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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

>Users do not need to unlock, show, or hand over their device to present their ID.

That was my first concern.

I don't want to hand an unlocked phone over to someone just to show ID. I'm not surprised, but still glad they covered this use case.

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I was on the ISO standard body for a short time on this. Not sure how much impact I had, but I advocated for this. There were also proposals for letting you only disclose subsets of information, although I don't know the state of that adoption. This would, for example, let you present your verified ID at a supermarket for restricted items purchase without disclosing anything other than that you are of a sufficient age and a photo (no name, address, etc).

RDW (the Dutch DMV, except allowed to be technologically competent) allowed the excellent prototype work that they funded (built by engineers at UL) to be open-sourced (https://github.com/mDL-ILP).

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.

You don't have to hand your license over when a store asks to scan it.

Whenever I have purchased something that is age restricted, I have just held my license and held on to it, and not let them scan it.

The insecurity of the POS systems means I don't trust them to not store that data and let it be leaked/stolen.

Bars, nightclubs, and music venues scan ids all the time at the door. Sure you don't have to hand it over, but then you are not getting in.

I've never had an issue with just showing them the ID, but not letting them scan it.

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!

What is the ISO number for this standard?

ISO 18013-5 mDL https://www.iso.org/standard/69084.html

> I don't want to hand an unlocked phone over to someone just to show ID.

this reminds me of a time when i traveled to Canada from U.S and the customs dude wanted to see my return flight ticket. I handed over my phone without thinking much and i can see from the glare on his eyeglasses that he opened my Messages app and scrolled through them and also went inside my conversation with my Dad. it was a learning experience.

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.

You can do this on Android, it's called "app pinning"

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9455138?hl=en-GB

I don't want to hand my phone over the the police for any reason, locked or not. It just doesn't make sense to do so.

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

Yeah, still not handing over phone. Mine will be used for recording the encounter.

How long until we get a video of the first officer demanding the person hand over their phone because "I just need to take this back to my cruiser to verify your ID"?

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

In my state of Australia, NSW, we have digital IDs we can access through the state services app. I was glad to know I was never required to had my device over. The cops can look but not touch which is great.

> cops can look but not touch which is great.

Is that still the case?

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

So if someone steals your phone they can access your id? Or use it? Is there a way this is avoided?

>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".

Typically better because the phone is locked & the data is stored within the SE, which puts it out of reach for most people. The proposal (not sure if adopted) was also that these have extremely short expiration times (like on the order of a month) so that you need to resign the credentials through the government body regularly. This further limits the damage - just report the device is stolen. This should put it on the revocation list & will prevent the government issuer from reissuing the ID (this also keeps the revocation lists shorter as they can be pruned).

That raises an interesting new dimension: the ability to revoke someone's ID remotely (if there is no physical version) by twiddling a few bits in a server somewhere.

Wouldn't someone be able to do that now if they were able to gain access to the DMV/police/state database? You might have a physical ID but if they called it in it could be flagged as revoked or something else.

I think you would still at least have a shot in hell since that physical id is in-hand. Maybe it could be flagged as revoked but the cops would have alternative ways of checking it out or at the least visually inspecting it and deciding you are at least who you say you are on the ID. This versus your soft-id just disappearing.

Your ID wouldn't disappear from your wallet, though. It would probably just show an alert. Either way, the cops would have to check the validity of your license/ID. They don't just accept IDs at face value unless they're only verifying something like your age.

> That raises an interesting new dimension: the ability to revoke someone’s ID remotely (if there is no physical version) by twiddling a few bits in a server somewhere.

For most critical uses, you can do that now, since IDs are electronically verified against a central server. For incidental uses, sure, an unverified physical ID works.

Of course, using a third-party ID storage system on which you have an account increases the threat surface to which that threat applies, since there are more places where compromise can occur with the ability to kill your usable ID that way (your account, the storage system, the ID issuers systems vs. just the first of those.)

Sorry, I genuinely hoped there was some way they had mitigated that.

I don't know if Apple has it but a secondary sort of light lock unlock layer might be kinda weird ... and disconnected from the existing ID system we have.

Not impossible, probably a good idea, but it would be some level of friction you don't have with a typical ID.

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.

> 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.

This is addressed in the press release

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.

I learned this with the App Store last week. My flight was delayed and I needed to start looking for a hotel since I would miss the last flight home at my connection. Masked up at the airport, I inadvertently triggered this lockout. At least I know FaceID is somewhat secure.

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.

I don't want my biometric information on my smartphone.

Cell signals can be triangulated. This "convenience" will be abused. Mark my words.

Why are you in a comment thread about adding your ID to your smartphone then?

I'm not. I'm in a comment thread about Apple announcing the first states to adopt a digital driver's license. I don't have to be a supporter of that news to comment in a thread about it, do I?

No, I’m saying you’re in the wrong thread to be complaining about pre-existing biometric authentication (Face/Touch ID), being used to verify ID usage on the same phone.

I also think you misunderstand how biometric models on phones/laptops work.

We are building a society where one or two companies get to decide "I don't like your face" and then you are shut out of communication, commerce, and now mandatory interactions with the government.

The decisions these companies make will be unaccountable, probably with the input from an inscrutable AI, and limited only by the terms of service which you click through without reading.

The dystopian consequences of this trend are so concerning, they deserve to be brought up in every thread on this site.

What are you going on about? Please find somewhere else to go on meaningless rants. Do you have some examples, or just fake FUD?

What exactly do you need examples of?

There have already been cases of people having their YouTube and Gmail accounts blocked because of their politics[0] and app stores are notorious for banning apps (and thus businesses) that allow access to legal but politically-unpopular speech[1][2]. You might argue that this censorship is a positive thing, or at least legal, for these platforms to do, but I don't know why you would call my concerns "fake FUD".

I admit I was using the phrase "I don't like your face" as it's a provocative idiom, but this article is about a technology which stores pictures of people's faces, and is activated by a picture of their face, so the real issue is that companies might react negatively to what's behind someone's face — that is, their opinions and beliefs — and lock them out of this facial recognition ecosystem.

[0] https://torontosun.com/2017/08/01/free-speech-advocate-jorda...

[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-disse...

[2] https://www.insideedition.com/unjected-dating-app-created-fo...

None of your examples have anything to do with the commenter’s faces, and everything to do with their hate speech and/or rule breaking.

You’ve linked stories about Jordan Peterson, Dissenter, and Unjected as if they prove your point about biometric authentication, so I’m going to stop commenting now.

I prefer not to feed trolls.

It sounds like you took my comment about not liking faces too literally. I apologise if my metaphorical use of language was ambiguous, and I can only take comfort from the fact that the people who upvoted my original comment seemed to have understood my choice of idiom.

This person can comment wherever they want— and the implication of your comment (that someone is out of place or out of line for expressing opposition to digital government ID on a monopoly's platform) is ridiculous.

HN guidelines are pretty clear about trying to have detailed interesting discussions versus open-ended ranting.

Triangulation isn't needed. Most phones have GPS chips already. If your phone is powered on, and with you, there is no difference between presenting an ID on the phone or physically. The carrier and (for most people) a bunch of apps on your phone already know your location and who you are. Data brokers have merged this information with your credit cards, vehicle registration, voting records, social media posts and tons of other information to create a digital twin. In fact, they probably already predicted you would be at the location you're worried about keeping private before you even arrived.

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.

You can also remotely wipe any Apple device registered under your Apple ID.

You really don’t even want them to know you have a smart phone.

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.

Yet.

Despite the constant of pessimism about tech. I think most folks glib claims of "yet" don't happen.

And I kinda wonder what use all that pessimism is in the face a protection that we would seem to want ... we like that it doesn't inform the state when the ID is presented right? No?

I think you're underestimating what DID happen. I think anyone from the 80s, 90s and even 00s would be shocked to know what's going on in the private data markets of today.

Surprised to hear you say that... nearly all of the privacy concerns that I've heard raised by tech people in the last decade have become reality.

Just a few that come to mind:

- A fun recent relevation is that companies are selling & buying netflow data [link](https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-...).

- [Govt tracking you by your cell location](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fede...), and [another link on same topic](https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/22/22244848/us-intelligence-...)

- [Another one](https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ng8x/pentagon-americans-su...) about gov't purchasing and using other private data like browsing history

- Local police departments using cell-site-simulators to intercept cell traffic [link](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/new-la...), [link to map of which states are confirmed to have them](https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-...).

- Apple, which previously has stated that they have a strong commitment to privacy & encryption, starts scanning photos on local devices; an expansion of their previous policy of scanning/sharing only data in iCloud [link](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/if-you-build-it-they-w...)

- Concerns that centralized social media would lead to censorship. (Whether or not you think it's good that they're doing so, the privacy/speech concern has been borne out). [Instagram censoring political content](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/06/censorship-facebook-insta...), [of course tiktok censors political content](https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883993/tiktok-censorshi...), and a google search brings up many more.

- The censorship of the lab leak theory for covid is a particularly interesting one... in 2020 it was ridiculed and censored, and then began to be taken seriously by the US govt and other "official" sources, showing that the censorship was way out of line [link](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-lab-leak-about-face-1...).

Some states already sell drivers license information on the open market, seems like the governments already done the damage with the info printed on the card (California, Florida: https://www.thedrive.com/news/35457/why-is-the-california-dm...)

I don't want to lock my phone at all, I only lock my password managers. Therefore I can't even use wallet.

I wonder if I'll even be able to use it for IDs.

Is wallet only available on the lock screen?

No, you can only use it (for credit cards) if you have a pin, face unlock or fingerprint id enabled on your phone. It has no locking ability on its own.

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.

Yeah, my only mitigation is that I just don't lose my phone.

If you are logged in to your email on the device, whoever gains access can trivially reset most of your passwords though, so even if your password manager is locked, it only helps for passwords for things that don’t offer an email reset option…

I am not particularly paranoid but I would feel very nervous about living like this…

Yeah, I know they can reset my passwords. They would have to care enough to do that first. They're not going to reset my bank password like that though... there is more security than just a password there.

So what are they going to get to? My Amazon account? I don't really care about that.

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