By Alicia Lucas
It’s hard to imagine the delicate balance Minnesota, USA, residents-turned-protesters must have gone through each day. Waking up, carefully but forcefully protesting the utter wrongness of it all, fearing someone’s, or perhaps their own, temper flaring in conflagration with federal immigration agents. Breathing a sigh of relief as the end of each day is reached – one more day closer to mid-terms. The USA federal government, in contrast, initially argued it was the uncontrollable and dangerous protesters who were the problem and federal agents were only protecting themselves. With this and more as a backdrop, some USA citizens are looking at how a widely used government instrument could become a digital ostracism tool.
In the USA, the drivers licence has been around for over 100 years. Mostly a licence gives road users a sense of security as it signifies drivers understand how to drive safely. Increasingly, though, government and business use it to prove identity or verify age. The drivers licence is now causing concern. What happens when it is revoked? Cancellation of a physical licence tends to have little impact on day to day activities except those associated with driving although that can be a hardship for some. Once it is digital, widely used as a general use id, a “digital id”, combined with the ability of government to cancel it from afar, revoking may lead to a person becoming an “unperson” as defined in George Orwell’s book “1984” cautions the American Civil Liberties Union.
A person with a revoked digital drivers license may find themselves locked out of such things as government services, bank accounts, new jobs and even online products and the pub as digital identification becomes increasing required in the USA. Revoking may be done from a distance if government retains a “revoking” link to the digital drivers licence just as the Australian state-owned Energy Queensland, through it’s distribution businesses, has been able to remotely turn down air conditioners in people’s homes without telling them since 2012. Some home owners may not even know the government can legally do this as this knowledge may have been lost in the mists of time.
ACLU make the case that cancelling someone’s identification, making it hard for someone to function in the USA, is already a reality. Six thousand immigrants had their legal social security number placed into a social security administration “dead file” preventing them from working or receiving government services, amongst other things, four months after the second term of Trump’s presidency began.
The ACLU seeks to protect civil rights and liberties including through legal action, lobbying and education. It has been doing so since 1920 and has many members as well as paid and volunteer lawyers. ACLU fear people’s licences may be revoked by mistake, false accusations of wrong doing, or the increasingly heightened awareness of the possibilities of political targeting in that country.
The contested as unjustified shooting of protesters Renee Good on 7 January 2026 and Alex Preeti on 24 January 2026 in Minnesota by the USA federal government’s Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Force agents could only have increased concerns about false accusations, political targeting and how far the current government will go to get its own way. The President’s ultimate disapproval of the handling of the situation by officials leading to changes to Border Force and the proposed withdrawal of immigration agents to normal levels following the second killing seems to be calming the situation. That’s now in Minnesota. People are wary, though, that something similar could occur in other states lead by the opposition. The government hasn’t changed its objective of removing those it considers shouldn’t be in the country. Maybe some other issue will blow up – the country is now fighting Iran.
The ACLU want governments to make it “technically impossible” for remote revocations of digital driving licences/digital ids and have that supported by enacting laws protecting people from this type of “identity” loss. Further, there should be no continuous or permanent linking by the overseer of the licence, rather people should be able to choose when to link within already established practices for such things as licence renewal or change of address. The ACLU also ask USA governments to stop building digital licences without full consideration of the ramifications to people.
There are other concerns about digital driving licences and digital ids. One is that once a digital id exists, whether as a drivers licence or not, more and more identifying information can be added to it as long as computer memory and format isn’t limiting. In Mexico, the digital id is now mandatory and includes fingerprint and iris scans as well as a photographic image. Secondary and tertiary issues related to this are hackers may be more enticed to break into a central database holding a lot of identifying information and the harder it is for a person to prove who they are as that information is compromised through hacking.
Another problem is the ease in which digital information can be moved around and used to build another type of id. The Australian Government has been planning for a centralised database storing facial recognition data to help prevent identity theft and increase road safety amongst other things. An Australia-wide database exists for drivers licences and is operated by a not-for-profit company with a board consisting of representatives from each state and territory government. Although states and territories can supply images from drivers licences photos to this database they will continue to manage licences and their photos in the originating database. Currently, facial recognition data is only to be used by Australian government agencies in regards to passports. Who can tell what the future will bring. What one government may have presented as never to be done, a future government may see as necessary.
Why use a drivers licence? Most USA adults have a physical driver’s licence perhaps making it easier to transition to a digital id, however, any other form of identification could be used.
Does Australia play any role in the use of digital driving licences and digital ids that might effect the USA? First there is a need to think about the role Australia plays in the roll out of new technology around the world and broadly what that involves.
Australia is known as an early adopter of new technology so in the case of digital driving licences and a digital id, we already have them. In the USA, where many digital products come from, states may also be early adopters. A lot of countries don’t appear to have digital licences or are at the planning or development stage.
In 2017, South Australia was the first state to supply digital as well as physical licences. The earliest formal release in the USA appears to have been Louisiana in 2018. Although Iowa started planning first in 2016, its statewide digital roll out didn’t occur until 2023. New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria can also now supply digital driving licences. Australia’s digital id, known as MyID, was initially introduced in 2019 although discussions appear to have started in the low to mid-2010s. The USA’s federal government started discussions for improved identification, a “Real Id”, to be released at the state level, following the September 11 2001 terroristic attacks, or possibly before. The digital driving licences appear to fulfil that requirement although only if accepted at the federal level.
The saying “The early bird gets the worm” is often used to portray how the early adopter is believed to benefit from, for example, the time saving a new technology can bring. However, the saying can continue with “but the mouse gets the cheese” implying that those who follow actually benefit more as problems are likely ironed out by the early adopters and implementing the new technology can proceed on a sounder and cheaper, although not necessarily perfect, basis. Queensland said it spoke to SA and NSW during development of its licence which was released in 2023. Not withstanding this and still a comparatively early adopter, SA faced defending the licence as, presumably other, technical issues marred its release. These technical difficulties draw attention as the company involved in development emphasises “trust” as a reason to choose that company.
Certainly technical issues, security flaws and hacks have occurred during the Australian roll out so far. For example, SA government accounts were hacked in 2021 and people’s details could relatively easily and unofficially be changed on the NSW digital drivers licence when it was released in 2019. The Australian government identification and related instruments have been subject to technical difficulties and hacks since its inception.
Besides Iowa, another state with known problems in the USA was Oklahoma. It originally released its digital driving licence in 2019 but shut it down in 2023 as the few people using it didn’t justify keeping it going when combined with the significant development needed so vision-impaired people could use it.
An early adopter may not be aware of all possible problems or the significance of a problem when approaching a new development. Even if the problem is known there may be insufficient knowledge about how to deal with it. Early adopters need to be prepared to pay further costs to fix problems after the digital product is released to the public. When driving licence details were hacked from Optus in 2022, the states needed to reconsider driving licence identification measures and released newly designed driving licences incorporating them. The states paid the cost for revision of the licence although Optus did pay for each effected person’s new licence. The new identification measures appear to have so far withstood further hacking. When Latitude Financial, who also stored driving licence details as part of confirming customer identification, was hacked the following year it was believed the only need was to give impacted customers a new driving licence as the changes following the previous hacking were already sufficient to prevent misuse of the driving licence data.
Given the different types of problems and how much time it may take for them to become apparent it is unsurprising many wait before undertaking, what can be very costly, development themselves.
Each Australian state developed its digital licence to meet its own needs. Queensland worked with French defence and technology specialist company Thales. Thales was already involved in digital driving licence development in some USA states and used a consistent approach to those in Queensland. The design contains the revoking feature that allows the controller of the licence to revoke or cancel it no matter where it is as long as they can digitally link to it. Countries and companies, other than Thales, can use this design. Different designs can have similar or dissimilar problems or may even have partially addressed theses problems. This includes the designs used for the other Australian states.
The ACLU are concerned about the design used by Thales. It was developed by private organisation ISO without input from “privacy, civil rights, civil liberties, labor (sic), refugee, human rights, or other public interest advocates” that ACLU knows of. Rather business and government interests determined digital driving licence content and how it works. ACLU list big tech companies including Google and Apple, the US DHS and representatives of other countries as being involved, however the members of ISO committees are kept secret so it can be hard, although not impossible, to identify, at least, some committee members. The ACLU conclude this committee makeup meant it has concentrated on how to strongly prevent fake identities with relatively limited thought about protecting the interests of the person holding the licence.
Unsurprisingly, Australian governments have recently all signed up to use this design even where digital licences are already available. Apparently, we will benefit from having the same digital drivers licence Australia-wide although there is no problem driving in another state or territory on any state or territory licence on a short-term basis and it appears relatively straight forward to transfer one state licence to another using physical licences. It does not appear the rest of relevant state department driving laws will change. Digital driving licences are probably more about ids and buying products off the web.
Other governments and development companies can use first adopters to motivate or reassure others. For example, “these states or countries are already doing it, you’ll be left behind if you don’t” and “they have a lot of experience now so they must know what they are doing – you should use them.”
Digital drivers licences and digital id availability and use in countries appears thinly dispersed around the world. It is difficult to know exactly. Some licences are fully functioning while others are partially functioning or only being tested. Internet availability can prevent widespread use. Some licences are built using ISO but others are based on different designs. Perhaps 18 of the 50 USA states had one by the end of 2025, only some based on ISO. North America’s Canada is still in the process of developing one as is Oceania’s NZ. South America’s Argentina’s licence became digital in 2019. In Asia, India’s driving licences were available digitally from about 2016 while a digital id dates back to 1998 and a digital drivers licence was introduced to South Korea in 2022. The EU is aiming to provide a digital licence for use by all of its member countries by 2030 although some countries have had digital driving licences for a while such as Norway from 2019 and Iceland and Denmark from 2020. In Africa, Kenya has a digital drivers licence and South Africa is in the process of developing one. UAE and Oman are two countries that have digital driving licences in the Middle East.
The UK government is testing a digital drivers licence. However, a 2025 proposal to introduce a mandatory digital id in the UK was wound back following protest. Nearly 3 million people signed a petition opposing the digital id organised by various UK civil and rights non-government organisations.
What can people in Australia do? No one knows what will happen in the USA. Hopefully, the seriousness of the situation has been misjudged. Perhaps, though, this is a situation where it is better to be safe than sorry.
Leaving identification documents and cards as physical is one way to lessen the chance of revocations leading to “unpersoning” and also protect peoples data from hacking. As no government or company can guarantee 100% secure storage of peoples identifying details, storage of identification data should be off-web and not in country- or world-wide databases. This may also reduce the need to store more and more invasive identifiers of people. However, it could be too hard to do cold turkey.
There is another approach as the digital drivers licence does not appear to have widespread use yet. It is possible people power can still have an impact on its roll out as it seems to have done on digital ids in the UK. People in Australia could simply stop using digital driving licences and explain why to help people in the USA. Physical licences are still used, digital licences are supplementary, so it is something easy to do.
If the demand for and use of digital driving licences stops in Australia, a known first adopter country, governments and businesses around the world may stop to pause and think. At a minimum it may lead to making automatic revocation of the licence “technically impossible” with laws to reinforce this and end permanent and continuous connections to the licence. This may remove the fear of people in the USA that they will become an “unperson”. Expanding driver licence design to considering people needs as distinct from those of government or business may help ensure the drivers licence continues to provide people with a sense of security not insecurity.
Reference: ACLU, How to give the government new power to “Un-Person” someone, in three easy steps, ACLU website, 5/1/2026.
Note: since writing this article and waiting to see how the situation developed in the United States, I came across the ‘#quitGPT’ campaign. The campaign asks users to stop using ChatGPT as a protest against the company who produces it, OpenAI. While the campaigners raise various concerns about OpenAI, what catches the eye is the military and surveillance deals OpenAI has made with the USA Department of Defence. The campaign originated in the USA in about early February 2026 and is now spreading around the world.
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The encouraged move from cash to credit cards is a sure way to determine who owns what and how much they earn. Similarly, the above article shows that digital-IDs can remove the privacy from individuals. Both these trends are designed to create the ”neo-feudal society” where the privileged few ride on the backs of the masses, much like the Russian aristocracy described in 19th century Russian novels.
The poor pay for government while the rich spend their profits.
Why do I think of the many 1950-1970s American Science Fiction novels ”imagining” a dystopic world of anger, and inter-class warfare as the rich protect their asymmetric distribution of wealth because ”they earned it”!!
Really?? Surely most of that wealth was created by the efforts of the workers, even in share market trading entities.
The very real threat of ”unpersoning” should be considered by all persons ….. because you can bet ”London to a brick on” the fact that the MAGA authors have already seen the opportunities to assert control over every individual in the world.
It’s difficult to put into words the fear I feel, and for the future, with these kinds of “initiatives’, and how they can be used to ruin peoples lives, as well as ramp up surveillance to a level that only used to be seen in distopian Sci Fi movies.
Yes…all the distraction while the remorseless, relentless and unimaginative cyber industry acts as robot for the oligarchy.
Civil society is pretty much dead in a new age of surveillance, fake messaging and fake news.
Apparently this has happened against Francesca Albanese, who has dared tell the truth, as required by her job.
Her accounts and data have been used or stuffed up as yet nore harrassment from the Lobby coninues to inflict misery on truth-tellers.