Apple Says U.S. Passport Feature on iPhone is Coming Soon

[lusty]

This has nothing to do with privacy, what does it matter if my passport or driving licence is physical or digital? Because the government, UK or US already has this info and has for as long as those two forms of ID have existed, which is many decades, so nothing will change there. This is not the same as the stupid digital ID system we want to bring in for every UK citizen, this is about taking two items I already have and digitising them for convenience.

It matters because a third party gets all your data, and those third parties have shown many times to have abused personal data, and have had security breaches. It matters because history has shown many times that this sort of tracking is very bad for society.

 

[JohnSmithJ]

Bringing that and the ability to add my driving licence to the UK would be nice as we don't need to carry our driver's license by law anyway, so having it in my digital wallet would be great. It would be nice to know what the holdup is, Apple or our pathetic government.

The U.K. government is developing its own GOV.uk wallet app, which they’ve been promising will launch this autumn, but no sign of a public release yet. You will be able to add a digital version of your drivers licence to it. No mention of digital passports though. Don’t expect Apple wallet compatibility anytime soon.

 

[Ohples]

I wonder if the delay is due to the US government shutdown. For example, if Apple needs one last approval from the feds or need something enable on the State Department side or something else to launch and the contact or team they have is currently furloughed or something.

 

[WolfSnap]

Do not put digital IDs on your phone, for any reason.

""But if you hand over your unlocked phone to a police officer and offer to show them something, “it becomes this complicated factual question about what consent you’ve granted for a search and what the limits of that are,” Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, told The Verge. “There have been cases where people give consent to do one thing, the cops then take the whole phone, copy the whole phone, find other evidence on the phone, and the legal question that comes up in court is: did that violate the scope of consent?”"

Do you hand over your phone when you do an Apple Pay transaction? It's the same thing for DL and Passports. You double click the side button, authenticate using FaceID, then tap your phone. It doesn't unlock the phone, and doesn't require the phone to be handed over to anyone. The FaceID only unlocks your wallet, not the entire device.

Please stop fear-mongering.

 

[martint235]

The U.K. government is developing its own GOV.uk wallet app, which they’ve been promising will launch this autumn, but no sign of a public release yet. You will be able to add a digital version of your drivers licence to it. No mention of digital passports though. Don’t expect Apple wallet compatibility anytime soon.

The government will be talking to other governments about compatibility rather than talk to private companies about giving control of citizens’ data to them

 

[jole]

Early days my friend.

Such was the availability and acceptance rate for AP. Now it is ubiquitous.

Apple Pay had a clear incentive — people might go and purchase elsewhere.

TSA has no incentive to make digital ID work. For the real id works just fine.

 

[FlavorfulTreat]

Do you hand over your phone when you do an Apple Pay transaction? It's the same thing for DL and Passports. You double click the side button, authenticate using FaceID, then tap your phone. It doesn't unlock the phone, and doesn't require the phone to be handed over to anyone. The FaceID only unlocks your wallet, not the entire device.

Please stop fear-mongering.

Fear Mongering? You mean reality?

You do you friend. Go for it, put all the IDs on your phone. Have fun!

 

[OGdrknight]

But who will accept it? In CO, we even have an official app for the digital ID, but you still need a physical ID if you get pulled over by the police. They apparently cannot scan the ID in their patrol car. Many locations like dispensaries, bars and liquor stores won’t accept them either. So the convenience has become very inconvenient and a negative experience.

I would assume that a digital passport wouldn’t passed the mustard with customs either.

 

[jaytv111]

But who will accept it? In CO, we even have an official app for the digital ID, but you still need a physical ID if you get pulled over by the police. They apparently cannot scan the ID in their patrol car. Many locations like dispensaries, bars and liquor stores won’t accept them either. So the convenience has become very inconvenient and a negative experience.

I would assume that a digital passport wouldn’t passed the mustard with customs either.

Right, it's been said over and over again: you cannot use this for border travel, you must use your real passport to go cross-borders. You can use this for TSA check in, and you have to check with individual airports whether you can use it or not at any given airport (this isn't even necessarily published online), and TSA says you must have your physical ID as well, because an agent at their discretion can ask for your physical ID, or the reader may not be working or it's buggy.

But it can always be used in websites and apps that are set up to use Apple's APIs for identity and age identification.