A unanimous vote has passed the SB 275 Sub 2, the State-Endorsed Digital Identity Program Amendments bill, edging closer to Utah accepting a digital ID system which officials have boasted about for privacy credentials.
The state is endorsing the development of a digital ID stored inside a digital wallet centred around citizens having control of their own data and privacy.
Government can take and utilise data but the state’s dutiful stance is to protect individual digital ID through the principles of trust.
State endorsed digital identity is critical public infrastructure that has to be made secure or privacy can not be assured to users. However, the endorsement undermines the basic belief of this bill that the government won’t be creating a digital ID to exert control over its citizens.
To provide or bestow digital IDs for their citizens is a distinction that Utah makes. They follow the pattern in digital ID programmes launched by multiple states, and ensure clarity around data privacy and self-sovereignty.
A year in the making, they have developed a bill of rights to preserve privacy with a state-endorsed digital identity and allow the user selective disclosure. If the user adopts it in their digital lives, which will be optional, they have a right not to be subject to government tracking or surveillance.
Utah is developing a digital ID embedded with decentralised data governance, recoverability, and security by design, against open standards and open protocols, which Chief Privacy Officer, Christopher Bramwell, stated at Identity Week America in September.
These goals were achieved, ensuring the identity belongs to the individual and not the state. So, Sen. Kirk Cullimore, the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee, and R-Cottonwood Heights, have approved the bill and Cullimore remarked that these critical objectives were converted into an “operational programme”.
It follows only the security safeguards outlined in the legislation of the SB 260 Standard, which passed last year.
