State-approved digital IDs could be coming to Utah
Oct 24, 2025, 2:13 PM
FILE - The Utah State Capitol is viewed during the final day of the Utah Legislature, March 1, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, file)
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, file)
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is exploring how a state-approved digital ID could work, and state leaders say they’re doing it differently than other places.
Utah Chief Privacy Officer Chris Bramwell said he sees a wide variety of use cases for a digital ID.
“Pretty much anywhere where you can imagine where you currently need to prove who you are, whether it’s to qualify for a service or you want to eliminate fraud so other people can’t use your data to pretend to be you. Those are obvious use cases for it,” he said.
But why go digital? Bramwell said “real harms” are happening right now due to a lack of digital identification, especially when it comes to kids online.
“Specifically, I want to highlight what’s happening with children online,” he said. “A lot of the harms online where children are able to engage online and you don’t know as a parent, are they actually talking to who they say they are?”
Bramwell said there were several examples of Utah children being targeted online by adults pretending to be their peers, a situation that he said was an “identity fraud issue.”
The chief privacy officer said using a digital ID for surveillance or profiling would “never be acceptable in Utah,” and security would be a top priority to prevent data breaches or attacks. Bramwell said other countries have used digital IDs for surveillance, but Utah won’t go down that path.
“We are very concerned about tracking and surveillance coming out of other countries and states around digital identity,” Bramwell said.
Utah is still testing the technology and won’t move forward until lawmakers are confident residents’ data will stay private, and Bramwell said no timeline has been set for implementation. However, he said they hope to have initial proof of concepts ready within a year.
“Our goal, though, is to get in, get it in the hands of Utahns as fast as possible, in a safe manner as possible, because there are real harms happening right now without it,” he said.
Contributing: Jacob Freeman, KSL NewsRadio
