The Identity Theft Resource Center as well as the Better Identity Coalition are two of the advocacy organizations that are part of a coalition of ten organizations that have made a request to Congress to approve the DIA of 2022, which would require the federal government to develop a federal digital ID infrastructure.
The measure has made its way through the committee process in the House of Representatives and the Senate, but it has not yet been brought up for a vote.
In the letter, the companies pointed out that in 2021, a total of 293 million individuals were impacted by security breaches, and that since 2017, there was a 333% increase in the amount of money lost due to identity theft.
In addition, the letter makes reference to an estimate made by the FTC which said that there would be a 3000% rise in the use of stolen identities to get public benefits between 2019 and 2020. In addition, the Financial Action Task Force (FinCEN), which is part of the Treasury Department, has determined that the primary motivation for online fraud and criminal activity in the nation is the misuse of parts of digital identities, such as personally identifiable information.
The Federal Reserve estimates that fraud using synthetic identities results in yearly losses of twenty billion dollars.
The organizations wrote in their letter to Congress that “the absence of an easy, secure, and consistent method for entities to authenticate identities of individuals they are interacting with web creates tension in commercial activity, leads to increased theft and fraud degrades privacy, and hinders the accessibility of many services online.”
The groups believe that by the year 2030, the infrastructure for digital identities might add 4 percentage points to the GDP. The (NIST) estimated that a single organization might save more than $300 million annually by using a digital identity infrastructure.