MDL Considered Harmful

Full Title

The Current Mobil Driver's License Design is Considered to be Evil.

Context

This is a paper about Ethics. That is a topic in which the computer practitioners have recently become interested as they try to make the case that they should be considered to be professionals, even though they are unwilling to accept the responsibility for their actions that any professional must assume.

In February 2023 there where 5,823,500 driver's licenses issued in Washington State out of a population of 7.79 million which means that there were almost 2 million residents without a driver's license, over 1/4 of the residents. An official ID card is available for these people at a cost of $54, not a good investment for most of that population. Unlike many states, the Washington State Department of Licensing will offer a state ID card at no cost for those who are homeless. For people who may not be homeless but are receiving public assistance, the DOL is offering cards at a reduced price of $5, if they have a letter from the Department of Social and Health Services. A letter is not required for those under 25.

The State DL or ID is now the de facto ID card nearly all restricted access sites in most of the United States.

Problem

The Pareto Principle devised by Vilfredo Pareto, specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. This principle serves as a general reminder that the relationship between inputs and outputs is not balanced.

Nearly all computer applications for public consumption would be very happy to reach 80% of the population and some would consider an identification method that excluded 20% of the population that does not have a state-issued ID to be any impediment to the success of their application in the marketplace. Since 80% penetration of the marketplace can be achieved at 20% of the cost of universal availability, the results should not be a surprise. Most identification systems are not inclusive. Notably this includes the identification systems defined by NIST SP 800-63-3. When NIST went to issue a new version of the standard, this discrepancy was brought to their attention and the rush to release version 4 of the standard was held back until this discrepancy was addressed.

The Mobile Driver's License standard ISO 18013-5 took the Pareto approach. It is strictly limited to driver's licenses in direct contact with the verifier and so is specifically targeting only 75% of the US population. This is ethically unacceptable.

Solution

Jorge Flores described a solution to the Open Wallet Foundation Architecture team in support of migrant farm-workers that needs to be understood to be believed.