How does digital drivers license work? You're driving down a road and get pulled over by a cop. He wants to see your license. How do you hand over a digital license?
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iPhone Driver's Licenses: These 17 U.S. States Offer Them or Will Later
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Yep. This is NEVER going on my phone, even if my state does do something this stupid.
The state-specific app for where i live lets you view the digital license and displays a digital/scannable barcode for the cop. The same barcode has been on the back of our physical licenses for years. Even bars scan the barcode to check against fake id
On the Apple Wallet, you actually don’t need to unlock your phone to access cards in it. Now I don’t have Apple Wallet IDs of any kind but for regular cards, it definitely doesn’t need to be unlocked, though you need biometrics or passcode to activate a card. You can try this out for yourself, you can cover the FaceID camera, activate Apple Pay, FaceID unlock, then swipe away from Wallet and then the phone is not unlocked yet, it just needed FaceID to enable a card to be presented. Wallet ID should be quite similar to regular Apple Pay.
Currently, no law enforcement agency except for the TSA accepts Apple Wallet ID under any circumstance. So currently you won’t use it if you’re pulled over by a cop. Hypothetically if a cop did take it, you would open the Apple Wallet on your phone and present an ID, and then they would scan your phone using NFC technology. Quite literally no different than Apple Pay. Your phone would never leave your hand. Just like it is for the TSA application at this moment.
There have been states that have done their own app for ID. They use a QR code instead of NFC. They scan the QR code. Those states had to change the law so that you holding your phone up with the QR code visible is acceptable ID, so even then you don’t hand your phone over.
It basically works the same way as contactless payments. Do you hand your phone over to the cashier when you're paying for something? No... They read your ID via NFC.
For the states that have implemented it, law enforcement aren't allowed to take your phone. If they can't read your digital ID for whatever reason (e.g. no network signal to pull down the information from the state's servers, or don't have the reader), then you need to hand over your physical ID.
I was really excited, last year (about this time) that I had-hold of my DL details on my Phone.
When I reached the pre-boarding TSA Rep, I stated that I would like to use my Digital License to Verify entry to the Gate . . . I was then educated (at the Gate!) that only TSAPre Members could do so!
Really like the idea, but the excitement falls-flat when things don't work like we expect.
When I reached the pre-boarding TSA Rep, I stated that I would like to use my Digital License to Verify entry to the Gate . . . I was then educated (at the Gate!) that only TSAPre Members could do so!
Really like the idea, but the excitement falls-flat when things don't work like we expect.
Yeah no thanks. I'm not handing my phone over to a cop. He's getting my proof of insurance, registration and physical drivers license.
He ain't gettin anything else
He ain't gettin anything else
All you have to do is take a trip to your local DMV. These institutions, like so many, are built on inefficiency. Too many manual processes with too much unnecessary human involvement. Ultimately bureaucracy at its finest.
Brining a new efficient digital process into a system operating like its from the last century will take time. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.
Good timing on this article. I just renewed my DL but it hadn’t occurred I’d need to update it in the wallet app.
"Uncomplicated"?? It is easy to put an ID card on a phone. It is hard to issue reraders to those who need to read the ID.
I think some people do not understand how this works. It is not just a photo of an ID card that you show someone. That would be incredibly easy to fake. Let's say you were pulled over for speeding. The officer does not want to see a photo of a driver's license. He wants you to place your phone near a small device he carries that can exchange encrypted signals with your phone. These signals can't be faked. It works like
"Tap to pay." The complexity is issuing the devices to the police, TSA, and so on, and training all of those people how to use them, and having backup services to handle the inevitable failures. It costs real money and time to procure the equipment and train the people who will be using it.
Money…. This requires politicians to do something. If you want them to do something they want money. Maybe Tim could grease the wheels with a few million dollars and speed things up. Otherwise it’s going to take decades.
It was never going to be anything other than "carry both" for quite a while into the future. The only way we get it to be used/accepted enough places that it takes over is by having a noticeable percentage of the population equipped with digital IDs. The CA digital drivers license doesn't suck, it just isn't used practically anywhere yet. It took me half an hour of fiddling around to get it added to my Apple Wallet, and I'm happy that it's there, even though I've never had a use for it. We're still in the very early adopter phase. Give it a few years.
And yeah, when iOS26 comes out, I'll be adding my passport to my Apple Wallet. Not because it'll be immediately useful, but rather because it'll be useful eventually.
PA is going to be one of the last states to adopt this. They are dragging their feet.
To be fair, the special readers and law enforcement training can come later (I'm not sure any states have that fully implemented yet). But there are very specific hoops to jump through, for each state's DMV to implement the system far enough to get their system to support digital drivers licenses and Apple's Wallet. Getting enough people to have digital licenses will generate the demand to get the readers and training rolled out. What we have now is a bunch of people getting digital licenses and getting disillusioned that they can't immediately use them everywhere, and declaring "this is useless", "what's the point?", without understanding the bigger picture.
And this is why sometimes, just sometimes, the technology ain't worth it. Currently, when you give your driver's license to an officer, he/she does an initial check to be sure it's not fake, that it's current, it's your photo, etc. Then the officer radios the station (or uses a computer in the car) and gives your unique driver's license # and then gets alerted if you have outstanding warrants or if you've had 10 speeding tickets in the past month, etc. Then the officer makes a decision on issuing a ticket or calling for backup or impounding the car, etc.
I don't mind someday having a digital driver's license...but it's going to take a looong time to implement this when, currently, there's no problem with physical licenses. The current process works and works extremely quickly. The whole "let's digitize everything in life because we can" attitude that some people/groups have is always offering a solution and then going to look for a problem. Other examples are home door locks.
As for my physical license, I can't tell you the last time I had to show it someone other than at an airport. Seriously. And even then, they're just seeing if my name on the airline ticket matches the name on my license and seeing if my photo matches my face. 100% eyeball work on the part of the Security person and it takes under 5 seconds for the verification.
More digital = more easy surveillance and tracking.
I'm doing the opposite. Going back to analog in lot of ways.
After HB199 passed a year ago they said we would have digital IDs by July 2025. 😂😂
This comes up every time digital drivers licenses are mentioned on MacRumors. I'm pleased that this time it at least is being phrased as a question, rather than an accusation or conspiracy theories.
The digital drivers license comes up in Apple Wallet just like any credit/debit card. You don't hand your phone to the officer just as you don't hand your phone to the sales clerk in a supermarket when you pay with Apple Pay. And you don't have to unlock your whole phone, you simply double-click the side button to get into your Wallet.
The exchange is, they ask for your license - and at this point, if they don't have a handheld terminal with which to read a digital ID, you take out your existing physical ID and hand that to them - that's the most likely scenario for a few years to come. If they do have the requisite handheld terminal, you take out your phone, double click the side button to unlock your Apple Wallet, select your ID, and hold it up to the terminal. Once the phone and terminal detect each other, you should then get a prompt on your screen to the effect of "double click to authorize sending your DL info" - the same kind of authorization prompt you get for, say, buying something in the App Store (or from websites that support Apple Pay). You double-click, look at the phone for FaceID to authenticate you, and it transmits your DL info to the handheld terminal. Done.
The officer never touches your phone, and never has access to it unlocked - if they were to grab it out of your hand at that point, they could... scroll through the list of cards in your Apple Wallet (they couldn't use any of your credit/debit cards, because purchasing would require additional FaceID authentication). In my case, they could see my library card number, and the available balance on my Starbucks card, and make an educated guess that I have a pet and what supermarkets I use, because of the various loyalty cards. Of course, they might also be setting themselves up for a lawsuit, or disciplinary action, because in many places implementing these systems, they are not allowed to touch your phone.
We get a lot of people spinning up nightmare scenarios of "well, the officer will say 'my reader isn't working, I need to take your phone back to my car' and they'll snatch the phone out of your hand and go steal all your data" or similar. These fall apart because the digital ID in the phone is useless without the handheld scanner (mine shows that it's from California and has my first and middle names and my last initial - hardly sufficient ID), and the scanners are entirely new tech - no police department is going to spend money building non-removable scanners into their patrol cars. They either have the handheld scanner or they don't. If they don't, you fall back to handing them your physical license. Some people, when presented with this information then spin up scenarios involving "what if they grab your phone and make you unlock it?!?". Well, at that point, you're dealing with an officer with a gun, who could also just shoot you and say you were acting suspicious, reaching for something, and/or resisting arrest. Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens regularly - and having a digital ID in your phone doesn't make the situation any better or worse - it's not a valid argument against digital IDs.
A side benefit of this is that the scanner can ask for specific information, and the iPhone will present a list of what information is being requested on the authorization screen, and you can elect to provide it or not (if you choose not to, you'll presumably need to pull out your physical ID). This means that bars and liquor stores can query for just "is this person 21 or older", and the bouncer gets that you're over 21, rather than getting your first and last names, birthdate, and home address as well. This is a big improvement in safety and privacy for, say, young women going to clubs. (I think I read somewhere that one of the places that readers are actually getting used currently is for UberEats/DoorDash type services delivering alcohol to people at home.)
Last time I went to the DMV, here in California, to renew my license (went in person because I wanted to do the authentication to get the REAL ID version), I made an appointment, and was in an out in literally just under 20 minutes - including checking in at the front desk, turning in my paperwork, having my documents examined (birth certificate, utility bills), passing the eye test, getting my photo taken, and getting my temporary permit issued.
while I can't speak for other states, in Missouri it seems they are busy undoing the will of the people.
Smaller community here.
Went to the DMV to renew my license. I'm the only customer/civilian in the place.
Got curtly told I needed to pick a number and wait at the designated point...
It's going to be decades before we see anything approaching a digital ID.