DHS Outlines Digital ID Initiative For “Travel, Immigration and Citizenship Status, Employment, Residency Status and More”
The US Department of Homeland Security s (DHS) recent unveiling of a $1.7 million initiative to foster the development of digital wallets will raise eyebrows among privacy advocates. While DHS s Science & Technology Directorate ostensibly presents this as the Privacy Preserving Digital Credential Wallets & Verifiers SVIP Topic Call, the devil will be in the details.
The plan is to use the system for travel, immigration and citizenship status, employment, residency status and more.
A look at the DHS s announcement shows a particular emphasis on wallets that are compatible with World Wide Web Consortium s (W3C) Verifiable Credential Data Model (VCDM) and W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DID) standards. On the surface, this may appear as a step toward standardization. However, this type of centralization could create a monoculture that will also speed up the move towards centralized digital IDs which could be the entire plan.
I really don’t like this.