San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Arizona offers driver’s licenses on iPhones
It started as a digital catchall for credit cards and concert tickets, enabling anyone with an iPhone to be waved through checkout lines and turnstiles.
The technology then expanded to vaccine passport records during the pandemic. And this week, the Apple Wallet, an app for iPhones and Apple Watches that stores payment information and QR codes, added driver’s licenses for the first time.
On Wednesday, Arizona became the first state to offer digital copies of driver’s licenses and state identification cards as part
of a sweeping partnership with Apple that was announced last year.
The project is expected to expand to Colorado, Connecticut,
Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah, as well as the territory of Puerto Rico. The initiative has been promoted by the tech giant and the states for its convenience.
However, the expansion is drawing renewed scrutiny to privacy issues and Apple’s outsize sphere of influence. Few places will accept the digital driver’s licenses at the start of the program, and Apple did not say when the other states and Puerto Rico would join Arizona.
Arizona residents should hold off on discarding their old-school driver’s licenses and government identification cards, though. The digital ones will not be valid should they get pulled over by police or carded at a bar.
For now, the digital licenses will only be accepted at select security screening checkpoints at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport that are operated by the Transportation Security Administration, a federal agency, officials said.
As of Thursday, the state’s Motor Vehicles Division, which is part of the Arizona Department of Transportation, estimated that 11,500 people had requested digital copies of their driver’s licenses or state ID cards.
In announcing the debut of this feature, Apple said that residents in participating states could press the plus sign in their Apple Wallets to add their license or state-issued ID card to their iPhone or Apple Watch.
The process requires participants to photograph the front and back of their license using their phone’s camera and to complete a series of facial and head movements, according to Apple. Users must also provide a selfie, which is sent to their state using encryption along with the photos of their license so that local authorities can verify their identity.
The company emphasized that personal information is not stored on Apple’s servers.