upset the autocrats!”
You jest, but a barrister was threatened with arrest while holding a blank piece of paper on the protest: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/barrister-threatened-...
I wasn’t jesting. I was (too) obliquely saying that when we all hasten to accede to the autocrats before they even ask, we become complicit in huge social evils.
I’m not suggesting that everyone most do self-immolation, but if it were me, I would draw the line at being afraid of being “caught” for an obvious prank using no PII. Screw that, come arrest me if things have really gotten that bad.
You kid, but that's very good advice in most human societies at most points in history.
It's not just a joke, it's parody and political commentary right?
You could go with misuse of computers, but unless the ID’s are actually used by yourself it’s not identity theft right?
The only way you'd ever get found out is if the affected MP was lying to the public and the identity documents do indeed get retained...
The generated addresses aren't real. It gave a London address for my MP; I know where he lives and it isn't London.
Most MPs' home addresses are actually quite easy to find. Mine's was printed below his name on the ballot paper last election – a nice reminder of how we used to have a high-trust society. I doubt this practice will be continued for much longer.
Yeah the address on all the IDs is for parliament. I assume one could find em there
>The only way you'd ever get found out is if the affected MP was lying to the public and the identity documents do indeed get retained...
I'm more talking about the developer of the site rather than the users. And the developer could potentially be found out if they posted it on a popular hacking website and used a known alias and registered the domain in the UK.
But, if they're comfortable, all the more power to them. As I said, I do really like the spirit of the site.
If I was that developer, I'd blacklist embedding of all British MPs and councilors to avoid fraud. This would also block the entire UK political class from accessing adult materials (I got blocked by a wine forum), which would be a very effective protest...
If you really want to piss off the UK government, add a comment section.
I think this is a fun project, but I'm not sure I'd leave this up for much longer.
MPs can be litigious. Especially if this is seen to be enabling things like ID fraud.
Also, there are only 650 constituencies. I would pre-populate the list so when entering a new postcode, it doesn't stall waiting for AI.
The generated images are very obviously AI fakes. I don't think anyone is going to be seriously fooled by this.
> I would pre-populate the list so when entering a new postcode, it doesn't stall waiting for AI.
It looks like it already works like this? It was slow the first time I searched for my postcode, subsequent times have been very fast.
> I don't think anyone is going to be seriously fooled by this.
Do you think porn sites are more interested in a) correctly preventing unauthorized people from accessing their site, or b) selling as many subscriptions as they can while nominally complying with the law?
The AI should generate nude photos festooned in kink accessories, brown noses, pearl necklaces, and dripping facials.
I wouldn't say they’re “obviously” AI fakes.
I’m not from the UK, so I’m not familiar with what their IDs are supposed to look like.
I was suspicious, though—the hands holding the ID cards looked kind of “crispy.” But at the same time, I thought, “woah, where did the website owner even get these photos?” It wasn’t until I read the Hacker News post that I realized they were all AI-generated (and now cached).
And here’s the thing: I’m an engineer at Apple with decades of experience in the tech industry—I’m not exactly new to this stuff. If I got fooled even for a couple of seconds, imagine how easy it would be to trick someone who isn’t technical.
The text is slightly misaligned and weird-looking; it screams "AI". The hand holding the ID looks like CGI. And the photos don't look anything like the actual MP, at least for the ones that I tried.
There's also some obvious tells if you know what UK driving licenses look like: the layout is wrong, the background is too plain, and all the anti-forgery features are missing. Real licenses have much more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_licence_in_the_United_...
MPs will be immediately trying to hang the civil service for telling them this was a good idea. Don't expect legal action. Do expect buck passing.
I wish there was a modern day version of "Yes, [Prime] Minister" for this kind of stuff. It's like the episodes could write themselves by the week.
In Australia we have a show called "Utopia" that does fill this gap reasonably well. Australian politics are close enough to the UK that it'd probably translate well enough to be enjoyable.
I've heard many government workers say that it's funny but they can't watch it, as it's so accurate it's depressing.
Just seconding a vote for Utopia (2014), and also its (better!) predecessor The Hollowmen (2008).
Well having worked for the government in an ancillary security role about 20 years ago on contract, I don't think they could produce a parody notably worse than reality to use as a contrast. Today, I suspect it is worse.
Hire an expert they said. From the pool of experts they had heard about through contacts in the civil service. None of whom have any industry or real world experience. At best, someone was on an industry eating and drinking with the right people panel. I was there for 3 months and crawled back to my previous job cap in hand, bruised and educated.
It was long enough ago that I can away with rounding errors of months on my CV thank goodness...
It is worthy of note that most of the incidents in Yes, Minister were based on things that really happened. At some level it was more curation than invention.
Not really. I was a civil servant and gave advice on this.
Civil servants aren't there to say whether a policy is good, sensible, or a vote-winner. The CS policy profeasion is there, in part, to advise on risks. Ministers decide whether to accept those risks.
There were plenty of people (like me) who would have pointed out the various risks and problems. Some of which caused policy to change, and some were accepted.
I don't think I've ever seen in recent years the CS be blamed for something like this.
You want a different photo each time to avoid easy filter lists.
Sure, if you offer to pay the bill for the Image generation, I'm sure they would love to implement this feature
A little random crop, tilt/pan, defocus, noise, etc, would be free-ish.
This is the sort of thing that brought me into tech in the first place, before it became the villain it had started off fighting: humorous, effective pushback against stodgy power structures. More please!
It looks like the code was/is going to be published?
From the FAQ:
> How did you do this?
> This site uses React for the frontend and Node.js for the backend. The MP data is fetched from the UK government public API, and the AI-generated images use the latest model from open AI. The images are stored on a Cloudflare R2 bucket. The code is open source, so you can check it out on GitHub. It was done in a hurry.
The git repo linked from that FAQ shows a 404: https://github.com/timje/use-my-mps-id
This is hilarious. Very well done.
This is so good. Not only does it get you past the verification screen, it infects the next generation of AI models with AI slop, and it adds MPs to a list of suspicious names that are likely fraud. That means that it ruins the Internet for MPs, which is just wonderful. Like, I legitimately think that Starmer might have extra trouble signing up for things now.
All in all, one of those ideas that sounds good on the surface, but the more you think about it the better it gets.
it's a bit buried in the FAQ - if you're a non-UK user like I am and just want to see what the output looks like, Keir Starmer's postcode is WC2B6NH so inputting that will give you an already-generated example of the output.
> Keir Starmer's postcode is WC2B6NH
It's actually the postcode of a WeWork in Holborn (which happens to be in Starmer's constituency.)
Keir Starmer's postcode is SW1A 2AA.
The UK has been a police state for decades, why are people surprised by this?
When I tried it with the Walthamstow constituency the ID used a , as a date separator instead of a .
Seems odd, but probably wouldn't be noticed by an automated validator anyway.
This is great. Weaponising the stupidity of the idea, compromising it entirely until it's so obviously ineffectual it's unenforceable, then going after the politicians who pushed it for the waste of money and effort.
Create a scandal. Bad PR is the only way out now.
Always tells me that the MP wasn't found for my selected area.
Just like any other interaction with your local MP…
Hey now, mine's pretty responsive. Just the response is about as useful as letting a chimp at a typewriter.
what's the postcode?
>It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force. The IDs actually work (for Reddit, Discord etc.) which highlights how terrible this implementation is.
Could you give a short TL;DR of how ids are constructed so we can all laugh here in comments?
it's literally just the MPs name. It's a fake DoB (because their DoB's aren't public knowledge anymore) all the numbers and such are nonsense, the images wouldn't fool a human for one second. The AI tools don't let you generate an ID for any real human being (because that sounds like all sorts of fraud) so you can't upload a picture of the MP or anything like that - so I just let the model fill in whatever face it thinks is appropriate for the given name.
> because their DoB's aren't public knowledge anymore
Most are on Wikipedia, no?
Even if they weren't, most MPs will be old enough that their top level Birth Records are available, so if they don't have a common name or you know enough biographical details you can find them anyway. If they've got a weird name like Elon Musk you just go name -> DOB in one step, if they're a Sarah Black maybe you need to know approximate age, birth name, rough part of the country where they were born. For super common names like John Smith you will need to know the mother's name, year and specific location of birth at which point yeah you're closer to just knowing their DoB anyway.
where are these public birth records?
https://www.freebmd.org.uk/
I'm a bit out of the loop and not familiar with the whole thing. Do you just submit a plausibly real name and any DOB that is older than 18 and a picture? Does the thing crosscheck the name + dob with a demographic database (does UK has any)?
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Are you just using ChatGPT api to make the images? I’m surprised it would let you make driving licenses.
If so it’d be kinda crazy to go after you if anyone can just make an image like this in ChatGPT anyway.
It get all sorts of complaints from it and then it eventually says it’ll make one but only someone similar and only similar to a uk licensed and then makes something pretty close to reality - but not as recognisable as yours.
I'd be interested to know which if any of the ID verification services were fooled by this.
Are the generated images supposed to look like the MP? they look nothing like it as far as I can see.
I think so, Keir Starmer and several others show plausible faces.
On the otherhand Ashfield (NG178DA) fails spectacularly.
Won’t the government force these websites to do some kind of stronger identity verification in the future? I worry that it’ll even come with broader support when the EU or whoever implements ID verification for protecting children or banning misinformation or whatever.
>Won’t the government force these websites to do some kind of stronger identity verification in the future?
These heckin' kids needs more protection. I suggest banning all VPNs too, only this way kids are truly protected like they are in China and Iran.
'MP not found for that postcode.'
How does this new policy not end with promising upstart political careers being torpedoed when the party in power “accidentally” leaks their porn history? There is no way the intelligence community doesn’t have a back door to this. Vote how we want on this bill or your embarrassing history just gets found
love this, nice work
Always tells me an MP can't be found despite multiple attempts.
Seems like open AI is rate limiting me for a minute, I didn't expect to get top of HN this quickly. Use Starmer's for now - WC2B6NH
Why didn't you just create the images for all 650 MPs ahead of time?
Because that's expensive as hell and I didn't know if anyone would visit the site..
Ideally you would save them as they were generated, and deliver the saved version the second time?
Really? Does it really cost that much to generate a single image like this?
yeah to generate a photo of reasonable quality it costs like $.18, so multiply that by 650ish MPs and you have a pretty expensive lil parody site...
Make hay while the sun shines. ~$120 upfront would make this an order of magnitude more expensive than a vanity domain name already, but if you had precomputed and cached them you’d be capitalizing on the viral momentum.
Are you putting in a valid UK postcode?
Meta: typo in title, says "Dd" instead of "Id".
My bad, fixed now.
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Wow, people who walked near the capital were thrown in prison. Really? Just walked near the capital. Didn't break in, attack cops, destroy property. Really. Just walked near the capital.
Wow that's crazy.
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uk ain't playin' these days, i would take it down if you are under their jurisdiction
World belongs to the brave.
In UK you get arrested for a mere tweet if it hurts anyone's feelings and it's called democracy. Unbelievable.
Btw UK surpassed Russia in these kinda arrests
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