We live in an age of convenience. Anything that makes our complicated lives less complicated and less difficult to navigate seems like a boon. And in the digital age—which allows us access to so much information anywhere, anytime—the lure of convenient access is very strong.

On the surface it seems sensible, for instance, to make it possible to log in to just one account for all our government services and interactions instead of having to use separate apps or an account for each service or department. And this would make sense if not for the immense dangers of concentrating such information and therefore making it an irresistible target for hackers. It’s also worth considering who might be among those hackers, for example, unfriendly nations and their militaries.

But that is what the British government is proposing for the British public through the government’s digital governance initiatives. You probably don’t need a long litany of data breaches including those involving governments to confirm your fears. But this article describes recent ones in Britain in the context of the government’s determination to roll out a national digital ID system.

It’s important to recall that with the advent of the Trump Administration, it is no longer necessary for government systems to be hacked from the outside. These systems can now be freely raided under the direction of the leader of a country by tech workers parading as government employees and the information shipped anywhere for later use and profit. We do not know for certain that this has happened. But that is just the point. It is currently impossible for us to know one way or another.

In my recent piece “Are computers and democracy compatible? Maybe not” I noted that even if Donald Trump had not won the presidency, all the personal information the U.S. government stores on its citizens would still be just as vulnerable as we are now finding out. Although a Harris administration would probably have scrupulously respected federal privacy laws, any future administration could do what the Trump administration has done (assuming there are no new barriers put in the way of accessing that data).

There is also the additional danger posed by a unified digital ID/login system entirely dependent a continuously functioning electrical grid. When the grid goes down, everything dependent on that ID/login cannot be accessed. Think: airline reservation systems which bring an airline to a halt until the system comes back up.

How quaint it must seem to our tech overlords when someone verifies a person’s identify by looking at a picture ID. How quaint it must seem when someone pays for something using currency. Given the fragility of our data networks and electrical system, it seems like it would be wise to have alternative ways of conducting daily life when those systems go down or just malfunction. Maintaining those alternative ways will seem inefficient until a major digital system goes down for a prolonged period.

Finally, there is the danger that those living under a digital system for accessing services may find themselves inadvertently or intentionally locked out. If intentionally, it might be for reasons that are justified or not. But it will be all too easy to cut someone off and much harder to address an unjustified cutoff. Meanwhile, the person needing assistance, perhaps urgent assistance, will be without help. Will there be a backup up system such as a physical ID when the inevitable happens and procedures to allow someone at an office in person to move forward with accessing the help needed?