ID-ing The Future

How will we identify ourselves as the digital age progresses?
In the world’s digital economy, there is one notable hold-out of the analogue era: the little paper booklets and cards that verify our identity when we travel, cross borders or conduct official business. Possessing hard copies of our passports, ID cards, and driver’s licenses are still a non-negotiable fact of modern life, and in turn a huge inconvenience if we turn up at a venue, government office or airport without them on hand when they are required.
However, because they’re so easy to steal, replicate or fabricate, it’s quite strange that governments haven’t seen the inherent value in taking our passports and identity cards off of paper and onto computer chips. With everything we do with our smartphones these days—make purchases, conduct business, store our banking details, log into our email accounts and other online profiles—it is a wonder that one of the more basic tenets of human existence and citizenship doesn’t have a purpose-built app for handheld digital devices. If nothing else, this is a space that seems to have ample room for innovation and disruption. After all, there is hardly a more personal or intimate gadget than the smartphone we all carry in our pockets.
There are, of course, serious security risks to moving ID cards of any kind to a digital format. This sense of inertia and fear of the unknown security risks is no doubt the reason why there has been little movement in this space for many governments. However, when you consider the other things the government allows us to do online, such as pay taxes, and the amount of administrative manpower and paperwork that saves them, it’s worth asking if there are any existing models of how to do this for passports and ID cards, and create a paper-less future.
At its most fundamental level, an identification card or passport is intended to prove that you are who you say you are. You provide the photographic proof, and an official scrutinizes you to verify the documentation. To provide the same utility, some in the tech space have suggested creating a government-verified and encrypted app, which an owner could only open with their fingerprint (a technology that many smartphones are already equipped with). Encrypting the app would prevent someone with nefarious aims stealing the phone, getting past the passcode and fingerprint and changing the information. And though no security measure is 100% foolproof—after all, hackers will adapt and advance alongside technology—such an encrypted digital system would be much harder to fabricate than a simple paper booklet embedded with a chip, a format that is falsified and sold on the black market all the time.
In 2012, the Guardian reported that a Canadian man managed to get past a border crossing in the United States using just a scan of his passport displayed on an iPad. Though the officials who allowed him to cross the border were disciplined, this incident is proof that the logical difference between the two formats is negligible. And with added digital security measures, and electronic option would undoubtedly be more secure anyway.
In addition to security concerns, access could be a problem too. While smartphone use is high in developed countries, it’s by no means 100%, especially among the elderly population. However this could be offset by a transitional period, where both paper and digital IDs would be acceptable. Similar to the way that paper cheques, while rare, are still acceptable despite the widespread use of electronic transfers. Over time, there is little doubt that nearly every citizen will be equipped with a smartphone allowing for a full roll out of such a digital ID scheme.
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