Iowa Considers Turning Driver Licenses Into A Smartphone App

If you’re going out at night, you probably don’t want to bring too many things with you. Maybe you’ll bring your phone, a credit/bank card, some ID, cash, and that’s about it. Well if you were hoping that more of your cards could go digital, in Iowa it could soon be made a reality. The state of Iowa has recently proposed an idea in which the drivers license of its residents can be made into an app.

This will allow drivers to install the app on their smartphones which in turn will allow them to pull up a digital copy of their license in the event that they need to. As it stands in Iowa, drivers are already able to show digital copies of their car registration and insurance, so safe to say that the app version of their driver’s license will be the next step.

Of course there are some risks associated with this proposal. For starters the license needs to be authenticated and this can be done either through facial or fingerprint recognition. The app can also be programmed to behave in a certain way to prove its authenticity as well which might come in handy to the police, bouncers, and alcohol vendors looking to verify the age of their customers.

The app will be tested in a pilot program by select state employees in the next six months, and if everything goes according to plan, residents of Iowa can start applying for their digital licenses sometime in 2015. In the meantime what do you guys think? Is this a good idea?

 

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Legal