iPhone owners in Arizona can now add their driver’s license: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there, listeners. It’s Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech.

Arizona becomes the first state where you can add your driver’s license or your state identification card directly to your iPhone. Apple announced on Wednesday that Arizona is the first state to offer residents this option, where you can add your license or your ID directly to your wallet app. I write about this in a story that you can read on tech.USAtoday.com. The biggest use case for this is now, travelers who have their driver’s license or their state ID on their iPhone can go to select transportation security administration checkpoints, at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and check in. So, here’s how it’ll work.

Basically, what you do is if you have it on your phone, you go up to, basically, a digital reader. It works like when you tap for Apple Pay. You go to this reader, you tap your phone, the phone will pull up your license. It’ll say, “This is what the TSA wants to see.” You agree to it, and then the TSA sees all your information. You also have to have a photo taken as well, because it’s similar to the process where, when you go check out with TSA, say at the airport, and you hand your ID, they look at you. They look at the ID.

Similar process, the idea being that nobody’s there. So, they’re taking your picture. They’re seeing the info on your phone, and then you go through and process it. Obviously, multiple states are going to be doing this. Apple announced on Wednesday that Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and Puerto Rico will join the list of states that they already announced. There were seven others that they announced last September when they first talked about this feature. That was Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah. So, if you have an iPhone 8 or later, or if you have an Apple Watch 4 or later, this feature will work.

So, how exactly do you add your driver’s license to your iPhone? You go to the wallet app. You’ll hit the plus sign and it’ll offer you the option to pick driver’s license or state ID. Then, you take a selfie. After your selfie, you’ll take pictures of the front and the back of your ID card. Then, you’re going to do this process. It’s similar to when you set up face ID on an iPhone. They want to get a scan of different facial and head movements, part of the process of verifying your identity.

Then what happens is Apple sends information over to the state. It includes your selfie. It includes the images of your ID, and an analysis by Apple that confirms, based on their head and face scan, this is you. Once states approve it, the iPhone owner gets a notification and it says that your digital driver’s license or state ID is ready to go. And the idea is it’s going to obviously work at various TSA checkpoints, as it spreads throughout the rest of the country.

Apple also says this data is encrypted. It just operates between the device and the digital reader, and that’s it. I think the TSA stuff is great if you travel a lot and you just need a really quick way to verify who you are and you want to scan your phone, and it’s all right there. Where I’m more interested in this feature is where else are we going to see it beyond just TSA?