Privacy-preserving features in the Mobile Driving License
security.googleblog.com
security.googleblog.com
At that point, where do you draw the line of privacy? You're carrying with you an object that you can't trust 100% and can work against you anytime.
This is truly chilling dystopian type stuff. Soon a cell phone will be required for every "person."
I have my payment cards on my watch. Pre-pandemic, my gym membership card was on my watch. If I had my ID on my watch as well, I don't ever have to worry about a wallet being stolen because I wouldn't carry one.
Sure, people can steal your watch at gunpoint- but it can be remotely disabled (even if you were forced to give your passcode under duress), and you'd still have a physical ID card at home you can use.
For most people on this site, this kind of threat is far more likely than the mugging you described.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-v...
1. Keep using a drivers licence in card form.
2. If you want to use it in phone form instead despite your dispute with google and apple, have it on a phone thats not made by google or apple.
3. If you insist on using a google or apple phone for your drivers licence phone app despite your dispute with google and apple, just leave it off after putting your licence on it except for when you need your licence, and don't connect it to the internet.
Eg. If you're an ex-Google employee or contractor, use a personal iPhone without any Google apps on them.
Is having a computer a requirement to be part of modern society? It certainly helps, and the vast majority of people use them for the convivence, but its not required.
Often does work against you really.
Maybe that's just the marketing working on 11 and I'm to tuned in, or maybe everyone is into it and I'm the one that doesn't care.
I kinda feel like most people, when threatened by an authority figure with a gun, will approve whatever data that person asks for.
The place where I do think this is valuable is when showing ID to get into a bar, or at a store when purchasing alcohol. The only bit of info the bouncer/cashier needs is whether or not you are of legal drinking age; they don't need to know your actual age/birthday or your name or address.
I think I'd be fine walking away from a bar that used this system to request everything, rather than just a simple "over 21?" verification question. There are plenty of bars out there and I don't have to patronize shitty ones.
It's not supposed to be a foolproof solution. The point is to prevent the officer from casually looking through your photos/texts after you gave him the phone.
That seems like a plausibly useful feature, or are there other ways to tell that the virtual id matches the real person holding the phone?
I changed hairstyles dramatically between my license photo and age 21, so I had my license challenged a significant (probably single-digit percentages) number of times until I got a new photo in my mid-20s.
If there is a standard (name, DOB, photo, address, height, weight) that's probably more than enough.
With the current system, I could easily believe that not all bars scan the barcode for a nefarious reason, but do it just to make it easier to avoid a bad manual reading (different ID layouts per state, darkness making it hard to read, etc.).
With this kind of digital ID, requesting anything more than my age and photo is an immediate flag to me that they're explicitly looking to do something shady (or at least they're incompetent and don't know how to use the reader properly). I would deny everything but the age and photo request, and if they balk, I'd ask to speak to a manager or just walk away.
https://idscan.net/scanning-solutions/age-verification-solut...
They use it for marketing purposes.
So now I have to put my image in the store's database too? Way more invasive than plastic card, which doesn't electronically transmit my image.
There is a much better approach that doesn't have the privacy problems that the proposed solution has: https://certisfy.com
Use good old PKI with the verification process for generating certificates delegated to suitable third-parties.
It's nice to know Google is concerned about this dystopian possibility.
Who doesn't have a charging cable in their car for their phone?? Also if you're going to be in nature for a weekend, you can opt to carry your physical ID as a backup (or leave it in the car if you're comfortable with that).
> hand over my phone unlocked to the police or to everybody who wanna see the license.
The article covers this. You never hand over your phone; you send a grant to the other party's device to read only certain bits of information from the ID app. And the article mentions that the right way to implement it on the ID-holder's side is to require PIN/biometric unlock in order to approve the transfer, but then immediately go into a lockdown mode so if the LEO then takes your phone, it'll be locked.
> More worse, until now, they just checked and it was ok. From now an, everybody is always saved after that in a DB.
That already happens now; if you get pulled over, the cop isn't going to manually read your ID and copy it into their squad car's computer. They scan the barcode on the back and all of it gets sucked in. (Even many bars and convenience stores that sell alcohol will scan the barcode and get way more information than they need.)
> And why is that more secure? If you cheated until know and showed a false ID, so you show now just a false phone.
Sure, you can borrow someone else's phone, but presumably your photo won't match theirs. And if it's close enough, then yeah, you can probably get away with it. But just because something doesn't close all the loopholes, it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. A discouragement for this particular thing is that the person you've borrowed the phone from will probably not want to give up their phone for an entire night!
Personally, I'm torn on this. If it really would allow me to selectively give only the bits of information from my ID that various parties actually need, that would be nice. But I worry more about how the ID data will be secured on whatever non-government third-party's backend this will inevitably be outsourced to.
You'd be sending a message cryptographically signed by the government to someone else's device, so it doesn't matter what's on your screen—if you can't produce that signed message, you can't do anything.
If you drive the car of a person who has a suspended license, you will get pulled over. Their ALPR system will automatically flag you, and the officer will tell you that he ran your plates and pulled you over because the owner has a suspended license. That might be a good time to have a physical ID on you to prove you're not the owner. BUT at the same time, if you know your DL number, or even your name and address, there's no reason the cops can't look you up to verify who you are.
It seems pretty common to loan a car to a friend, or to use a car registered to another family member, or to rent a car form either a traditional rental company or a service like Turo. In those instances they have no idea who you are.
> If you drive the car of a person who has a suspended license, you will get pulled over. Their ALPR system will automatically flag you, and the officer will tell you that he ran your plates and pulled you over because the owner has a suspended license.
I don't find that unreasonable at all. And that's a fine counterexample to your original complaint; in this case it's good that you have a license that you can produce to prove you're not the owner with the suspended license.
> BUT at the same time, if you know your DL number, or even your name and address, there's no reason the cops can't look you up to verify who you are.
There are all sorts of ways to defeat that. Perhaps you give your sibling's name and address, and your photos look close enough that you get away with it. And why would I bother to memorize my DL number? It's far easier to just carry the card.
These sorts of systems and processes are designed to avoid loopholes and make things more certain for the cop. Asking a cop to "just trust you" based on self-provided information also just begs them to decide based on their unconscious (or conscious) biases, which reduces justice for anyone who happens to be a member of an often-discriminated-against group. I think cops should try to be flexible and give people the benefit of the doubt when it's appropriate to do so, but deciding when that's the case isn't always easy, so I'd rather we just require people to carry their license with them when they drive. It's not hard, and if you're going to be assuming responsibility for a one-ton metal and plastic ballistic object traveling fast enough to kill, then you damn well can also take on the responsibility for carrying a physical license.
Regardless, out of all the things that the government does that's shady and reeks of wanting to control people's lives, requiring you to carry around a little card with you when you drive a car is not even in the top 100 for me.
I know this is a real problem because I can hardly see. I don’t have a license. It causes continuous problems in real life.
I live in Oz. You are supposed to be able to use a “Photo Card” to prove identity the same as a drivers license. It takes the same amount of proof to get a “Photo Card” from the government as a drivers license. They look the same as a drivers license, even the same holograms, but a different colour.
But I have continuous trouble dealing with banks, insurers, government (crazy!), post office, telephone companies, internet companies. I bought a passport mostly because it easier to carry that around.
If we get an app that only accepts drivers license and not the official photo card equivalent it means we’ll get told by contact centres to drive (!) to our nearest branch of whatever and bring a folder full of ID and hope the drone will accept it.
It's possible that they are afraid the latter will raise more "big brother" type concerns with people in the US, so they're focusing on the DL part of it.
I know people who don't have a DL, and instead have a (nearly identical looking, also obtained from the same government agency that handles DLs) state ID, and it would be silly if this new "mDL" didn't also support their IDs.
This is something I'd like to be able to use on non-Android and iOS platforms, but that's unlikely if it's not possible for anyone but the issuer to write an mDL app.
You can keep many Govt issued IDs in there and those are all good to be accepted and treated as valid across the country - for example DL and vehicle ownership docs when checked by cops. You can keep some non Govt IDs as well e.g. insurance docs.
I do have some privacy/safety concerns but I'd trust my Govt (that issued most of these docs in the first place) more than a corporation who are known as a business with privacy invasion as their primary function - in fact almost anything they do revolves around this core idea.
(Yes I know other forms of licences are fallible, I’m just being cynical).
That's an interesting feature. I wonder if it's going to result in pressure from law enforcement to unlock the device.
Consequently, two people who don't really look alike can essentially share the same ID card as the person doing the comparing doesn't want to invite accusations of racism.
It was not a comment about whether cards are standard. I do need to be able to present a policy number the police look up in my state.
Ditch the concept entirely, no need for proof of insurance - either in physical card or digital form.
I don't want my identity in society controlled by a fucking Google app. I don't know when they'll lock me out. I don't know if I'll always have a working, charged smartphone on me. I don't see a single advantage to this approach.
Not saying this is the solution, but the current system isn't that great.
That's not a thing where I live. Sucks that you have to deal with that, and that it's not outlawed. Where do you live?