Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday said the U.S. should not create national identification numbers for its citizens, warning against centralizing to much personal information and avoiding a single point of failure in the event of a compromise.
Mnuchin said there are “some quarters” in the U.S. that gravitate toward calling for a national ID but said this isn’t the American way.
“Whatever solution we develop for identification and authentication must reflect the strong value we place on decentralization,” the Treasury chief said at a morning keynote address as part of AFCEA’s Federal Identity Forum. “In this country we do not, nor should we, have a single national identity number.”
The proliferation of current identification documents serves citizens by protecting “personal liberties” and from a “central point of failure,” he said, adding that the decentralization of identity document creation and the “diversity of the system” creates resilience.
Mnuchin highlighted the proliferation of new models for banking and other financial services that are increasingly transacted remotely and digitally. The increasing use of the Internet also is creating opportunities for new ways to develop trusted identities in cyberspace, he said.
“Fortunately, we have new opportunities to create identity solutions that address the inadequacies of our current identity system and support our financial integrity, national security and economic growth objectives,” the secretary said. “These opportunities are driven by the rise of the digital economy and the development of new technology driven products and services that can potentially be used to provide trustworthy identity solutions to people anywhere in the world.”
Creating safe and secure ways for trusted online financial services will help bring more people into the banking system, Mnuchin said.
“Anyone who uses these shares a common challenge. It’s hard to offer these services if you don’t know who you’re dealing with online. Solving identity is key to enabling financial inclusion into banking the underbanked. Identity is the rails that the financial services run on.”
Solutions for trusted identities will come from the private sector, not his department or the U.S. government, Mnuchin said, although he plugged an effort by the federal government that is helping to create more secure and acceptable ways to conduct transactions online.
Six years ago, under the Obama administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology stood up a public-private partnership called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). The NSTIC effort is ongoing, but at one time funded pilot projects, often with private companies, the ultimate goal being to create safe and trusted ways for facilitating online commerce.
Mnuchin said the NSTIC charted a path for the government to work with the private sector developing an identity ecosystem that embraced these important principles: security; privacy; ease of use; and interoperability.” This public-private partnership has created “great innovation,” he added.
Mnuchin did not address the government mandated program REAL ID, which passed Congress in 2005, in an effort to create minimum security standards for driver’s licenses in every state. After a number of postponements, the act is slated to go into effect next January, although some states still do not have REAL ID Act compliant driver’s licenses.
For air travel or certain interactions with federal agencies, individuals without compliant licenses will have to show an acceptable alternative ID such as a passport.
Some states and privacy groups, such as EPIC, have argued that REAL ID is essentially a federal effort to create a national ID.