Digital documents: what are the prospects for using digital passports

Technologies have emerged in the world that can easily replace classic paper and plastic documents. But not all countries are ready to forget about paper passports and driving licenses. We asked the experts and the IT company about what prevents loading all documents into the memory of an ordinary mobile phone and what risks arise.

Steve Marcinuk, Intelligent Relations

Digital ID is a complex topic. In theory, it's simple — you give each person a cryptographic string that replaces things like social security, driver's license, and is more secure/more universally recognized. Advantages: in theory, could replace a variety of documents, could standardize documentation across countries, ensure more secure financial transactions, eliminate fraud, more efficient processing of govt services etc. Disadvantages: there’s a lot of problems. The whole seems simple thing belies its risks.

Civil liberties advocates point out that bar-coding human beings is dangerous b/c it enables more state intervention into people’s lives. ID should not be a ‘permission slip’, without which things are assumed to be denied. The concept of making them ‘easier’ means making them more universally required.’ There’s also the problem that when digitizing ID, you’re making it easier to copy/transfer.

The reason we have ‘documents’ — physical items — for proof of ID is b/c physicality is a barrier to fraud. Anything that is data can be copied quickly by 1000s of methods. This is true of documents, but the barrier of having to physically replicate something — photo, a card, etc — is significant enough to prevent large-scale abuses. The ready availability of phone numbers results in daily robocalls; digital ID invites the same degree of constant low-level abuse, completely aside from the civil liberties concerns.

There is definitely a worldwide push to start to find new ways to create secure ID. Financial services people are giddy about the idea, as it would vastly reduce costs for a range of processes. The things you mention are primarily the health passports initiatives rather than Digital ID. Examples of 4 people who have been working on the subject for years are here (IBM, Remme, Concordium, Avanade) If you are interested in expanding this commentary, I can connect you to Rob Shavell, CEO of Abine/DeleteMe, a privacy expert with a decade of experience in protecting users’ personal information online. He has been featured in a large number of publications from Fast Company to The New York Times so he could be a great source of information. We can reply in detail via email, or I can coordinate a quick call with him at your convenience.

Daria Bogretsova, Marketing Director of Leobit

ID will become increasingly mobile. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to know that we’ve arrived at a time when mobile connectivity dominates. However, it’s worth noting that the trend shows no signs of slowing down. And the implications for digital identification are enormous.

By early 2020, over 4 billion people will have access to the Internet. By the end of the year, 60 percent of the world’s population would have access to the Internet.

According to Statista, mobile will account for 50% of global internet traffic in 2020. Users’ main means of accessing the Internet is now mobile devices (including tablets).

Google, a company that understands the future of technology, is slowly transitioning to a mobile-only environment.

Eric McGee, Senior Network Engineer at TRG Datacenters

From handwritten documents with glued-in images to completely digitized, electronic documents, passports are rapidly changing. The use of digital certificates has the potential to boost national security significantly. Furthermore, passport control at automated border control gates is greatly accelerated by machine-readable electronic IDs.

Biometric passports, on the other hand, come with a range of drawbacks.. Interoperability and confidence are essential for authorities to accept genuine passports from other countries quickly.

Furthermore, electronic passport chips must comply with upcoming International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards such as LDS 2.0, which will enable the chip to store both personal biometric data and travel records such as visas. Contactless efficiency and durability are also important success factors.

Timothy Robinson, CEO of InVPN

Biometrics will become more Important in the Identification Process.

Biometrics will become more widely used to verify a person’s identity. They’re safer, and you can’t forget about them. In recent years, we’ve seen examples of such innovations. Nat West, a British bank, and Mastercard collaborated to create a biometric payment card that incorporates chip technology and fingerprinting. Passwords and PIN numbers are likely to become obsolete due to the advent of biometrics.

Behavioral biometrics — the concept of detecting a person’s identity based on how their phone moves in their pocket, their location, or how they type on their keyboard — will also play an important role. It’s a non-intrusive method of identifying people who have given their consent. Behavioral biometrics can also be used to detect attempted fraud. A monitoring technique, rather than authenticating users, will identify suspicious activity.

From the viewpoint of a fraudster, biometrics would make it more difficult to carry out attacks. As a result, they’ll devise new approaches. We suspect that in the future, more bad actors will try to spoof biometric authentication using deepfakes. Our defensive strategies will have to change over time.

The thought of using biometrics makes certain people uncomfortable. There are concerns about privacy and the consequences of storing such information. The new California Privacy Act (CCPA) and the EU’s forthcoming Digital Services Act both have strict privacy laws governing the processing and storage of personal information. However, a decentralized model, which returns complete control to the owner of the ID, is another way to handle privacy. Identity processes will need to become smarter and more refined in the future, and they will need to be built with privacy in mind from the start.

Steve Scott, CTO at Spreadsheet Planet

Centralized identity models will be phased out in favor of Decentralized ones.

Credit bureaus, for example, have centralized databases that restrict user access and pose security risks. Breach of personal information is becoming more common, larger in scope, and more sophisticated. As compared to the same period last year, the number of breaches rose by 54% in the first half of 2019. This alarming pattern appears to be expected to continue.

Users can regain ownership of their identity with a decentralized solution that provides one-touch access. Everyone in the world would essentially own and regulate their own legal identity. You won’t need separate accounts for various providers, and you won’t have to share your information every time you sign up for a new service. And if your data isn’t stored in a centralized database, no one else can access it without your permission.

Consumers can benefit from privacy and convenience, as well as quick access to goods and services. Businesses can easily stay compliant when attracting new customers. Finally, regulators will notice fewer requirements that are contradictory.

John Bertino, The Agency Guy (Philadelphia)

In today’s digital world, traditional methods of identity authentication are obsolete. Currently, the majority of identification papers (passports, ID cards, and driver’s licenses) are given in a physical format. They are distributed from a central location (usually the government) and are highly secure. To ensure this, features such as printing methods and paper format adhere to strict guidelines.

However, as more resources are offered electronically, there have been many experiments to move away from physical IDs. The Digital Identification and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC), for example, is already working on improving Canada’s digital identification and authentication scheme.

When it comes to digital IDs, one of the most pressing concerns is maintaining high standards of security. They may be devoid of security features, making them more easily forged or counterfeited. Or they might be fickle — what happens if a digital ID is stored on your phone and it runs out of battery?

We don’t have a complete solution yet, but we’re heading in the right direction, with regulators on board as well. The EU has passed the eIDAS regulation, which seeks to provide a common legal structure for the identification of electronic IDs across borders.

Harriet Chan, Coco Finder

The post pandemic period necessitates that we shift to processes and products that minimize contact. Digital IDs and passports are a perfect fit for this. Digital passports will come in handy in allowing inter-country travel while still adhering to covid-19 protocols of vaccination. Through digital passports and IDs, migration points, hotels, and more can track who to let into their countries and facilities and who to restrict. The future of digital IDs and passports will see them integrated with other personal documents to allow for easy movement and identity verification.

At the moment, opting out of paper and plastic IDs entirely is a far cry. Digitization of these crucial documents and the development of corresponding digital infrastructure is still miles away from realization in most parts of the world. What this means is that movement using digital formats of these documents may be a challenge in some countries and states as well. Mobile app IDs are rising in popularity with the best news being that the shift is being led by government agencies. Going forward, more countries will allow this and allow mobile IDs to be a norm in most parts of the world.

Digital IDs in mobile phones, however, means that there is a database where all data is collected, stored, and aggregated regularly. The main issue with having such an arrangement is that this data if not secured well could fall into the hands of unauthorized people and be used for malicious activity. Chips in hand would increase the security of the data people share with their digital IDs, however, the ethical issues surrounding this make smartphone IDs more feasible in the short-term.

Josh Wright, Cell Phone Deal

Downloading Your Credentials: Honestly, why not? As someone who has traveled before quite a bit, for both business and family, this is something which I can see happening. Now, maybe not to the extent of having something like a SIM card implanted in your thumb or such, but I can absolutely see us hosting digital IDs and passports in our phones. We can already download our credit cards, store loyalty cards, flight and concert tickets. With the use of NFC technology, you could use it and simply float your phone over the terminal or government checkpoint or such. Now, this also leads to the possibility of people being able to extrapolate your credentials and possibly even tampering with their own, to gain access to things they normally wouldn’t or shouldn’t. On the one hand, imagine your information being able to update after a request to your DMV without having to leave the house. If someone who has a history with violence whose ID is tagged to notify gun vendors he has priors instead of waiting until a court or a judge remembers to flag them in the system? The technology is there to be honest. We now simply have to secure it so that we can safely implement it into the general public.

David Attard, Collective Ray

Digital ID cards and passports are becoming a reality however there are issues of security, privacy, and governance. Universal acceptance will take time but one thing is for sure that they could shape the future of travel. Yes, there is an option to opt-out of paper and paper IDs. Some countries offer the facilities on ID cards fit in a mobile app for ease of verification but since it’s still not accepted anywhere it’s not very popular. The risks posed by digital passports are concerning privacy and security issues. A chip in hand would be way quicker since it is used exclusively for the purpose of travel.

Julian Goldie, CEO of Goldie Agency

Using digital passports and digital ID cards might work in the future. Security is always in question when we talk about digitalization but with the current advancements in IT and engineering, your identity and accounts will be secured as ever. Such as the use of Apple Pay where Apple is proud of the level of its security embedded in its proprietary chip, it wouldn't be impossible for this type of implementation to be a worldwide success and more companies might be able to produce better and more secured identity protection. It should offer faster and intuitive function, as well, than the normal chip in hand.