Digital ID Research Articles

A Study on Remote Detection of Turkey Digital Identity Card Hologram Element

Technological advances and the pandemic have caused an explosion in demand for remote services. In critical processes such as banking, insurance and notary public, the service to be provided remotely has to be provided as quickly and safely as the service provided in presence. In such sensitive processes, the identity card authenticity detection must be done accurately and securely. One of the techniques used in accuracy detection is the use of mobile devices that support contactless chip technology. However, the number of mobile devices using this method is limited today. This situation hinders the effective and widespread use of remotely provided services and resources. Therefore, a different solution method was needed that would be an alternative to contactless chip technology, remove the obstacles to widespread use and reduce incidents such as counterfeiting. In this study, it was investigated whether the hologram, which is one of the security elements in the identity, can be used in determining the accuracy of Turkey's digital identity cards. For this purpose, a special function and program has been developed on the MATLAB application by using 2-D neighborhood methods to detect the crescent on the hologram. 227 digital ID cards were first evaluated on a mobile device over certain threshold values such as color level and similarity ratio. Then, each card used in the test was examined one by one with the naked eye. Approximately 99.56% similar results were obtained between the test findings made over the application and the findings obtained after the controls made with the naked eye. It has been concluded that the secure hologram image, one of the security elements on the digital ID card with this high success rate, can be used as computer aided in remote services. With this solution method, it has contributed to overcome an important obstacle in front of services that are thought to be provided remotely in many fields such as banks, notaries and education.

Digital IDs for advanced robotics systems as a regulatory infrastructure

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly performing legitimate tasks on behalf of humans. However, the legal aspects of this task performance are critical, given the unprecedented ability of AI to self-learn and act reasonably and independently. This article therefore identifies the critical regulatory aspects of AI that authorities and policymakers should be aware of, with regard to whether AI should be regulated now or at a later stage in its development. Nevertheless, the absence of a specific law, literally designated as an Artificial Intelligence Law, does not necessarily mean that AI is unregulated. This research therefore argues that AI is already indirectly regulated in several aspects. It is subsequently found that broad regulation could be premature, given that some types of AI systems are not yet specific in their form, or have yet to mature. On a global level, it is argued in this paper that it would be sensible to establish an international organization sooner rather than later, as AI grows in complexity and becomes increasingly transnational. Therefore, this research presents some of the possible obstacles this proposed organization may face. On a national level, it is suggested that the time has come to establish a regulatory infrastructure as a pre-regulatory phase, which would render future AI regulation more feasible. In particular, AI needs to be identified under a national digital identification scheme, as this would make it more regulatable and manageable. This is a necessary step to enable the authorities to confront the myriad legal issues and challenges in the longer term. While establishing a digital ID scheme for AI systems, discussions over the liability associated with AI’s wrongful acts would be especially productive.

Blockchain‐based security enhancement mechanism for employee performance assessment system

SummaryIn the proposed approach, the blockchain based employee performance assessment system is introduced to enhance the security and privacy of employee data. The proposed three phases are used to enhance the security mechanism in the employee performance assessment system: authentication, encryption, and data retrieval phase. The authentication process is performed in the first phase by utilizing Lamport Merkle digital signature (LMDS) algorithm. The LMDS algorithm generates and verifies a digital ID for each employee. In the next phase blockchain based encryption is carried on employee data using the new light weight cryptography algorithm (NLCA), which uses a 16 bytes (128 bit) block cipher and needs 16 bytes (128‐bit) key to encrypt the data. At last, the data retrieval phase allows users to access the data through the secret key. Proposing a modified Diffie‐Hellman (ReDH) algorithm to exchange the secret key to ensure security. The proposed approach is implemented in the Python platform, and the performance of the proposed approach is compared with existing methods in terms of encryption time, throughput, decryption time, storage efficiency, and search time. Using a blockchain‐based employee performance assessment system enhances system trust level, transparency, accountability, and security efficiency.

NIST reveals winners of six-year digital ID contest

NIST reveals winners of six-year digital ID contest

Digital ID framework for human-centric monitoring and control of smart buildings

Digital ID framework for human-centric monitoring and control of smart buildings

A Real-Time Biometric Encryption Scheme Based on Fuzzy Logic for IoT

When milliards of smart devices are connected to the Internet using the Internet of Things (IoT), robust security methods are required to deliver current information to the objects. Using IoT, the user can be accessed via smart device applications at any time and any place, which challenges IoT security and privacy. From security point of view, users and smart devices should have secure communication channel and digital ID. Authentication is the first step towards any security action. Biometric-based authentication can ensure higher security for developing secure access. In this paper, fingerprint is used as the biometric factor. After scanning the fingerprint using the cellphone’s camera, the image is transmitted to the authentication system. Since the comparison time increases after increasing the database volume, instead of storing the scanned fingerprint image, some key features of the scanned fingerprint are extracted and transmitted to the learning system of the convolutional neural network for detection and authentication and stored in the database. In the user authentication phase, the authentication keys are identified and the passcodes for the user of interest are extracted, and zero code is sent to the forged people; finally, the passcode is examined to check if the user is legal or illegal. In this step, the legal codes for fuzzy encoding of the image and text information are activated, and encryption is carried out in multiple steps depending on the number of members. The final code is compressed using Huffman coding and used for transmission to the network or storage. The proposed method is tested in MATLAB, and the results show that an excellent security is achieved using this cascade encryption method. Conclusively, the proposed hybrid coding technique reduces the information volume by 15.9%.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Women and Digital ID in Kenya: A Decolonial Perspective

AbstractInspired by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the international development community is driving digital ID programmes in low and middle income countries (LMICs) such as Kenya. Kenya has had experience with state-issued identity registration such as that proposed in digital ID programmes for over a century. Identity registration has gendered impacts, stemming from the historical exclusion of women in the system, lack of recognition of their contribution to new uses of the system, as well as lack of engagement with women regarding remedies. Digital ID risks continuing and exacerbating these injustices, as it is based on the existing system. This article uses the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ framework of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to analyse how decolonial approaches could be applied in digital ID to untangle it from colonial legacies, check the ever-increasing power of businesses involved in digital ID systems, and broaden intersectional understanding of human rights.

Streamlining online student library access

The article addresses how a traditional Public commuter college library in the Bronx began making strides to automate student ID barcodes so online library access was granted without in person registrations. How does a barcode number get generated for an individual student and what offices need to be included in automating a library account? The author discusses the College's expansion of its online education program, strategies to serve this community and the eventual development of a digital ID card allowing students instant access to online resources. The article also reports data from a trouble ticket system developed for patron log in issues using Libwizard from Springshare.

IFace 1.1: A Proof-of-Concept of a Facial Authentication Based Digital ID for Smart Cities

“Smart Cities” are a viable option to various issues caused by accelerated urban growth. To make smart cities a reality, smart citizens need to be connected to the “Smart City” through a digital ID. A digital ID allows citizens to make easy and effective use of amenities provided by the smart city such as healthcare, transport, finance, and energy. In this paper, we propose a proof-of-concept of facial authentication based end-to-end digital ID system for a smart city. Facial authentication systems are prone to various biometric template attacks and cyber security attacks. Our proposed system is designed to detect the first type of attack especially deepfake and presentation attacks. Users are authenticated each time before using facilities in the smart city. Authentication is performed on edge devices, making the process more secure as no data leaves the device during authentication. Facial data is stored at the cloud in a look up table format with an unidentifiable username. Our proposed solution achieved 97% accuracy in authentication with a False Rejection Ratio of 2% and False Acceptance Ratio of 3%.

I Don’t Exist: Aesthetics of Virtual Expropriation

Existing in virtual global networks poses questions on how subjects can main- tain agency within them. The shift of digital networks into compartmentalized locked-in platforms facilitates the metamorphosis of subjects into the category of users. The ever-growing absence of a buffer zone between online and offline representation means that online highjacks become increasingly problematic. Currently, there is a rise in emerging efforts to transition bureaucratic citizenship into new modes of digital identity, such as the ID2020 project and other govern- mental projects seeking to implement digital ID in countries like Australia and Canada, or the digital ID proposed by the World Economic Forum. This shift, in some cases from a centralized state as guarantor to a decentralized allocation of identity allows easy verifiability and access to a multiplicity of services and personal data but also poses questions concerning these systems. This research aims to look at the different models of digital identity that are being developed, thinking about their implications. Researching in an art context, the goal is to develop a speculative project related with digital ID and expropriation, reflecting upon the assetisation of identity. The goal is to think through different theories to explore agency within virtual global networks distributed in planetary-scale assemblages of subjects and technological infrastructures.

The Aadhaar Mirage. A Second Look at the World Bank's 'Model' for Digital ID Systems

The Aadhaar Mirage. A Second Look at the World Bank's 'Model' for Digital ID Systems

Why NFC is a rising star in digital ID

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across all industries, enabling many businesses to carry on trading while streamlining processes. But perhaps not surprisingly, this move to digital has been accompanied by a rise in cyber-crime and fraud. This in turn has accelerated the search for technology that can help improve the security of digital ID verification, while enhancing the experience for users. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Privacy and Data Protection Practices of Digital Lending Apps in Kenya

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) has been studying the impact of digital identities on society. This has included policy research on the legal and technical aspects of the national digital ID system Huduma Namba under which the Government is integrating all its identification documents. This research shows that the national digital identity system also integrates with privately issued digital identities such as mobile phone numbers and social media accounts. We anticipate that as national digital ID uses increase, so will the linkage with private systems. This is already evident from e-government services, where payments for Government services, such as passport applications, drivers’ licences, national health insurance and hospital bills in public hospitals are made using mobile money platforms. We also appreciate that private digital ID is more developed and has more uses than national digital ID. For example, a 2019 survey, undertaken by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), estimates that access to financial products had risen from 26.7% in 2006 to 89% of the population in 2019. This is attributed partly to the availability of digital products such as “mobile banking, agency banking, digital finance and mobile apps”. These products make use of personal data, which broadly falls under digital identities. This study seeks to understand the privacy implications of digital ID by looking at digital lending apps.

Mergers That Harm Our Health

We are currently facing a new wave of healthcare mergers in the United States. More and more health insurers, such as Aetna, have started merging with powerful drug suppliers, such as CVS. What do these companies hope to achieve by merging? They want to increase their access to our health data. They want to know our individual biology, our medical history, our level of well-being; they want to know where we go, what we buy, how much we sleep; if we can resist sugar, junk food or nicotine; if we exercise and how often we exercise. In other words, they aim to shape our digital health ID. Why? On one hand, health insurers aim to reduce their risks and therefore their costs by improving our level of well-being. On the other, health insurers aim to reduce their costs by discriminating against us. Indeed, by allowing health insurers to gain access to consumers’ prescription history and health habits, these data driven mergers can create substantial barriers to entry for high-risk consumers who want to enter the health insurance services market. Can the U.S. antitrust enforcers address the harm that these mergers create? Specifically, reduced access to health insurance services for a specific segment of consumers? And, if so, how? This article identifies three potential ways in which the U.S. antitrust enforcers could address the harms that these mergers impose on high-risk consumers. First, the U.S. antitrust enforcers could contend that the vulnerable, high-risk consumers constitute a separate relevant market. Second, they could argue that the proposed merger’s negative impact on high-risk consumers should weigh more heavily than its positive impact on low-risk consumers, notwithstanding that the net effect of the merger should be assessed. Third, the U.S. antitrust enforcers may argue that these mergers facilitate a health insurer’s efforts to violate the Affordable Care Act and should, therefore, be prohibited. Thus, this article is the first to address the need for the U.S. antitrust enforcers and the courts to confront the harm that these data driven mergers pose to high-risk consumers. If not, they risk applying antitrust law in a way that further exacerbates the existing health disparities in the United States.

Research on Digital Identity Authentication Technology Based On Block Chain

In the traditional digital identity authentication, there are potential security threats caused by the user’s personal privacy data being too centralized and vulnerable to attack, and data centralization will lead to data redundancy, poor permeability, user’s lack of master control, high overall cost, and potential threats of abuse of central rights. The digital identity authentication technology based on block chain can perfectly solve the problem of appeal. The main innovative work includes the design of a new digital identity ID and a new asynchronous Byzantine fault-tolerant algorithm dsbft using cryptography, computer network, asynchronous Byzantine fault-tolerant algorithm and other technologies, Block chain is designed based on ID and dsbft, and a decentralized identity authentication system is designed based on block chain. Hash algorithm is used for signature and acceptance to improve authentication efficiency and scalability. In order to solve the dust attack and quantum computation, the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) encryption algorithm can be combined with other cryptography. The results show that the appeal identity authentication scheme can resist a variety of attacks and has high efficiency and security.

India’s Approach to Open Banking

We examine how the development of the digital infrastructure known as the “India Stack”—including an interoperable payments system, a universal digital ID, and other features—is delivering on the government’s objective to expand the provision of financial services. While each individual component of the India Stack is important, we argue that its key overarching feature is a foundational approach of providing extensive public infrastructures and standards that generates important synergies across the layers of the Stack. Until recently, a large share of India’s population lacked access to formal banking services and was largely reliant on cash for financial transactions. The expansion of mobile-based financial services that enable simple and convenient ways to save and conduct financial transactions has provided a novel alternative for expanding the financial net. The Stack’s improved digital infrastructures have already allowed for a rapid increase in the use of digital payments and the entry of a range of competitors including fintech and bigtech firms.

Analysing the impact of Digital ID frameworks on Marginalised Groups in Sub-Saharan Africa

The adoption of Digital Identification systems has been hailed as transformative for many developing countries; sub-Saharan Countries being no exception. Reference is often made to the potential increase in public service delivery efficiency and to the ability of such systems being a significant component of the Digital Economy, that has the capacity to leap-frog economies. At a national level, many Sub-Saharan African countries are adopting these programs through legislation and, as they are currently designed, do not offer adequate rights protections nor do they meet the needs of the population. It is increasingly becoming apparent that African countries face a confluence of challenges that require a more nuanced and tailor-made approach when introducing programs such as Digital IDs. Currently, 81 % of the 1 Billion people lacking legal identities and or proof of any legal identity residing in sub-Saharan Africa. Further, majority of the Digital ID systems adopted by sub-Saharan African countries require that persons registering provide various forms of formal identification in order to enable collected biometric data to be integrated with already existing identification repositories which would then be held in a central database. This would, therefore, imply that already marginalized communities, that have historically been unregistered, would remain unregistered and without formal identification. It is because of this, that the adoption of Digital IDs raises questions regarding the ability of the systems, and legislative and policy interventions, to remedy traditional inefficiencies of the lack of registration or formal identification of persons such as refugees and other marginalized communities. Further, the digital IDs bring about new challenges such as the protection of basic privacy rights of residents and citizens. In light of the above, the aim of the project will be to research and identify the implementation of Digital ID in sub-Saharan Africa through regulatory instruments, and outline any risks and challenges identified with this implementation in the relevant region with the goal to address the following questions: • How the implementation of Digital ID systems, including the legislative instruments establishing said systems, remedies the lack of registration and formal Identification of refugees and other marginalized communities, that was prevalent in the traditional Identification system. • The adequacies of legislative instruments and mechanisms used to protect the privacy of the said marginalized communities.

Legally Belonging in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Status of Legal Identity (Conference (Re)Imagining Belonging in Latin America and Beyond)

The days that one could belong in their country without having a legal identity to actually be(long) legally in that country seem well behind us, except for minorities that have no other place to go than, perhaps, a refugee camp, or underground. “Leaving no one behind” — the motto of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda — is a hollow phrase until each and everyone one of us has a legal identity and basic rights for our interaction with governments. The Latin American and Caribbean region has arguably done the most to reach a state in which the proportion of those excluded from legal identity is down to a level very close to that in high-income countries, and lower than in any other part of the world. Birth registration coverage of children 0–4 years old is 96% (and higher still for children and youth 5–18 years old). ID-coverage is 95%. But this paper also shows that whether it is the World Bank (ID4D), the United Nations Statistics Division or UNICEF, their statistics on civil registration and national ID coverage leave much to be desired in terms of timeliness, coverage, veracity and compliance with adequate statistical practice. For a randomly chosen sample of seven countries in the LAC region we found that the World Bank’s “2018” dataset was in error to the extent that the actual number of “unidentified” people in those seven countries, by 2016, is just 15% of the World Bank number. All three actors release data that are, disappointingly, representative of the situation of 5 to 7 years ago. The World Bank, UNSD and UNICEF also treat high-income countries as VIP-countries that, “of course”, do not have people without a legal identity. Hence those countries are let off the hook and are not required to establish and report the problem of their “unidentified” people. “One UN” is not what we see either. That also applies to the tussle within the UN (including the World Bank Group) over what role “digital ID” systems could play for legal identity, if at all. The LAC region shows (to the extent available statistics allow) that, when it comes to legal identity, ID coverage tends to be, and become, more exclusionary than civil (=birth) registration coverage. The region also shows that universal coverage can be achieved, not by “leapfrogging” to eliminate “the identity gap” or “quack-fixes”, but by serious study and judicious policy and implementation. Much of this paper zooms in on the quantitative, empirical data on the regional coverage of civil registration and national ID-systems. The region deserves to be commended for the sophisticated-but-pragmatic, organization-focused research, and implementation follow-through largely with local resources. Reaching legal identity for all by 2030 in the LAC region is feasible.

Analysing the NDHM Health Data Management Policy

Propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prime Minister of India launched the National Digital Health Mission on 15 August 2020. The aim of the Mission is to improve capacities in the Indian healthcare system by creating a digital health ecosystem connecting different stakeholders from the public and private healthcare sector. A key aspect of the Mission is to establish digital health IDs and a digital health records system. In order to guide its implementation, the Government of India notified the National Digital Health Mission: Health Data Management Policy (NDHM-HDMP) in December 2020. In this paper, we aim to provide a broad overview of the NDHM-HDMP and highlight related legal, socio-economic and implementation issues. We analyse the NDHM-HDMP based on five criteria: (a) legal foundation and health system preparedness; (b) governance framework; (c) implications for individual consent and privacy; (d) risk of exclusions; and (e) concerns around access to health big data by private entities. We find that the NDHM-HDMP, in its present form, suffers from a weak legal foundation and inadequate preparatory groundwork; excessive delegation; a constricted digital consent and privacy framework; over-reliance on an Aadhaar-based authentication system; and, vague systems for anonymisation and de-identification, as well as complete absence of strict access control requirements for personal health data. We recommend that the identified shortcomings are addressed prior to the full scale roll out of the digital health ID and digital health records system, in order to meet the objectives of the NationalDigital Health Mission.

Digital ID and Risk of Statelessness

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