A digital identity verification system could be soon set up in the United States, with the legislation behind the initiative now progressing to the Senate for debate.
Introduced by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), the S.884 bill is known as the “Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023” and was introduced in the Senate on March 21 after getting passed by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“The lack of an easy, affordable, reliable, and secure way for organizations, businesses, and government agencies to identify whether an individual is who they claim to be online creates an attack vector that is widely exploited by adversaries in cyberspace and precludes many high-value transactions from being available online,” said the bill text. “Incidents of identity theft and identity fraud continue to rise in the United States, where more than 293,000,000 people were impacted by data breaches in 2021….