What is Digital Identity?
In the United States, digital identity is promoted as a communist and “privacy-ruining” technology of the future. But the reality is, many countries around the world have already issued digital IDs to their citizens, and it has actually increased privacy in some areas—but maybe not the ones you were thinking of.
Digital identity returns the control of one’s identity to themself, though the government still oversees it. While it may lower digital privacy from the government, it increases it in the consumer space. Read on to learn more about digital identity.
What is Digital Identity?
What would happen if you lost your Driver’s License? You would probably have to make a trek to a government building to have it replaced. People don’t like to consider it, but in the last 50 years we have boiled our identity down to a scrap of plastic, or a piece of paper in a passport booklet—something which can easily be stolen, lost, or destroyed.
The reality is, digital identity is safer and better than our current ways of establishing identity. It ties who you are to an app or website, with information that can only be accessed when you enter your specific passcode or fingerprint. The cool thing about digital identity is the fact that it can be connected to several businesses and services, meaning an individual doesn’t have to worry about bringing a paper identification to every appointment.
That being said, because of current technological limitations, digital identity is still controlled by the government issuing it—but that doesn’t mean you are sacrificing privacy.
What are the Benefits of Digital Identity?
Less Loss/Theft
The biggest upside of digital identity is that you would no longer need to panic when you dropped your license in a crowded bar, or have your passport stolen on the streets of Colombia. With digital identity, your information is stored digitally, and not on a piece of paper, meaning you are more protected against the petty versions of identity theft.
More Privacy
In general, digital identity offers more privacy because it allows you to only give access to certain businesses and only disclose certain aspects of your identity. For example, a doctor’s office may have you scan your digital identity QR code, which contains your health insurance information, but it won’t disclose anything more.
Additionally, right now, anyone can grab your passport and learn a lot about you—your age, birthdate, and even your place of birth. A digital ID encloses this all in a single QR code, which can be restricted to only be viewed by the proper authorities. This also stops companies from having to store your data and verify over and over—rather they just allow you to input your code each time, and they check against your digital ID. This means, no more massive hacks where consumer information is stolen, and no need to panic if someone does somehow get your information—they won’t be able to use it without the code.
Which brings us to the next positive—right now many companies all over the world are collecting and selling your data, whether you realize it or not. Digital identity removes access for these companies to some of your data. Sure, they can still sell cookie data but since they are no longer keeping your age, sex, and location on file, you limit the value your data provides to the company…how cool is that?
Ease of Use
Instead of having to verify your identity on every website ever, you instead hold your identity in the palm of your hand (in your phone). This makes it easy to join new websites, open new bank accounts, and whatever else you would normally need a photo of you plus your passport, plus you holding up paper with today’s date to do.
What are the Downsides of Digital Identity?
Government Oversight
As we mentioned above, we would love a world where identity is completely separate from issuing governments—something more decentralized. However, that dream is likely a long way off, and we aren’t certain we are prepared to switch government authority for business authority.
Many people moan and groan that digital identity gives way too much power to the government…but we have news for you. If you still think you can keep information from the government yet you have a passport, driver’s license, use a cell phone, or have a bank account, you’re wrong. Ever since the Patriot Act went into effect in 2002, most governments already have an insane level of access to all of your information. And yes, they are allowed to monitor your internet activity, phone calls, text messages, and more. There is even current legislation to have an AI bot to track every single US citizen…we aren’t kidding.
So, while we hate that digital identity is tied to the government for longevity reasons (if the government goes down, it’s bye-bye identity), we are pro digital identity because it allows you to keep your information more private from businesses and better protects you from identity theft—because the government is already all up in your business anyway.
Technology Issues
Of course, the major downside of a digital identity program would be the corresponding tech issues. We aren’t sure how an entity would be able to push an update without having to take things offline for a few minutes, and we aren’t sure how this would affect consumers, but the reality is, anything that involves tech involves tech issues, and this isn’t a reason to not move forward with a digital identity program.
Discrimination
Unfortunately, as long as there is a government behind digital identity, there will likely continue to be discrimination—against those who are born elsewhere, under certain circumstances, and more. However, this discrimination already exists in physical IDs, so unless you find a way to change 300 years of history, this isn’t a reason to hate digital identity.
Overall, we believe digital identity is the next step forward in society. It brings a lot of positives to life; however, it does have some downsides too, so we hope those are addressed soon.
