Today, Apple released California ID cards and driver’s licenses for iPhones. This makes the digital IDs easier to show, but they are only accepted at a few airports and stores that sell alcohol, tobacco, fireworks, or guns to people over the age of 21.
Even if a driver gets a digital license, they are still required by law to keep their paper license. The Department of Motor Vehicles, which gives out digital IDs, only accepts them online, through an app, so they can’t use them at any of its offices.
But soon, digital IDs will be used more in government and the private sector. This is because more stores will be able to accept them thanks to new sales terminals, and more state agencies in California will accept them too. The Biden administration is also pushing the federal government to do the same.
A news release from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said that the launch was “an important milestone in the rollout of IDs in Apple Wallet.” It was written by Apple vice president Jennifer Bailey.
A California ID or driver’s license can now be added to Google Wallet on smartphones that use Google’s Android operating system. This was added last month. As of today, California is the fifth state to get Apple Pay identification and the seventh state to get Google Pay identification.
Not many businesses and almost none of the state departments use mobile ID to check IDs, but that’s quickly changing. Verifone’s sales terminals can accept payments from Apple or Google smartphones. The California DMV and the company TruAge are working together to make it normal for businesses across the state to check people’s IDs in person.
“Right now, there are only a few of them in the state,” said DMV head Steven Gordon. “But the plan is for several thousand to be rolled out very soon,” mostly by businesses.
Digital IDs can be used online too. Apple started letting apps like Turo check people’s IDs to see if they are of legal age with digital IDs last year. Last month, Google’s Chrome web browser began trying its Digital Credential API for online identity verification.
Before, Californians could carry digital IDs on their smartphones, but they had to run extra software. Last year, the state released the California DMV Wallet app for Apple and Google devices. The app and new wallet integration are a part of the state’s digital ID strategy’s plans to connect with Login.gov, a service that more than 50 federal agencies use for identity and sign-on, including the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security, and to adhere to a federal standard for remotely verifying a person’s identity. Login.gov began working with state governments in 2022 and just this month added more services to that list.
Reports say that the Biden administration is working on an order that will speed up this merging, require all federal agencies to use Login.gov, and push more state governments to adopt digital driver’s licenses and IDs. The goal is to cut down on fraudulent benefit claims. If you asked Apple and Google if they were in talks to write the presidential order, they both said no.
Using digital IDs to stop AI
At the moment, though, only a few places are accepting them. The California DMV is the only agency in California that does, and even then, only digitally. The Transportation Security Administration is the only federal agency that does, too, and they check people at about 25 airports across the country, including Los Angeles and San Francisco international airports.
“We do hope that we can find a sister agency at the state level to start using this,” Gordon said. Gordon used to work at the tech company Cisco Systems and was in charge of updating the DMV during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The California Department of Technology made the state’s digital ID strategy and is now working on connecting it with state services like transit discount programs and making sure people are eligible for programs like CalFresh food benefits and veteran services. The “Identity Gateway” is a key part of the strategy. Bob Andosca, a spokesman for the department, told CalMatters that the end goal is to soon start pushing state agencies to use digital IDs so that Californians can “access all state services through one digital ID system.”
Remote identity verification with digital IDs and services like Login.gov or California’s Identity Gateway can cut down on the amount of private tech companies that state governments work with. This can speed up access to government services. That might mean relying less on software with artificial intelligence.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center did an analysis in September 2023 and found that about half of the AI contracts signed by government organizations are for finding fraud. In the most well-known case to date, the California Employment Development Department wrongly denied unemployment benefits to at least 600,000 people because AI from Thomson Reuters thought their claims were fake.
Digital IDs let state agencies make sure that people who apply for benefits online are who they say they are. This could mean that fraud spotting tools like the one used by EDD are no longer needed.
IDs from the government that can be used on iPhones were first presented in 2021. They are now available in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, and Ohio. The IDs are also being made for eight more states, and next year they will be used in Japan, which is the first place outside of the U.S.
Apple and government leaders in the state have worked to make adding a digital ID as easy as possible. Open the Wallet app and tap the + sign in the upper right corner to add a driver’s license or ID card. Then, take a picture of your ID card or driver’s license from the front and back.
After that, you’ll be asked to move your head and face in a certain way so that your phone can scan your face and compare it to the picture on your ID card. The state needs to do its own facial matching after your phone’s, so you will be asked to take a selfie. This picture will be encrypted and sent to the DMV so that they can check a database of photos of ID cards and licenses for your face. Apple also gives the state a scam score based on how someone uses their iPhone and the settings they pick.
Phone IDs should be easier to use than real ones once they are set up. If you want to show one, hold your phone up to a reader at a government building (like the airport or DMV) or a private business (like a booze store) to connect your phone to the reader.
The phone will then show you what information the other person wants, like your date of birth and official name. When you agree to the trade, you authenticate on the device (with your passcode, face scan, fingerprint scan, or both), and then your personal information is sent. Apple says that a record of these kinds of transactions is kept on your phone and is not shared with Apple or the government agency that gave you the device.
The DMV still says that you should bring a physical ID card until mobile IDs are accepted by more people. Jaime Coffee, a spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol, said that drivers who don’t have their IDs with them are breaking the law.
As digital IDs become more common in California, new privacy concerns have come up.
The DMV smartphone app, which was California’s old mobile ID system, is now used by more than 500,000 people. Through the built-in ID reader, the app can not only show a mobile ID but also read it. This includes the new ones from Apple and Google Wallets. The ID reader is used to confirm a person’s name, age, or driving privileges. Apple also sells a reader that works with iPhones and Android phones.
At the moment, the ID reader is the only way for the DMV to accept digital IDs.
But DMV head Gordon said that the hope is that more people will carry digital IDs and more stores and banks will accept them, both in person and online, now that Apple and Google are offering them in California.
He also believes that digital IDs can make it easier for people to use state and local government services by letting them do things like show who they are when they pay their taxes online. He imagines DMV workers out in the field giving homeless people mobile IDs right away to replace lost ID cards. This would let them use government services they wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise. He also thinks that wireless ID sharing during traffic stops can make life safer for both the public and the cops.
Hackathons will be held in Silicon Valley by the DMV in October and November to look into new ways to use digital IDs.
Even though the new IDs are helpful, they also make people worry about their safety. Alexis Hancock, head of engineering for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said earlier this year that California’s DMV Wallet app didn’t have enough controls over what information you share. This kind of security would let someone buying beer, say, digitally prove that they are over 21 without giving the shop their address.
Hancock believes it is very important for politicians to make rules about how to use mobile IDs. For instance, digital IDs could make it illegal to make databases that keep track of a person’s movements whenever they are identified or their age is checked. These databases don’t exist yet, but they might be able to with digital IDs.
A list like that and the possibility of being watched could affect a lot of people in states where proving age is common before accessing adult material. This year, the California Legislature failed to pass a bill that would have made it illegal to track someone’s online behavior or store, keep, or share information that was used to confirm their age.
But the bill also said that stores that sell things like fireworks, spray paint, or pornography would have to check a customer’s age. Some privacy supporters were against the law, but the Free Speech Coalition says that more than 20 U.S. states have thought about passing laws that require people to prove their age.
“You can’t just trust companies at their word that they won’t try to exploit that (kind of) information,” Hancock said. “Apple and Google generally use strong security protections,” he said. That lesson has been taught to us many times before.
“My main concern about these programs is that when you share such private information in such a public way, and when you do it more often digitally, there is a higher likelihood that it will be leaked in some way,” she said.
Haack is also worried about deals that tech companies and government agencies have made. CNBC looked at the contracts that Apple has with the states of Georgia and Arizona and found that the company has a lot of power over those states’ governments because it forces them to give out free digital ID cards and pay for the systems that are used to make those cards. Similar parts can be found in deals between big tech companies and the state of California.
CalMatters got a memorandum of understanding signed in 2022 by an Apple executive and Greg Fair, who worked for the California Department of Technology as the head of the Digital ID program. Because of that deal, the government has to pay for the staff and computers that are needed to keep Apple Wallet ID cards running. It also tells the government how to sell digital IDs and tells the state what to do when someone gets a new ID or replaces a lost or stolen one.
A later agreement, signed in August 2023, says that the state has to give Apple reports every month. Since this part of the contract has been removed, no one knows what’s in those reports.
Some of the new features that were added to the Google contract in July are selective disclosure, getting an ID without having a physical card, sharing an ID across devices, and “adding multiple credentials (such as for a parent and child).”
Apple and Google have agreed in both contracts that they will not give third parties, including the police, information about a person without that person’s permission. They also say that both businesses will work with state agencies to stop the distribution of fake IDs and report cases of digital ID fraud that they think might have happened.
After reading the papers, Hancock said they back up her worry that the state gives Apple too much power by agreeing to do things like offer a digital option when people renew their physical driver’s license and give Apple power over marketing before it happens.
“They [Apple] help change how people think about digital ID,” she said. “Apple controls a lot of the messages about how this is shown to people in California.”
When trying to bring government services up to date, both the DMV and Login.gov have made mistakes in the past.
A federal investigation last year by the Government Services Administration found that Login.gov lied to other government departments into thinking it met a federal standard for remote identity verification. A former head of Login.gov said that it hadn’t because of worries about how the technology could be used unfairly.
A 2019 report from the Los Angeles Times found problems at the California DMV when a program to register voters along with car registration was rolled out. One of them is that the DMV sent personal information and 100,000 wrong documents to California poll officials without meaning to.