Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Legality and Risk to the Developer and Users

  • Many commenters think the site could violate UK laws (identity fraud, fake ID creation, computer misuse), especially since the domain is UK-registered.
  • Others argue it’s satirical political commentary: fake DOBs, bogus ID numbers, non-matching encoded data, and a “this is satire” watermark weaken any fraud case.
  • Debate over legal intent: some compare it to using fake ID to buy cigarettes (kid + shop + ID provider all liable); others say there’s no gain if the user is already over 18 or not harming the MP.
  • Consensus that “the AI did it” would not protect the developer; courts are likely to treat the model as a tool under the user’s control.
  • Several people advise taking the site down; others see pre-emptive self-censorship as enabling authoritarian drift.

How the Site Works (and Its Limitations)

  • Postcode → constituency via an official statistics CSV, then constituency → MP via the UK Parliament API.
  • ID images are generated via OpenAI, with random fake faces and synthetic details, then cached per MP.
  • Cost (~$0.18 per image, ~650 MPs) explains why IDs weren’t precomputed; caching avoids duplicates.
  • Some bugs/mismatches reported (wrong MP for a postcode, odd date separators).

Online Safety Act and Age Verification Critique

  • The project is framed as a small protest showing that trivial fakes pass age/ID checks on sites like Reddit and Discord.
  • Commenters describe UK age verification as outsourced, automated, and weak, with no central national ID database to cross-check.
  • The Act for some services is said to require “identity” verification, not just age, increasing privacy stakes.
  • Several predict inevitable large-scale breaches and blackmail once ID upload becomes normalized and easily misused by sites.

Political and Broader Context

  • Many see this as “weaponising the stupidity” of the law and hope it generates scandal that embarrasses MPs and civil servants.
  • Discussion of which parties backed the Online Safety Act, with frustration that both major UK parties supported or enabled it.
  • Comparisons to China’s real-name internet rules highlight fears the UK could drift toward similar surveillance norms.