The shortcomings of driver's licenses are part of a larger problem with how people go about answering the question 'Who are you?' It's an even bigger challenge online, where identity theft has risen sharply over the past decade. There's information on the card that a cashier or clerk can check against a person's physical appearance, but that's hardly a foolproof system of verification. And nothing on the card will signal that it has incorrect information the only way to verify details like your current name and address is to access the DMV's database.Īnd finally, even a counterfeit-proof, updated ID card can't confirm that the hand holding it belongs to the person who obtained it. In addition, the information laminated into permanence on a physical ID is not, itself, permanently accurate. (And as Jorgensen points out, nothing stops the bouncer from taking pictures of every license shown at the door.) You have to show him the whole thing, revealing your name and address in the process. When that creepy bouncer at the nightclub door demands proof that you're old enough to enter, you can't just show him the birthdate on your license. But you have to jump through a lot of hoops on the web to prove that the ID card you're using actually belongs to you, and the process is still vulnerable to scamming.Īnother problem with physical ID cards is that they can share too much information. They're not useless - see, for example, how ID.me uses licenses and smartphone cameras to verify identities online. You almost have to be a security expert to detect them, Jorgensen said.Īnd like all physical IDs, conventional licenses are not much help when it comes to verifying your identity on the internet.

While the watermarks and other design features were hard to copy, they were also hard for the untrained eye to recognize. The goal was to deter the cards from being counterfeited or obtained by people who were not legal residents. That day's events prompted the federal government to pass the Real ID Act in 2005, which set higher standards for how licenses were designed and issued. The 9/11 terrorists used fraudulently obtained state IDs to board the planes they hijacked, putting an exclamation point on the vulnerabilities of physical ID cards. The easiest way to understand the push for change, though, is to consider the problems with conventional driver's licenses. 'It's an attempt to make all three of those better.' 'It's not about balancing one against the other,' he said. Eric Jorgensen, director of Arizona's Motor Vehicle Division, said in a recent interview that the goal is to improve security, privacy and convenience.

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