Re: Three steps to avoid this
"This is not just about you and your personal choices."
No, it's about HMG's choices. Several European govts have opted for a choice that respects privacy. Germany even abandoned its first choice to do this. One then has to ask HMG why it made this particular choice.
It might be simply the ruling ERG's xenophobia leading it to wish to do the opposite of Europeans. It might be an unthinking data-fetish.
But from our PoV it's simply UK govt., having a long history of not being trustworthy in terms of privacy, doing yet another thing which is not trustable in terms of privacy and asking us to trust them. There's nothing to stop them reconsidering like the German govt. did but my expectations are low.