Apple announces first states to adopt driver’s licenses and IDs in Apple Wallet

So have private corporations. The point is that government at least has a mandate to protect it's citizens. Corporations explicitly do not care... and in fact there are many situations where they would be taking on significant liability if they put user privacy above profit (putting any above profit risks a shareholder suit or shareholder activism to bump executives/board)

Are you seriously asking this question? https://soapboxie.com/government/who_do_YOU_TRUST

Same in Australia, at least in my state of NSW.

You use either a PIN or FaceID to log in to the app, and it provides the above as well as our covid QR logins for contact tracing.

Solutions must be created publicly with active participation of experts from different domains.

Regulations and laws must be defined with expertise and care for the future of humanity, with proper protection of privacy and existing legislative frameworks.

There are proven principles that define our world. The tech overlords are playing gods at the moment, and the minions are following the lead.

Solutions arise when expertise is manifested trough political and public action. Bed time stories about convenience and trust are for kids. Grown-up humans are using history as a reference to protect the future and work actively towards balanced implementation.

One logical tech solution is everything that is of critical importance to be open-sourced and scrutinized on a regular basis. The other is to regulate big tech and create a line that cannot be crossed.

What is Apple anyway? Entertainment company? Utility company? Automotive company? Digital services company? Now they are police and government? Whats going on actually?

Paper? Or at least working toward open source, which is what an actually transparent government should run with.

As per the announcement, the prompt will show you what information specifically the reader is requesting, which implies that depending on the use case it will be configured to request only the information needed (if your local supermarket requests your home address or anything else besides your age), you'd see that and be able to refuse the prompt.

Thank you for advocating for it, I am sure it made a difference!

That seems very reasonable. TY.

I know even in the US when stores started scanning physical drivers licenses people were / are irked when we're talking about validating a birth date... I think just presenting what the user wants is a good proposal.

What is the ISO number for this standard?

What a creep... People will often abuse any little power they have. You should have reported the guy, anonymously if possible.

As for the problem at hand, ideally we should be able to 'lock' the device on a certain screen or while using a certain app whenever we wanted. Notifications disabled as well.

That's fine, keep your physical license on hand.

You can currently use Wallet and Apple Pay without unlocking the rest of the phone. I'm sure they've thought of this and probably made it so that only the license can be unlocked.

Australia has entered the chat

> cops can look but not touch which is great.

Is that still the case?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28311722

This is addressed in the post:

> Biometric authentication using Face ID and Touch ID ensures that only the person who added the ID to the device can view or present their ID or license in Wallet.

>So if someone steals your phone they can access your id? Or use it?

same way someone steals your wallet they can access your id or "use it".

I assume it works similarly to Apple Wallet currently does:

If you double click the power button without looking at the screen, it’ll request face unlock for the payment card; and after exiting this screen, it still requires another face unlock for the phone itself.

If you are aware that your iPhone has been stolen, the first thing you should do is mark it as lost/stolen in iCloud. This will deactivate all functionality behind a newly assigned pin code.

I'm not sure that's much of a mystery tho...

They do also state that:

>Apple and the issuing states do not know when or where users present their IDs.

That's nice too.

Does that mean you don't sign in to your email provider (or any websites) on your phone? Or that you only use the browser in private mode and close all tabs as soon as they are done?

Just curious how you mitigate the danger of a third party accessing your private information if your phone is ever lost/stolen.

Is wallet only available on the lock screen?

Too bad that apps cannot access integrated Guided Access APIs. It's a little clunky for most people to remember to use this setting for sharing something like an ID.

Android has an equivalent feature called app pinning.

woah thanks for sharing this. Just tried this out and it lets you draw areas you don’t want to be accessible as well; which is pretty neat.

You still need to Face/Touch ID for Wallet, as you already do.

It won’t unlock your device as well, is their point. Just like Wallet currently operates.

> Biometric authentication using Face ID and Touch ID ensures that only the person who added the ID to the device can view or present their ID or license in Wallet.

That's fair point which I both missed and not personally familiar with as I'm an Android user (Android's equivalent of Apple Wallet does require you to unlock your phone).

I still worry about relying on my phone to hold my ID and then surrendering my phone when it's reasonable for the other party (presumably a government entity) to want to look at it in more detail or take the ID away for a period of time (eg during a traffic stop they will take your ID to run you through the computer and write your ticket up)

I also worry functionality like this leads to changes in general expectations which leads to more implementation that may not be as carefully executed

It would seem that those darned product managers did in fact think through a few things.

Not only that but you are legally permitted to withdraw your consent to search at any time. Just merely handing your phone to an officer unlocked does not permit a limitless search and seizure.

However if during that time the officer sees material that constitutes probable cause for a search, they can seize the phone without your ability to withdraw consent.

IANAL

However it'll very likely require first unlock which puts the phone in a very vulnerable state (storing unencrypted data, or at least the keys in memory).

It is way easier for law enforcement to get into phones after first unlock than it is from a powered down phone.

It's not just convenience -- it's also about privacy. For example, I don't like disclosing my home address just to prove I'm old enough to buy alcohol.

With this, I won't have to since it allows for asserting proof of age without disclosing additional information.

I'm not sure it's ALWAYS been a thing, or at least it's scale has definitely grown more recently, but, yeah, that's why I thought of it being extended to 'those with e-wallets', of course.

I do won't do any of that "clear" or even "pre-check" stuff just on principle; most everyone I know thinks I'm crazy. I try to fly as little as I can these days, even before pandemic, it's just so unpleasant both in terms of security/dignity as well as physical comfort.

Through my American Express card I could get Clear paid for, and I still refuse to do it because I think the business model is just that scummy.

Right. Which is why I'm wondering how long until those without IDs in an "e-wallet" get penalized too.

Centralized digital record. Closed source company. Third party unable to audit databases. There are so many answers.

> Is there something concrete you're worried about

A dead battery and a virus on my phone stealing all of my data, identity, and then time to get it straightened out again.

I'm not grandparent poster, but depending on who supplies and configures the ID reader, a digital system makes it easier to track people. E.g. if you show your ID at a liquor store, currently the cashier would just check your age and then forget about you. If s/he has a barcode scanner or an Apple ID scanner, then that scanner can log your visits. And your whereabouts can be tracked by following where your ID was scanned throughtout time.

In China, ID cards have RFID and they have to be scanned when entering a train station or airports (or the old town of Lhasa in Tibet), so a future government here might abuse a similar system to track you and maybe harass you by saying "You were in this area yesterday, there was $SOME_BAD_EVENT, what's your alibi?". China also implements long distance travel bans by refusing you entry to the train station/airport, e.g. if you have a bad "social score", which, I imagine would be ripe for abuse in a Trumpian regime. (Although the FBI already abused the no-fly list for the purposes of harassing individuals)

Can someone explain the huge net gain in conveinence you get from not carrying a wallet?

I know if I drop my wallet, the cards inside will still work. They won't be out-of-service-area or forgot to be charged.

The wallet also caters to many use cases the phone will never support. That can be high-tech stuff like some obscure closed-loop fare card or keycard system that isn't NFC-compatible, or the paper punch card from the local burrito place.

And it lets me carry cash, which is still less of a production number for plenty of informal payments-- I'm not walking through a Apple Pay/Zelle/PayPal transaction at a yard sale.

Maybe it's because I'm fat and wear loose fitting clothes-- having a wallet in my pocket is not a huge frustration.

>> Too bad there’s not enough of us to fight back.

I don’t think so. You can see glimmers of hope in people who refuse to buy into propaganda every day if you go looking for it. Just today, for example, Project Veritas successfully got a California high school teacher fired for literally trying to convert his students to communists.

There are lots of people doing horrible things with tech, and programmers willing to write the shit code that executes on those desires, but all of that comes from the desire for more money and power. It has always been the case that smart humans with drive chase money and power, but it often only takes a small handful of people to bring change to even the worst tyranny. Don’t lose hope for freedom, friend.

Me too, but I keep them in 1Password

Thank you for reply, it's getting clearer now. Still don't understand what exactly is being certified here. Does Apple wallet somehow communicates with government database and verifies the ID, and then protects it against spoofing with some kind of government-approved cryptography?

This is false. The device transmits all visible Wi-Fi access points and their signal strengths (which is analogous to your location) to Apple at all times. The API returns location data to the handset.

There is no way to verify that Apple's servers don't store this information.

They absolutely have access to it, as they provide the location information to the phone based on the Wi-Fi data.

If you use a disposable Apple ID and only add funds with gift cards, they do not.

Apple has started selling iPhones in person by appointment only, however, and a phone number is required to get an appointment.

You used to be able to walk in, masked, and buy one for cash, without providing any identifiers.

> You’d still have your physical ID.

For now. In the future I could see a cost saving measure to be all digital.

> It would be reasonable for there to be statute that prohibits Apple from revoking your digital ID

There are a lot of reasonable statutes that should exist.

I think his point is that apple can revoke access to your digital license.

I'm hoping it's like Apple Pay, where I choose and authorize with Face ID + button. It shouldn't be passively readable. Anyways, it will be awhile before it applies in California. CA DMV is not an early adopter of this.

That's what they said about RFID until it was broken, and people starting building hardware that could snoop on it from a backpack several meters away.

It is the "easy to get one" part that is often the kicker. There are a lot of examples out there, many of them concerning poor people, but I will use my late grandmother as an example:

In 2011 Wisconsin instituted a Voter ID law that required a valid government ID in order to vote. Being in her 90s at the time my grandmother had stopped driving (at her childrens' wise insistence) a number of years prior. That being her only government ID that was acceptable, she needed to get a renewal of it, but this time as a non-driving ID.

So she was taken to the DMV to renew it, only to be told that they could not renew it (or convert it), because it had expired too long ago. She needed to start the application from scratch, and for that she needed an original birth certificate, with a stamp. The only birth certificate that she had had no stamp (the county she was born in not having had one until much later). So that was going to require her to get a new one of those.

So my aunt called around, finally finding the proper number for the hall of records in the county where my grandmother was born. Unfortunately it is a small county, so the hall of records is only open once or twice a week for part of a day... and the only place they accurately record that is on the door of the building apparently. So just getting in contact was quite a pain (a couple weeks of occasional work).

Then we learned that she would have to present herself in person to get her birth certificate. I remind you that she is in her late 90s at this point, and had never traveled far in her life (the farthest ever was probably to my wedding on the other side of the state), so this was not going to be a minor trip for her (only an hour-and-a-half... but for her...).

This was just too much for her, so she gave up. She grouced about not being able to vote in what wound up being her last major election, but... the hurdles she faced were just too much.

She had voted in pretty much every election she could, but her last one was denied her by the Voter Id Laws.

The answer to your question is that this is entirely an attempt by one political party to make it harder for people to vote, knowing that the people with the largest hurdles are likely the ones who are going to vote against them. It is disgraceful and underhanded, especially from the party that likes to associate itself with religion.

Pakistani living in US here. As far as I understand, Democratic party has relatively poorer voters. Some of these voters do not want to take off and get their voter Id, because if they do, they will loose their wages for the day. Republican party wants to make IDs mandatory so that these guys won't come and vote.

If you look at percentages, these voters will be less than 1% of the electorate...but important American election results are decided by a single county or a few 1000 votes, so these issues make a lot of headlines. In India, the victory margin is higher, so it doesn't make headlines yet

Its largely a political issue in which the republican party claims fraud is rampant without voter IDs but simultaneously makes it difficult for poor people to get them. In many locations they're not free. In some, like Georgia I think, it is free, but you still need to gather documents and go to a DMV and register, which is, frankly, difficult to do when you're poor and don't have a car.

The effect of requiring voter IDs when they're not free AND easy to acquire is disproportionately preventing the poor from voting vs. stopping fraud.

The key part of your statement is "and it's easy to get one." Voter ID requirements in some US states is usually accompanied by a very restrictive list of acceptable forms of ID, and the requirements for getting such IDs are often tightened. Making it easy to get an ID is not the goal of such legislation.

Has one political party in India got a long history of using voting qualification mechanisms to exclude large groups of the population from voting at all?

Because the US does: these mechanisms replay the old literacy tests which were used to disenfranchise immigrants and Blacks in the US until the voting rights act was passed.

For clarity, while India does have a voter ID system distinct from the national Aadhaar ID, the voter ID itself isn't required to vote. IIRC any government issued photo ID (like Aadhaar) is accepted.

It’s a manufactured issue designed to get people to squabble with each other on racial lines instead of uniting.

There are zero legitimate reason why a country with the resources of the US can’t accomplish something basic like this. It’s intentional.

That’s currently the case; the feature isn’t even out yet.

> Presenting a driver’s license or state ID to TSA: Once added to Wallet, customers can present their driver’s license or state ID to the TSA by simply tapping their iPhone or Apple Watch at the identity reader. Upon tapping their iPhone or Apple Watch, customers will see a prompt on their device displaying the specific information being requested by the TSA. Only after authorizing with Face ID or Touch ID is the requested identity information released from their device, which ensures that just the required information is shared and only the person who added the driver’s license or state ID to the device can present it. Users do not need to unlock, show, or hand over their device to present their ID.

Please read the article. It's presented there, and not even hidden away.

Imagine trusting Apple.

Yeah it’s rude.