Gavin Newsom just signed a law that will put the driver’s licenses of 17 million Californians on their phones. He called it “cutting red tape.” I call it handing Sacramento a master key to your identity.
The bill is SB 169, signed July 13. It expands California’s Mobile Driver License Pilot Program from 13% of the state’s population to 60%. More than 17 million residents will now be able to carry their ID digitally, flashing a QR code at TSA checkpoints, gas stations, convenience stores, even financial aid offices.
Newsom was beaming. “Now we’re going further by cutting the red tape that slows government down and giving more Californians the option to carry their ID right on their phone,” he said. Classic Newsom. The man who locked you in your house and kept your kids out of school for two years is very concerned about your convenience.
Here’s what they’re not leading with: this is the same state that has suffered some of the most catastrophic government data breaches in American history. The California Employment Development Department exposed the personal data of roughly 1.4 million residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s own DMV has been caught selling driver data to third parties. And Sacramento’s tech infrastructure is, to put it generously, a decade behind where it needs to be.
When you hand a physical card to a police officer or a TSA agent, the transaction is simple: they look at it, they hand it back. When you scan a phone, you’re now interacting with a database. The scan pings something, somewhere. Data gets logged. Maybe not today, maybe not under this law. But systems built for “convenience” have a habit of expanding their reach the moment the public stops paying attention.
And California is not exactly run by people who believe your privacy is a priority. This is a state that mandates vaccine status verification, tracks COVID “misinformation,” and has tried at various points to require disclosure of gun ownership. These are not people who stop collecting data once they start.
This law also isn’t just about driver’s licenses. It’s part of a decade-long DMV “modernization” plan. The digital ID is the infrastructure. What comes next, once 17 million Californians have their identity on a state-controlled digital system? What apps get linked? What checkpoints get added? What happens when a future governor decides to tie your digital ID to your speech online, your carbon footprint, your social credit score?
The physical driver’s license has one enormous advantage over a digital one: it doesn’t require a functioning phone, a working battery, or a cooperative server. It doesn’t get hacked. It can’t be remotely revoked. It doesn’t ping a database when a cop scans it. It’s a piece of plastic, and that plasticity is a feature, not a bug.
Newsom’s office says DMV wait times have dropped 40% since modernization began. Good. That’s a real improvement. Nobody wanted to spend three hours at the DMV. But streamlining DMV operations is completely separate from creating a digital identity system that tracks your movements and logs your transactions.
California will tell you this is optional. It is, for now. Things that are optional in Sacramento have a way of becoming mandatory once enough people opt in and the infrastructure is built. Ask anyone who tried to refuse a smartphone during COVID.
