The Case for a National Digital Identity Credential
By Neville Pattinson, Vice President of Standards and Government Affairs, Gemalto North America.
The Problem
The United States is in the midst of an identity crisis. Evidence for the
problem is apparent in all sectors of our government and economy.
- Data breaches have exposed 260 million records containing sensitive personal information in the U.S. since January 20051; this leads to credit card fraud and other forms of identity theft
- The Federal Trade Commission reported that for the ninth year in a row, identity theft was the number one consumer complaint2 category, 26% of all complaints
- Verification is essential to the success of any new immigration law; it is the only way to ensure that illegal immigrants are unemployable; yet today there is no effective way for the nation's seven million employers to realistically determine someone's status
- A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report concluded that medical identity theft is a significant problem and consumers have the most to lose, yet little is done to authenticate the identity of individuals throughout healthcare3
- One organization estimates that in 2007 three percent of annual
healthcare spending ($60 billion) was lost to outright fraud4
Next: Identity Problems
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1. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
2. FTC Releases List of Top Consumer Complaints in 2008, Federal Trade Commission News Release, Feb. 26, 2009, The report states that credit card fraud was the most common form of reported identity theft at 20 percent, followed by government documents/benefits fraud at 15 percent, employment fraud at 15 percent, phone or utilities fraud at 13 percent, bank fraud at 11 percent and loan fraud at four percent.
3. "Medical Identity Theft Final Report," U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (Booz Allen Hamilton) January 15, 2009
4. "The Problem of Health Care Fraud," National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association
One
of the biggest challenges facing healthcare providers around the
world is ensuring the protection of sensitive patient data.
The eID projects highlighted below, are an example of how such schemes
provide access to a large number of different public and private
applications.