Category: Technology

In August it was announced the California would “Soon” be joining the ranks of digital ID capable states. 

What didn’t get a whole lot of play was that Ohio brought the functionality online a few weeks earlier. 3-4 days ago Hawaii enabled the functionality with little fanfare at all.

So as of this writing, there are six states whose ID’s can be stored and presented via Apple Wallet.

Looking at the digital representations of the IDs is kind of neat.

It might be that the digital licenses are better looking than the documents they’re intended to represent.

I stumbled across Hawaii being in the list, completely by accident and then wondered how that happened.

There have been no IOS updates over the past few days, so the addition of any of these IDs appears to be independent of the base OS.

This leads me to think there’s some kind of switch that can be turned on without a full update. Which begs the question, just how connected is my phone to Apple?

They talk about privacy and security but if something like this can be enabled transparently I wonder what else can be enabled… Or disabled behind the scenes without the phone or OS mentioning that there’d been a change.

This also suggests that California’s addition to the participating states could be done independently of an IOS update too.

Previously, I thought that states were added to the “Allowed” list via “Point” updates to the IOS and they’d require the user to allow the download and installation of an IOS update.

Yet clearly that is not the case.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I suppose in reality nothing has changed. Apple still has control over the device just as they always have, the difference now is that I’m perhaps a bit more aware of their technological leash.

There’s another thing that I found interesting.

With the exception of Ohio. Every single one of these states, has something in common. They’re all deep Blue States politically.

Even Arizona, though I know there are people who’d vehemently disagree, is a Blue State these days.

California, a deep Blue State will soon be added to the list.

I don’t think it’s anything other than an oddity, a coincidence if you will. But it makes me wonder.

According to Apple and several news articles I’ve been able to dig up, there are other states looking into allowing digital ID’s.

In 2022 Apple said there were six states that would soon allow digital licenses. These States were;

Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, & Utah.

To date none of these states have proceeded with the project. Kentucky for example says “Soon” but has been saying that since 2022. The other states either say in the future or are non committal about it.

With the exception of Connecticut, these states are all Red States.

So I’m wondering if the difference is a matter of political, or religious leaning. Might it be conservatives worried about the intrusiveness of technology on every aspect of our lives, or do these Red States know or suspect something I’m missing.