Future of ID — Spoiler it’s not an ID card!
By: Rahul Avasthy
Tags: Identity Management, Social Media Marketing, Authentication, Digital Transformation, Social Media

I looked at my ID card today and wondered what the future of identification methods would look like, how can we design it better for the next generation?

There is something about the real simple ID cards across geographies which have provided an identification proof to us for so long, its time and tested, has evolved from a paper with a thumbprint to a holographic secured plastic credit size card and is evolving continuously — have you ever noticed new emergency ID on your iPhone OS 14 available without unlocking your iPhone, if not do so now? It means ID cards will not go obsolete in near future but it will die eventually, if yes what comes next, bothers me.

Signatures are dead too!

Let me take you back to the era of signatures, if you were born in the last century you know how important signatures were to us, without it there was no access in banks or school report card a signature was confidential and core to our identity, change of it needs to be reflected everywhere, fast forward to 2020, signatures are dead, yes there are enough ways and means that even if your signatures are copied to the accuracy of 100% there are probably high chances and secure alternatives in place to make sure your bank account won’t get empty with a fake signature. When was the last time you cared about your signature on merchants copy for a credit card transaction (Or even they cared about), DocuSign lets you create signature styles on fly and you may not even remember the style you chose last,

Even the new titanium metal apple cards with Goldman Sachs have removed almost never used feature of a signature placeholder on credit cards completely, basically, signatures as a form of identity are dead like the horse and bullock carts which at that time no one thought would get replaced by an app. Or real kids toys that are facing slow deaths to digital apps.

Identification mechanism has evolved a lot already

In addition, your identification now not only holds your blood group type but a whole wide array of health data, not just your home address but geographic locations, checking and a realtime check on where your credit card was used wrt where you were at the time, its more than election data but a programmatically sequenced thought process of emotions to your views with the candidate you want to vote for, it’s not just holding your money but also securing your potential to secure next loan. Your id is not just your driver’s’s license unique ID but also somewhere a record of your driving data giving you a discount in the next insurance payment due.

As the greater demand for security and trust forays, your mattress becomes smart so as your cities become accelerated toward smarter cities, and access to the internet becomes not a luxury but a fundamental right a call for most forms of secure identification grows.

SO the key question is how we construct and use digital identities would determine

how people are represented online, what opportunities they have access to, what or who is trusted online

So it’s quite a foundational role that identity plays in digital economies and societies and so its our responsibility to discuss needs to shape it thoughtfully, there are a couple of areas that need our attention

To make sure that the opportunities associated with this identity is distributed widely so today we only have about 50% of the world’s population using the Internet according to the World Bank Over a billion people do not have any form of legally recognized identity that’s excluding them from participating in the digital economy and there are devices within 60% of those people live in lower-middle-income countries 50% are in sub-Saharan Africa In the lower-income countries that were surveyed about 40% of the women don’t have access to identity compared to about 30% of men so if we don’t prioritize inclusion then we risk exacerbating some of the divides that already exist Quality of the digital identity, which gives you access to a range of meaningful opportunities in your daily lives to keep me and my data secure does it protect me against discrimination exclusion harms and doesn’t give me control over how my identity is used There are also tricky questions involved how do you balance multiple goals and individuals right to privacy at the same time our nations need to protect its citizens

So back to the analogy of

Future of ID — what in future identification would look like.

My prediction is which ID cards will become irrelevant eventually and slowly as IDentification will be irreversibly replaced by digital authentication, this authentication will be decentralized and it will be a mix of advance single sign-on (remember when you choose to sign in via Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft or LinkedIn that experience its just completely reverse of it from backend and decentralised) like experience, but rather than social sign on’s in future it will be powered by the Government and decentralized enterprise identity hubs we trust, for example, we would have a government Single sign-on decentralized hub authentication enabled by numerous ways of our choice of multi-factor authentication (Passwords, OTP, Biometrics, Blockchain), where government level identification as a user name and authentication to verify it will be required for immediate access to verify identify and unlocking programs and services, and combined with specialized non-government enterprise institutions we trust, providing access to products, features, and services where government level identification are not required.

This will prevent endless breaches of data, passwords, reduce billions spent on audits and risk for GDPR, KYC etc. This may or may not require sharing our social graph, this would be of course mobile-first multifactor authentication experience which initially will have a huge learning curve but something slowly we will get used to. These future single sign on’s will be flexible and secure single sign-on experiences and will go beyond web apps and easily connect users to the world.

Identification will re replaced by authentication Combination of biometrics and behavioural biomeetrics a to verify a person’s identity will increase. They are more secure, and you can’t forget them.

Decentralized and owned by you

In addition, with the increased adoption of blockchain rise of quantum computing and edge devices, everyone in the world will own and control the use of their own legal identity, so while you would have a single sign on authentication like experience the ownership of identity and data will not be owned by a central authority.

In fact, digital identity as it exists today but it’s just a patchwork of individual approaches and systems which each require people and businesses to start from scratch every time an identity needs to be verified and not enough to fight the fraudsters.

In the end, let me quote the following which I believe will be key to this private experience.

The 7 Foundational Principles of Privacy by Design

The objectives of Privacy by Design — ensuring strong privacy and gaining personal control over one’s information, and, for organizations, gaining a sustainable competitive advantage which is intended to serve as the foundation of one’s privacy practices.

Principle 1: Proactive not reactive: preventative, not remedial

Principle 2: Privacy as the default setting

Principle 3: Privacy embedded into design

Principle 4: Full functionality: positive-sum, not zero-sum

Principle 5: End-to-end security: full lifecycle protection

Principle 6: Visibility and transparency: keep it open

Principle 7: Respect for user privacy: keep it user-centric

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Please share your thoughts below, would love to learn from you.

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Rahul Avasthy

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Photo Contributions

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Photo by blocks on Unsplash