France launches new digital identity cards

Identity cards have become an inseparable part of our lives. From the office to voting booths, they are required everywhere.

They follow a common template all around the globe and include details about every person's name, gender, address andnationality.

The French government has launcheddigital identity cards equipped with QR codes and fingerprints. It also has an electronic chip that acts as an all-access key.

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The new cardswere approved by the French government on March 14 and were launched to prevent identity theft.

According to French Citizenship Minister Marlène Schiappa,"The identity card as you know it, as the French know it at the moment, it will gradually be replaced by a new object, the one we have been able to discover, more practical, new, which has a format more suitable for the pocket or the wallet. It is also an object that is more protective of our rights, and more secure, which will take its place in our daily lives."

The QR code at the back of the ID cards makes it much more secure as it will prevent the production of counterfeits.

Theold cards, which are 25 years old, will be replaced by new ones that will be rolled out from March 29.

AlthoughEurope is a highly digitised society, that comes with a downside.

56 per cent ofEuropeans have experienced some kind of fraud in the last two years. One-third of those cases were of identity theft. This had caused a setback ofaround 24 billion euros.

Reverse digitisation

There areprivacy concerns over France's new ID card as critics claim itstechnology has loopholes.

They claim that storing all their personal data in asingle chipis highly risky.

Previously, in a row over India's Aadhaar card, it wascondemned as the most unsafe identity document ever.

However,for millions of ordinary Indians, theAadhaar card wasa ticket towelfare schemes, bank accounts and a better life.

Despite theirdrawbacks,identity documents arepotent toolsin rolling out welfare schemes.

In the United States,the social security number was called a privacy ''time bomb.''

Hackers claimedthat byusing algorithms, publicly available data can be pieced together to generate a person's social security number.

However, ithelped America recover from the Great Depression.

Last year,there were reports that Britain was mulling a digital identity card. As a result, it received abarrage of criticism. It was described as government over-reach.

Identity documents are crucial for survival during the coronavirus pandemic that many health experts consider as apublic health crisis.

US President Joe Biden had said last week,"The government isn't some foreign force sitting in a distant capital. It's all of us. We the people."