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Error-prone eVisa system a precursor of digital ID | Computer Weekly

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Error-prone eVisa system a precursor of digital ID | Computer Weekly


Technical errors with the Home Office’s electronic visa (eVisa) system are causing “high levels of stress, fear and exhaustion” for migrants in the UK, who are being left to navigate the digitisation of their immigration status with minimal support, research has found.

The report, Exclusion by design: Digital identification and the hostile environment for migrants, said the error-prone eVisa system represents a precursor of what’s to come with mandatory digital ID, arguing that efforts to digitise the immigration system represent an opportunity to test such systems on a precarious section of the population before extending them out more broadly.  

On 31 December 2024, the physical immigration documents of millions of people living in the UK expired after being replaced with a real-time, online-only immigration status by the Home Office.

With paper documents having been completely phased out, people are now expected to use a UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) digital account to generate “share codes”, which they are supposed to use to prove their immigration status when dealing with a range of third parties, including employers and letting agencies.

This means the eVisa system – which trawls more than 90 disparate government databases to generate and determine someone’s immigration status each time they log in – is the only means by which people can prove their lawful residence in the UK, as well as evidence their associated rights and entitlements.

‘Substantial barriers’ 

However, the research – published on 5 December 2025 by academics Derya Ozkul from the University of Warwick and Marie Godin from the University of Leicester, in collaboration with Migrant Voice and the Open Rights Group – has found that the mandatory eVisa system is deeply impacting the daily lives of migrants, including their ability to work, rent or buy, travel, study, and access vital public services.

“The transition to a fully digital immigration status system marks a significant shift in how migrants interact with the UK’s immigration infrastructure,” it said, noting that while digitisation is being presented as a modernisation effort aimed at improving efficiency and security, the research demonstrates that its current implementation has created substantial barriers for many migrants.

It also found that the “frequent technical problems” are being made worse by a lack of support from the Home Office, and that migrants’ sense of vulnerability is being heightened by the wider hostile environment in which this digitisation is taking place.

“Worries of being unable to prove legal status – within a hostile environment that emphasises enforcement, detention and deportation – were pervasive,” said the report, adding that research participants shared “a deep fear of losing their rights” if they made mistakes.

“Because the system requires migrants to regularly update their information, even minor or inadvertent errors were perceived as potentially jeopardising their status,” it said. “This created a persistent sense of vulnerability. Moreover, the burden of managing these risks and the anxiety associated with them falls entirely on migrants.”

It added that this was creating “a deep sense of mistrust” towards the Home Office among migrants with negative experiences of the system, which were particularly acute for those with limited digital literacy, language barriers, disabilities or caring responsibilities.

The findings echo many of the sentiments previously shared with Computer Weekly by people experiencing technical errors with the eVisa system, who spoke in June 2025 about the “anxiety-inducing” psychological toll of not being able to reliably prove their immigration status in the face of a hostile and unresponsive bureaucracy.

“Our report highlights the experiences of migrants across the UK – of different nationalities, legal statuses and family situations – who were forced to adapt to the new system with little time or support,” said Godin.

“Many described confusion and anxiety as they navigated a complex, glitch-prone platform, fearing that even small mistakes could cost them the right to work, rent or travel. The constant pressure to manage their digital status and fix technical issues left many exhausted, reinforcing migrants’ perceptions that the shift to digitalisation prioritised control over fairness, efficiency and accessibility.” 

Ozkul said she hopes the report can serve as a warning about “what can go wrong when systems are made compulsory and digital-only, without offering any alternatives”.

Highlighting how the proposed introduction of digital ID in the UK has been framed around the need to curb illegal immigration, the report said the online-only eVisa has effectively positioned migrants “as a testing ground” for its broader national digital ID ambitions.

“While migrants have served as ‘technological testing grounds’ in other contexts (Molnar 2020), such experiments have typically focused on managing external borders rather than governing populations within state borders,” it said.

“In this respect, the UK represents a distinctive and troubling case: it has piloted a digital identity system on migrants residing within its territory, effectively normalising experimental forms of digital identification on a specific, already precarious group before considering similar digital infrastructures for the general public.”

Policy recommendations

The report goes on to make a number of policy recommendations that can help alleviate the situation for migrants. In the short term, this includes providing non-digital alternatives for migrants, ensuring there is transparency over what data is stored and which government agencies it may be shared with, and creating accessible repeal and redress mechanisms.

In the longer term, it said the Home Office should establish meaningful two-way communication with civil society organisations supporting migrants; introduce clear legal safeguards to prevent individuals or organisations, such as shop staff or political activists, from demanding proof of digital immigration status without lawful authority; and stop the experimental use of technology on migrants.

“The Home Office can take immediate steps to reduce the anxiety that migrants are experiencing by giving them the safety of a physical or digital backup that will allow them to prove their status in any circumstances,” said Sara Alsherif, migrants digital justice programme manager at Open Rights Group, which collaborated with the authors on creating the report.

“However, root and branch reform of this system is also needed and lessons must be learnt, especially as the government intends to roll digital ID out to everyone in the UK.”

The report itself added that implementing the recommendations would significantly reduce the risks and inequities created by the current digital immigration system.

“By prioritising accessibility, transparency and accountability, the Home Office can ensure that the digitalisation of public services does not compromise migrants’ rights,” it said. “Failure to act will perpetuate systemic exclusion, deepen inequalities and erode trust in public authorities.”

Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about the contents of the report, but received no response.



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Top Design Within Reach Promo Codes for March 2026

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Top Design Within Reach Promo Codes for March 2026


Design Within Reach carries some of the best and coolest home decor you can find, from modern couches to fantastic office chairs and fun designers like Herman Miller and Dusen Dusen. It’s not a cheap store to shop at, though, which is what makes these coupons something to jump on. Unlock online-exclusive discounts of up to 50%, free shipping, plus 20% off featured brands and 15% off office furniture bundles with Design Within Reach promo codes and Summer 2025 sale events. Save on hundreds of stylish items, including our favorite Design Within Reach office chairs, plus some other fantastic home gear we’ve earmarked for testing.

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Buying furniture and other household items can be one of the biggest purchases one makes in their life. Luckily, Design Within Reach has some great furniture deals, with clearance deals that are even steeper than their usual sale discounts. These deals include last-chance furniture discounts, with up to 50% off on all home categories and decor—including light fixtures, tables, ottomans, furniture cushions, and more. Check out Design Within Reach clearance deals and take advantage of the final sale prices, where furniture items are at their lowest prices yet—before they go out of stock.

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A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow ‘Organ Sacks’ to Replace Animal Testing

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A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow ‘Organ Sacks’ to Replace Animal Testing


As the Trump administration phases out the use of animal experimentation across the federal government, a biotech startup has a bold idea for an alternative to animal testing: nonsentient “organ sacks.”

Bay Area-based R3 Bio has been quietly pitching the idea to investors and in industry publications as a way to replace lab animals without the ethical issues that come with living organisms. That’s because these structures would contain all of the typical organs—except a brain, rendering them unable to think or feel pain. The company’s long-term goal, cofounder Alice Gilman says, is to make human versions that could be used as a source of tissues and organs for people who need them.

For Immortal Dragons, a Singapore-based longevity fund that’s invested in R3, the idea of replacement is a core strategy for human longevity. “We think replacement is probably better than repair when it comes to treating diseases or regulating the aging process in the human body,” says CEO Boyang Wang. “If we can create a nonsentient, headless bodyoid for a human being, that will be a great source of organs.”

For now, R3 is aiming to make monkey organ sacks. “The benefit of using models that are more ethical and are exclusively organ systems would be that testing can be meaningfully more scalable,” Gilman says. (R3’s name comes from the philosophy in animal research known as the three R’s—replacement, reduction, and refinement—developed by British scientists William Russell and Rex Burch in 1959 to promote humane experimentation.)

New drugs are often tested in monkeys before they’re given to human participants in clinical trials. For instance, monkeys were critical during the Covid-19 pandemic for testing vaccines and therapeutics. But they’re also an expensive resource, and their numbers are dwindling in the US after China banned the export of nonhuman primates in 2020.

Animal rights activists have long pushed to end research on monkeys, and one of the seven federally funded primate research facilities across the country has signaled it would consider shutting down and transitioning into a sanctuary amid growing pressure. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also winding down monkey research, part of a bigger trend across the government to reduce reliance on animal testing.

As a result, Gilman says, there aren’t enough research monkeys left in the US to allow for necessary research if another pandemic threat emerges. Enter organ sacks.

Organ sacks would in theory offer advantages over existing organs-on-chips or tissue models, which lack the full complexity of whole organs, including blood vessels.

Gilman says it’s already possible to create mouse organ sacks that lack a brain, though she and cofounder John Schloendorn deny that R3 has made them. (For the record, Gilman doesn’t like the term “brainless” to describe the organ sacks. “It’s not missing anything, because we design it to only have the things we want,” she says.) Gilman and Schloendorn would not say how exactly they plan to create the monkey and human organ sacks, but said they are exploring a combination of stem-cell technology and gene editing.

It’s plausible that organ sacks could be grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, says Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, Davis. These stem cells come from adult skin cells and are reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state. They have the potential to form into any cell or tissue in the body and have been used to create embryo-like structures that resemble the real thing. By editing these stem cells, scientists could disable genes needed for brain development. The resulting embryo could then be incubated until it grows into organized organ structures.



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A Mysterious Numbers Station Is Broadcasting Through the Iran War

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“Tavajoh! Tavajoh! Tavajoh!” a man’s voice announces, before going on to narrate a string of numbers in no apparent order, slowly and rhythmically. After nearly two hours, the calls of “Attention!” in Persian stop, only to resume again hours later.

The broadcast has been playing twice a day on a shortwave frequency since the start of the US-Israel attack on Iran on February 28.

According to Priyom, an organization which tracks and analyses global military and intelligence use of shortwave radio, using established radio-location techniques, the broadcast was first heard as the US bombing of Iran began. It has since played on the 7910 kHz shortwave frequency like clockwork—at 02.00 UTC and again at 18.00 UTC.

Over the weekend, Priyom said it had identified the likely origin of the broadcast. Using multilateration and triangulation techniques, the group traced the signal to a shortwave transmission facility inside a US military base in Böblingen, southwest of Stuttgart, Germany.

The site lies within a restricted training area between Panzer Kaserne and Patch Barracks, with technical operations possibly linked to the US army’s 52nd Strategic Signal Battalion, headquartered nearby.

That identification narrows the field, but it does not reveal who is behind the transmissions or who they are meant for.

The two-hour-long transmission is divided into five to six segments, each lasting up to 20 minutes. Each opens with “Tavajoh!” before shifting into a string of numbers in Persian, sometimes punctuated with an English word or two. Five days into the broadcast, radio jammers were heard attempting to block the frequency. The following day, the transmission shifted to a different frequency—7842 kHz.

Radio communication experts believe the broadcast is likely part of a Cold War–era system known as number stations.

The Return of the Numbers

Number stations are shortwave radio broadcasts that play strings of numbers or codes that sound random—like the one now heard in Iran. “It is an encrypted radio message used by foreign intelligence services, often as part of a complex operation by intelligence agencies and militaries,” says Maris Goldmanis, a Latvian historian and avid numbers stations researcher.

Number stations are most commonly associated with espionage. “For intelligence agencies, it is important to communicate with their spies to gather intelligence,” says John Sipher, a former US intelligence officer who served 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. “This is not always possible in person due to political constraints or conflict. This is where number stations come in.”

While the use of number stations can be traced back to the First World War, they gained prominence during the US-Soviet Cold War. As espionage grew more sophisticated, governments used automated voice transmissions of coded numbers to communicate with agents, Goldmanis says. Citing declassified KGB and CIA documents, he adds that number stations were widely used during this period, often as Morse code transmissions and, in many cases, as two-way communications, with agents reporting back using their own shortwave transmitters.

“Nowadays, you have various satellite and encrypted communications technologies,” Sipher says. “But during the Cold War and even before that, governments had to find ways to do this without being noticed, and broadcasting coded messages was one way to communicate with your assets discreetly.”

The apparent randomness of the numbers means they can be understood only with a codebook, Sipher adds. “Nobody can make heads or tails of it or understand what it says unless you have the codebook that can give you hints to decrypt the code,” he says, noting that such systems must be set up and coordinated in advance.

A Signal Without a Sender

While the likely origin of the signal may now be clearer, its purpose and intended recipient remain unknown.

Because the broadcasts are encrypted and designed to be covert, those details may remain unclear for years, Goldmanis says. The structured nature of the transmission—its fixed schedule and consistent use of frequencies—further suggests it is part of a planned operation.



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