Verifiable Barcodes

This is a new work item proposal for the W3C Credentials Community
Group called "Verifiable Barcodes".

During last week's DHS Demo Week, it was announced that this
technology is being integrated into the physical California Driver's
License (27 million+ people) as well as various U.S. federally issued
identification documents (14 million+ people) such as the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services' Permanent Resident Cards,
Employment Authorization Documents, and Citizenship Certificates. It
is built on W3C Verifiable Credentials and W3C Data Integrity.

Please see the proposal here and provide input if you'd like:

https://github.com/w3c-ccg/community/issues/248

We are seeking additional Editors for the work item before it is
adopted by the Credentials Community Group. If you are interested,
please let us know via the mailing list or the issue tracker link
(above).

## Link to Abstract

https://digitalbazaar.github.io/verifiable-barcodes/#abstract

This specification describes a mechanism to protect legacy optical
barcodes, such as those found on driver's licenses (PDF417) and travel
documents (MRZ), using W3C Verifiable Credentials. The Verifiable
Credential representations are compact enough such that they fit in
under 150 bytes and can thus be integrated with traditional
two-dimensional barcodes that are printed on physical cards, or paper,
using legacy printing processes.

## List Owners

* @wes-smith @msporny @dlongley

## Work Item Questions

> 1. Explain what you are trying to do using no jargon or acronyms.

We are securing the 2D barcodes found on physical documents such as
Driver's Licenses, employment authorization documents, and permanent
resident cards using W3C Verifiable Credential technology.

> 2. How is it done today, and what are the limits of the current practice?

Most 2D barcodes found on physical documents today, such as driver's
licenses, are not secured using cryptography. This means that anyone
can generate a fraudulent barcode using commonly available technology
and no mechanism exists to verify the data encoded on most
identification documents.

The result of the lack of barcode security has resulted in a large
global market for fraudulent documents, which are then used to open
fraudulent lines of credit that fund illicit activity or purchase
alcohol for underage individuals. In the United States, over [32% of
college-aged individuals own a fake
ID](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2711502/) for the
purposes of buying alcohol resulting in 24% of all underage deaths
between the ages of 15-20.

> 3. What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?

We secure the 2D barcode with a digital signature that can be verified
using a commodity smartphone or other broadly available hardware and
software. This enables fake documents to be identified far more easily
than what is possible today.

> 5. How are you involving participants from multiple skill sets and global locations in this work item? (Skill sets: technical, design, product, marketing, anthropological, and UX. Global locations: the Americas, APAC, Europe, Middle East.)

We have involved the retail industry, as well as federal and state
governments in the work. This includes policy analysis, technical
analysis, privacy analysis, and accessibility analysis. We continue to
seek engagement in these areas by making this a W3C CCG work item,
which has many people, across many industries and countries, involved
in the vetting of the work items. We do also plan to take this
standards track to ensure further analysis before the technology
becomes broadly available to global society.

> 6. What actions are you taking to make this work item accessible to a non-technical audience?

We are providing websites that individuals can use to try out the
technology and provide feedback. We are presenting the work at
in-person conferences and teleconferences.

We'll send a separate email with demo instructions such that anyone on
the mailing list can take this new technology for a spin.

If you have any questions on this work item, we'd be happy to answer them. :)

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Wednesday, 29 May 2024 22:05:19 UTC