Show HN: Use Their ID – Use Your Local UK MP's ID for the Online Safety Act
248 timje1 53 7/28/2025, 9:49:10 PM use-their-id.com ↗
Hi 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.
https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1926
Labour voted in conservative policy. Conservatives voted against it. Reform, whilst all over the news for being against it, voted for it.
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.
ID verification is enforced on all Chinese websites. People figured out they can just use Xi's ID number.
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.
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.
> 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.
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...
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!
However, I doubt that's a strong legal argument.
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.
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.
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
On the otherhand Ashfield (NG178DA) fails spectacularly.
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.
Could you give a short TL;DR of how ids are constructed so we can all laugh here in comments?
Most are on Wikipedia, no?
Create a scandal. Bad PR is the only way out now.