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Nine states allow you to add a digital version of your driver’s license to Apple Wallet. Eight more states, as well as several airport TSA checkpoints, just announced they were adopting the feature. What’s holding up Oregon? —Brett S.
Actually, Brett, fully 13 states have implemented digital IDs. Why isn’t tech-friendly, forward-thinking Oregon among them? Maybe we just haven’t gotten around to considering it. If there’s been any legislative back-and-forth on the subject, I couldn’t find it. My usual answer as to why Oregon hasn’t done something is that we’ve been too busy smoking marijuana and having gay sex (both of which, by the way, are more pleasant ways to spend one’s time than legislative back-and-forth), but the truth is it’s a lot easier to say why something did happen than why it didn’t.
That said, there are certainly reasons why we might want to pump the brakes on digital IDs rather than, say, rushing headlong into a dystopian surveillance state in the name of convenience. (Orwell famously said the future would be a boot stamping on a human face forever—but hey, at least the human face isn’t constantly having to pull out its actual physical wallet at the liquor store!)
To put it another way, there are privacy concerns. When you present your physical ID to an actual human, the transfer of information stops there. When you present your digital ID to a digital reader, however, there’s nothing to prevent that reader from sending a permanent record of that interaction to [Dan Bongino/the Deep State/Ramblin’ Rod].
Such “phoning home” is, in fact, the default option for most forms of digital authentication, from workplace key fobs to credit cards. This may be why the current leading standard for digital IDs, the catchily named ISO/IEC 18013-5:2021, wound up including a phone-home option.
Somewhat surprisingly, most states aren’t using phone home (the standard also supports an offline mode that doesn’t check in with a central server), but privacy advocates are pushing for a standard where phoning home is impossible, rather than merely relying on states’ promises to steer clear.
Perhaps Oregon lawmakers are sensibly waiting for the dust to settle so they can implement a perfected system. Then again, maybe they’ve just been dicking around with the budget for so long they’ve forgotten how to do anything else. Either way, though, there’s probably no harm in limping along with our primitive stone-tablet-and-papyrus IDs for another year or two.
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
