By mid-November, Floridians will be able to download their driver’s licenses and ID cards to their smartphones through a mobile app developed by the state’s Department of Road and Motor Vehicle Safety (DHSMV).

Department officials told the Senate Transportation Committee last week that they were ready to launch the Florida Smart-ID on the Apple App Store and Android Google Play store “within a month.”

Tech companies, state auto services, the American Automobile Association and lawmakers in a growing number of states say mobile digital licenses will give people more privacy by allowing them to decide what personal information they share .

Florida Smart-ID, studied since 2014, could also mean the end of long lines at the DMV since licenses and cards can be updated remotely – perhaps even the end of an actual place called the DMV. .

Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Wyoming, and Washington, DC received federal grants to test mobile driver’s licenses in 2016. Colorado and Louisiana were the first states to create digital ID applications. in 2018.

Since then, according to Congressional Quarterly / Fiscal Note, six states have created mobile driver’s license and digital ID card apps – Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland and Oklahoma, the Florida joins Utah and Iowa as states that will do so by the end of the year. .

DHSMV CTO Chad Hutchinson demonstrated to the Senate committee how the Florida Smart-ID process works, explaining that it can provide various information based on requests.

Hutchinson said the user’s device will receive a QR code requesting information. If it’s looking to verify age, say at a liquor store, that’s all the data the app will provide. If the QR code is from a law enforcement agency, the request will include more personal data.

Hutchinson said the smartphone app is ready for traffic checks and law enforcement age checks right now, but won’t be available to the public until mid-November. Once implemented, the uses should extend to car rental, voting, airport security and carpooling among many uses.

Digital licenses will not replace physical plastic licenses or ID cards, he said. Florida law requires all adults to have a physical ID card, and no member of the committee suggested that the state change this law.

Physical driver’s licenses are still needed as the “fall-back solution” in the event of an Internet outage or device malfunction, Hutchinson said.

“We have all of these gadgets in our pockets,” Senator Gayle Harrell’s chairwoman R-Stuart said, holding her smartphone. “They have become our way of life, our lifeline, really, for the world.”

But with the convenience of smartphones, concerns about data fairness and privacy ensue. In a May report, the ACLU warned that while digitization is inevitable, it must be done deliberately with caution.

“Digital isn’t always better – especially when systems are digital-only,” the report says, noting that many people don’t own smartphones,

The report calls on “state lawmakers to insist that digital driver’s license standards be refined until they are built around the most modern, decentralized, privacy-empowering and empowering ID technology. ; ensure that digital identification remains genuinely voluntary and optional; that the police never have access to people’s phones during the identification process; and that businesses are not allowed to ask for identity documents from people when they do not need them. “