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Iowa Wants To Let You Carry Your Driver's License On Your Phone
An anonymous reader writes: The Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles is busily developing software that will allow users to store the information from their driver's license on their smartphone. It would also add features like a simple barcode to scan for information transfer, and two-factor authentication to access it. "At first thought, the idea seems rife with potential security and privacy issues. It is well known at this point that nothing is unhackable; and if a project is made on a government contracting schedule, the likelihood of a breach is only greater. ... Questions of security, however, must take into account context – and there, it can be argued that our current regimes of physical documents have been an enormous failure. Having every state choose their own approach for issuing IDs has led to patchwork regulations and glaring weak points in the system that criminals have repeatedly taken advantage of. Driver's licenses today are regularly forged, stolen, and compromised – it’s far from a secure situation."
I don't see this as any different than Apple pay at some point. If this would help officers obtain validity of the license faster, this might be a benefit.
I don't think this should be a requirement for Iowa drivers, but a perk of driving in Iowa.
The downside that I can think of is that in many areas of Iowa I don't care to carry a smartphone because the lack of coverage there kills batteries.
Place something witty here
Handing you phone to a cop grants them implicit rights to search the phone. Therefore, having your license on the phone is a backdoor way to grant them access to search your device.
.. I can't show you my license because my battery died..
This space for rent, inquire within.
Licence has a qrcode or similar onto the DMV website.
(proper verification apps ensure that the URL is actually the DMV website and ignore any other URL)
The biggest problem I have with this and carrying your insurance on your phone is in order to produce it to authorities you have to unlock your phone. Coupled with some of the rulings we've seen about law enforcement being able to rifle through your phone without a warrant, this gives them instant access to everything beyond your license.
I'd rather just stick to handing them a single card that is solely for that purpose.
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
... it can be argued that our current regimes of physical documents have been an enormous failure.
Unless, by enormous failure, you mean, has been working for hundreds of years, then citation please. No one's stolen my driver's license or any other physical documents - ever - and they're pretty simple to use - no batteries or cell signal required. In addition, I don't have a smartphone.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is just a ploy to get you to hand over an unlocked phone without a warrant.
This is as good a place as any for me to jump on my favorite hobby horse: the US government should be issuing a standardized national ID; there should be a federal administration that handles identity of US persons.
Specifically, the government should issue 2-factor authenticators to all citizens which do absolutely nothing but verify identity to businesses, people, and other government agencies. The service should return no name, address, or other identifying data: just a hash ID code which is unique for every person, and unique for every agency or business which requests your ID. Thus, a bank can verify that you're the same person who set up your bank account, the state police can verify that you're the same person who applied for a driver's license, but that's all they can learn about you. This would makes it very difficult for anyone but the federal government to steal your identity, and tough for anyone but the feds to correlate your credit card data with your medical data with your Facebook profile.
Obviously, this means the federal government would be able to use your identity records to track you. But they can do that anyway, with a quick call to a credit card company and your internet service provider. This at least keeps everyone *else* from being able to do so.
On the plus side, if your battery goes flat, all you have to do is commit a crime and wait for the police to recharge your phone so they can access your ID card.
It'll probably involve a minimal contactless reader and token-transfer like Apple Pay.
I assure you it will not. That is not how police play that game. Furthermore that requires your phone to be on and then the officer can search the phone because you just gave him access and probable cause. If they want to come up with a system whereby the officer has no physical way to search the phone (not just legal protections) then I might think this is a good idea. As the law stands right now there is no way in hell I would do this.
Some idiot judge apparently recently ruled that while you don't have to give your password you do have to give your fingerprint. How that doesn't violate the 5th amendment involves some mental gymnastics that I'm not really capable of.
Don't need to transfer all phone data. (really? you think cops are going to sit around to transfer 16-128GB? lol)
Don't know why you are laughing. It's not funny at all. Yes I absolutely think cops are going to sit around and transfer the entire contents. You'd be a fool to presume otherwise. He gets paid to be there no matter how long it takes.
So the government wants you to accept an application built by them, including giving it permissions to operate on your phone. You don't even need to hand your unlocked phone to a cop to have them looking around in your personal business. The app can do that all by itself any time it wants. Thanks but no thanks.
I don't see why you think that handing an officer your phone for one reason - viewing the on-screen ID, would appear to translate into "I grant you permission to close the ID app and browse/download my email and photos."
That is EXACTLY how it will be interpreted by the police until they are told very explicitly that doing so is a no-no. In fact odds are they will keep doing it anyway because the cost of fighting them on it is really steep, well beyond what is reasonable for most people. Justice may be done at the end of the day but that doesn't mean that you won't experience a whole bunch of severe inconvenience and civil rights violations along the way.