Tomorrow, will everyone have a digital identity?

What if our identity cards were available online?

And if there was a service likely to avoid countless photocopies, which are provided here for a real estate file, there to open a bank account?

This is the project carried out by the State with its digital identity guarantee service (SGIN).

It is also a sea serpent whose multiple iterations illustrate certain reluctance of the French in terms of identity management.

What are we talking about ?

Digital identity can take on several meanings.

A first definition concerns the range of identifiers, pseudonyms, avatars that the Internet user creates online and with which he or she publishes, comments, interacts.

Another, more directly linked to the world of communication, concerns his reputation: the digital identity then brings together all the articles, publications, various activities directly linked to the Internet user and which can have an effect on his professional or personal life. .

In the sense of the state, digital identity responds to a third definition, at the crossroads of sovereign issues - if it is the state that tells you that the individual in front of you is X, you will have more reason to believe that if it is an unknown third party - and cybersecurity, among others.

This identity corresponds to a series of attributes attached to you: surname, first name, place, date of birth, address, etc., which are stored in the electronic component of the new identity cards (National Identity Card electronics, CNIe).

The decree issued on April 26 by the government authorizes the processing of personal data present in this chip - excluding the digitized image of fingerprints - to allow identification and electronic authentication.

What is the difference with France Connect?

It's a little different from France Connect insofar as this service only asks a third party (the tax service or health insurance, for example), to verify that you have the pair identifier / password you registered with them.

It is a centralized connection platform, similar to the services offered by Facebook or Google, which provides access to several hundred procedures.

In this case, we speak of authentication.

The sovereign digital identity will involve using the France Identity application, available in beta test since May 12 with a handful of Android users, to read the element or elements useful for your

- your age to access to a limited service, your address if what you are looking for corresponds to a geographical limit, etc.

It is a very secure identifier, insofar as it is certified by the State.

To facilitate its adoption, France Identity will be offered among the various means of authentication listed on France Connect.

How are citizens received?

Creating a regal digital identity is a recurring subject, but also a real source of mistrust.

In 2019, a decree had already validated the creation of a technique for “Certified online authentication on mobile” (Alicem), which authorized the development of the system using facial recognition.

The emotion, at the time, had been strong: it had sparked an initial debate on the use of biometric data, the association for the defense of digital rights La Quadrature du Net had filed an appeal (rejected) before the Council of 'State… Among the ethical questions raised by the project, two main questions emerged: is there a need to recover an almost exhaustive amount of data on the individual in order to identify them?

And who will control the information collected, and how?

During the Covid, again, with a slightly different solution: TousAntiCovid aimed to link a person's identity (his first and last name) to a viral status (covid or not).

An initiative which, useful as it is in times of pandemic, has not simplified the debate by mixing health data and identification data.

For researchers Laura Draetta and Valérie Fernandez, the rejection of this type of solution is also a symptom of a lack of confidence in the state and in the technologies tested.

This may explain why the new SGIN is content with more classic attributes - first name, last name, age and any other element of information that the citizen would need to access such or such other entity.

And let it be optional.

France, behind the rest of Europe?

Be that as it may, France is a latecomer in the European space: since 2014, the eIDAS regulation has pushed member countries of the European Union to provide citizens with high levels of guarantees for their online interactions (it There are three levels of security, low, substantial and high).

In 2021, the Commission proposed the creation of a "European digital identity wallet" by 2030, a tool that would allow European citizens to carry out the same procedures anywhere in the Union.

At the individual level, all sorts of initiatives exist in Europe.

Estonia is a figurehead, with the very wide and already relatively old adoption of its digital identity - this was even followed by the creation of an e-resident status.

If a sovereign digital identity must make it possible to adapt to the digital transition of all parts of our lives, the CNIL specified in a December deliberation the need for the tool to be easy to use, including for users " the less digitally savvy.

In this, it takes into account the concerns expressed in 2019 by the Defender of Rights on a "forced march" digital transition of State services, which would risk increasing the digital divide.

What technical protection of identity data?

The April decree does not provide very precise information on the protection of SGIN user data.

It is all the same a question of a backup of the information on the servers of the service for five years (this period will be shortened if the user deletes his application, which will lead to the deletion, or if it remains inactive for two years ), with encryption.

In its December deliberation, the CNIL also notes that the user will have access to almost all of the data processed, which provides him with a form of control.

It also encourages the ministry to make public certain data processing not mentioned in the decree - starting with the verification of the national file for checking the validity of titles.

In the February one,

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