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A single, secure digital ID that could be used to validate one’s identity when accessing public and private services was implemented in Estonia, a small Baltic country bordering Russia, around 20 years ago.
The electronic signatures used by its e-ID have practically become standard, according to Carmen Raal, the government organisation e-consultant Estonia’s on digital transformation.
“There are currently two things you can’t do online in Estonia: get married and divorced. Everything else is possible,” Ms Raal said.
According to Ms Raal, Estonia introduced the eID as it reestablished itself following decades of Soviet domination.
With just one ID and a secure PIN, Estonian people can cast ballots online, file tax returns, access health records, manage prescriptions, and use digital signatures.
Cybersecurity experts are looking at new safe ways for Australians to prove who they are in the wake of the recent hacks on Optus and Medibank in Australia.
While no system is 100% safe, cybersecurity expert Vanessa Teague says digital IDs are preferable to “flashing your passport number or driver’s license all over the internet.”
According to Dr Teague, chief executive of Thinking Cybersecurity and an associate professor at ANU, “the fundamental thing that makes it better than what we’re doing in Australia at the moment… is that you aren’t leaving a trail of numbers that can be copied and pasted and used to impersonate you.”
Australia has a digitally restricted ID system, but Dr Teague claimed it needed to be more comprehensive to safeguard privacy.
“Rather than directly authenticating yourself with your credentials to whoever you want, to whoever you want to log in to, you’re pinging your identity provider and the government identity exchange every time you want to log in somewhere, so you leave this kind of trail everywhere you’ve been,” she said.
Additionally, there was a risk of data leaking due to the storage of the documents used to create accounts.
Digital IDs could improve privacy if they were made available to Australian businesses and individuals, according to Fergus Hanson, director of the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). This is because companies wouldn’t have to collect identity data.
But first, the government had to put up the proper legislation.
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