Focus

Conclusion

Verifying your identity, and knowing with whom you are dealing, are essential infrastructure components of today's digital economy. Yet, we are unable to give our citizens a way to do this.

Worse, we have an identity crisis. Identity theft is the number one consumer complaint to the FTC and identity related fraud is significant in healthcare, financial services, legal employment and other sectors of the economy.

The U.S. Government is already in the identity business. The problem is the identifiers like Social Security numbers cannot be trusted because there is no digital security around them to prevent fraud and abuse.

The digital identity credential would turn the tables on fraudsters. Stolen numbers could no longer be used as a toll for identity theft. Instead, the biometric and smart card-based digital identity credential would be required to verify and use an identity.

Putting 21st century digital security technology around the same identities we already have will serve U.S. citizens by protecting their identity and privacy more effectively. It will help to reduce fraud in government and the private sector, and create opportunities to improve the efficiency of government by providing more secure access to personal services online.

We will still have many identifiers in different parts of the government and in the private sector, as we do today; but the digital identity credential will protect the individual's root identity in a way that would be far more secure and private than it is now, and put an end to our identity crisis in the United States.