Re: Hello world, meet American driver’s licenses

Kim's article is certainly important but the focus on mDL surveillance
misses the elephant in the digital privacy room. Most of the examples she
gives, other than age verification, already leave a record that can be used
for near-universal surveillance. Every credit card transaction calls home
and keeps a record. Signing-in to a hotel leaves a ledger. So does signing
with a notary. Picking up a package. Etc... Will mDL make a
qualitative difference?

I appreciate the efforts of this community and of organizations like EPIC
(that I work with) to push back on digital surveillance through mDL but I
suggest to you that ignoring the realities of using digital payments,
contracts and commerce, in an environment where Palantir and DOGE are
enlisting both private and public data brokerage in opaque ways suggests to
me that mDL's most important feature will be educating the society on what
digital platforms are already doing to us.

Adrian

On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 3:14 PM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 12:23 PM Kalin NICOLOV <kalin.nicolov@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > True, Steve, Chris and Timothy are all involved in the best way possible
> - why is this not happening more often in other states though?
>
> Having engaged with other states on these topics, one of the reasons
> it's not happening there is because they don't have access to people
> like Steve, Chris, and Timothy at the legislative level. Many of these
> legislators also have "bigger" problems that they're dealing with
> (political unrest, healthcare crises, budget crises, etc.).
>
> There is a huge knowledge gap in state legislatures and even in their
> state information technology divisions when it comes to good policy
> wrt. digital credentials. As many of the folks on this mailing list
> that are engaged with these governments, large and small, are aware...
> we spend a lot of our time educating these policy makers and agencies
> on how to responsibly deploy these technologies.
>
> To further complicate matters, some vendors have higher tolerances for
> privacy and security risks than other vendors... some vendors disagree
> with what is and is not acceptable... and sometimes, the budget (or
> political appetite) just isn't there to do a more thorough job.
>
> Largely, this is an education challenge; I think we underestimate just
> how much specialized knowledge we have in communities like these and
> how long it takes for that knowledge to filter out into the minds of
> decision makers. It can take decades, especially when you have
> disagreements over things like whether or not server retrieval is a
> feature worth keeping.
>
> ... which is why articles like the one Kim wrote are so important.
> They educate beyond this community and that is desperately needed to
> scale digital credential technology to the masses.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>
>