In my (European) country now we can have a digital copy of the driving license on the phone. It specifically says that it’s valid to be presented to law enforcement officers during a check.
I saw amazed in the beginning. They went from limited beta testing to full scale nationwide launch in just two months. Unbelievable. And I even thought “wow this is so convenient I won’t need to take the wallet with me anymore”. I installed the government app and signed up with my government id and I got my digital driving license.
Then yesterday I got stopped by a random roadblock check and police asked me my id card. I was eager to immediately try the new app and show them the digital version, but then because music was playing via Bluetooth and I didn’t want to pause it, i just gave the real one.
They took it and went back to their patrol for a full five minutes while they were doing background checks on me.
That means if I used the digital version, they would had unlimited access to all my digital life. Photos, emails, chats, from decades ago.
What are you are going to do, you expect that they just scan the qr code on the window, but they take the phone from your hand. Are you going to complain raising doubts? Or even say “wait I pin the app with a lock so you can’t see the content?”
“I have nothing to hide” but surely when searching for some keywords something is going to pop-up. Maybe you did some ironic statement and now they want to know more about that.
And this is a godsend for the secret services. They no longer need to buy zero day exploits for infecting their targets, they can just cosplay as a patrol and have the victim hand the unlocked phone, for easy malware installation
Immediately uninstalled the government app, went back to traditional documents.
That stuff becomes a moot point once you have a decently working bureaucratic system (if and when). If you can ask for a digital certificate online, and get it in your email three days later, you’re not too worried about losing a copy.
On the other hand… I swear to you that multiple times, I have had to present “a birth certificate that was less than 6 months old”.
As if the time and circumstances of my birth might have suddenly changed in the last year.
Yeaaaaah, I see where you’re coming from, but no, I’m just gonna stick with a paper copy that I know is reliable instead of a theoretical bureaucratic system that could possibly be reliable if it were to exist but in no way does exist (at least in the US).
This is the government after all. I’d like to have a paper copy in case they fuck something up during a system update and “can’t find me in the system”. (This is not very likely, I admit, but I wouldn’t put it past them some days…)
Edit: Also, what if I don’t have three days and I need said document(s) as soon as possible? That’s where a hard copy comes in.