Improving Digital Identity Act of 2022
Introduced in the House on 6/30/2021
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the “Improving Digital Identity Act of 2021”.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
(1) The lack of an easy, affordable, and reliable way for organizations, businesses, and government agencies to identify whether an individual is who they claim to be online creates an attack vector that is widely exploited by adversaries in cyberspace, and precludes many high-value transactions from being available online.
(2) Incidents of identity theft and identity fraud continue to rise in the United States, where more than 164,000,000 consumer records containing personally identifiable information were breached in 2019, increasing the total number of data breaches by 17 percent from the previous year.
(3) In 2019, losses resulting from identity fraud amounted to $16,900,000,000.
(4) In 2019, the Director of the Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network stated, “The abuse of personally identifiable information, and other building blocks of identity, is a key enabler behind much of the fraud and cybercrime affecting our nation today.”.
(5) Trustworthy digital identity solutions can help under-banked and unbanked individuals better access to digital financial services through innovative delivery channels that promote financial inclusion.
(6) The inadequacy of current digital identity solutions degrades security and privacy for all Americans, and next generation solutions are needed that improve both security and privacy.
(7) Government entities, as authoritative issuers of identity in the United States, are uniquely positioned to deliver critical components that address deficiencies in our digital identity infrastructure and augment private sector digital identity and authentication solutions.
(8) State governments are particularly well suited to play a role in enhancing digital identity solutions used by both the public and private sectors, given the role of State governments as the issuers of driver’s licenses and other identity documents commonly used today.
(9) The private sector drives much of the innovation around digital identity in the United States and has an important role to play in delivering digital identity solutions.
(10) The 2016 bipartisan Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity called for the Federal Government to “create an interagency task force directed to find secure, user-friendly, privacy-centric ways in which agencies can serve as one authoritative source to validate identity attributes in the broader identity market. This action would enable government agencies and the private sector to drive significant risk out of new account openings and other high-risk, high-value online services, and it would help all citizens more easily and securely engage in transactions online”.
(11) The public and private sectors should collaborate to deliver solutions that promote confidence, privacy, choice, and innovation.
(12) It should be the policy of the Government to use the authorities and capabilities of the Government to enhance the security, reliability, privacy, and convenience of digital identity solutions that support and protect transactions between individuals, government entities, and businesses, and that enable Americans to prove who they are online.
SEC. 3. IMPROVING DIGITAL IDENTITY TASK FORCE.
(1) identify Federal, State, and local agencies that issue identity information or hold information related to identifying an individual;
(2) assess restrictions with respect to the abilities of such agencies to verify identity information for other agencies and for nongovernmental organizations;
(3) assess any necessary changes in statute, regulation, or policy to address any restrictions determined under paragraph (2);
(4) recommend a standards-based architecture to enable agencies to provide services related to digital identity verification in a way that is secure, protects privacy, and is rooted in consumer consent;
(5) identify funding or resources needed to support such agencies that provide digital identity verification, including a recommendation with respect to additional funding required for the grant program under section 5;
(6) determine whether it would be practicable for such agencies to use a fee-based model to provide digital identity verification to private sector entities;
(7) determine if any additional steps are necessary with respect to Federal, State, and local agencies to improve digital identity verification and management processes for the purpose of enhancing the security, reliability, privacy, and convenience of digital identity solutions that support and protect transactions between individuals, government entities, and businesses;
(8) assess risks related to potential criminal exploitation of digital identity verification services;
(9) evaluate the security, effectiveness, and benefits of a digital identity as compared to legacy physical identity verification; and
SEC. 8. DEFINITIONS.
(1) DIGITAL IDENTITY VERIFICATION.—The term “digital identity verification” means a process to verify the identity of an individual accessing a service online or through another electronic means.
(2) IDENTITY CREDENTIAL.—The term “identity credential” means a document or other evidence of the identity of an individual issued by a government agency that conveys the identity of the individual, including a driver’s license or passport.
