Technology can be the key to protection against identity theft.
‚Digital identity is the future‘, says EUANOTICS MEP
During the Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association’s online launch event on Friday – a Chicago-based group focused on regulatory clarity and industry security – US representative Bill Foster explained the importance of a „secure digital identity.
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„You can have the strongest cryptographic guarantees of a blockchain or equivalent and it does no good if people fraudulently participate in it with anonymous names,“ Foster said during his brief speech at the event. He mentioned trade as an example, noting BitQT that dishonest actors in the industry could conduct illegal trade using false names.
A Harvard graduate and blockchain programmer, Foster knows the potential of this technology. Foster is also co-chair of Congressional Blockchain Caucus – a government group working on blockchain-related regulation. Foster began his journey to college several years earlier – when he was 15 – according to his speech, later becoming a physicist and then a politician.
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Foster also spoke of the importance of anonymity, which essentially involves an anonymous identity aimed at the public, with the caveat that impossibly large details of identity may become necessary when brought to justice.
„I think this is a fundamental requirement, I believe, of digital contracts or almost every case of use we talk about,“ he said. The transition begins by offering people a traceable method to identify themselves uniquely and securely, Foster explained, adding that the blockchain and the technological space already contain the elements needed to build such a system.
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He completed:
„What is missing, and the essential governmental role, is that once in a lifetime, when you get your real ID card or passport or something, you need to be authenticated as a legally traceable unique person, and then you have to be biometrically deduplicated to ensure that you will not receive another passport in another country with another identity“.
This kind of system, however, needs international collaboration. „It requires a group of countries to come together to establish this reliable identification ecosystem, and that’s where we have to go,“ Foster said. This structure would subsequently lead to other potential future use cases.
Parallel to Foster’s thought process, two fellow Blockchain Caucus members, U.S. representatives David Schweikert and Darren Soto, recently proposed a new bill to make blockchain-based digital signatures legally binding.
However, this digital identity system also has drawbacks, such as increased government tracking of citizens, further invading privacy – an aspect that the cryptographic space often considers important.
Foster’s comments were made during the launch event of the Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association – an initiative born out of an initial meeting in March 2019.
