Transportation committee holds informational briefing on mobile driver’s licenses, digital ID

The Committee on Transportation convened an informational hearing on mobile driver’s licenses and digital identification featuring Kansas Department of Revenue staff and a national motor-vehicle administrators’ representative.

The briefing, presented by Zach Denny of the Kansas Department of Revenue and Michael McCaskill of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), explained that a mobile driver’s license (MDL) is an optional, cryptographically signed digital credential issued by the state that is intended to supplement — not replace — a physical driver’s license.

The MDL, McCaskill said, is not a simple photograph or PDF of a card but a digitally authenticated credential provisioned to a device and verifiable by an electronic reader. “If you do that and you put a picture of that driver license or a PDF of that driver license on your phone as a picture, none of the security features are in play,” McCaskill said. He added that MDLs rely on public/private key cryptography and a system of public certificates so relying parties can verify a credential “was issued by the state of Kansas.”

Why it matters: committee members pressed on where MDLs could be used (TSA, age checks, point-of-sale, online authentication), who controls which…