Digitalization in Practice

Chapter 5 The politics of seamlessness: a rights claims perspective on digital identification technologies

Baki Cakici

Alena Thiel

Ranjit Singh

Content warning: This chapter mentions sexual violence.

1 Introduction

In the past decade, many countries have introduced digital identification systems to facilitate service provision and other state-citizen interactions such as distributing welfare benefits, tracking births, registering residents, and voting in elections. These systems are occasionally linked to physical identification cards in the traditional sense, but increasingly come with their own code cards, card readers, or mobile phone apps. These forms of digitized identification often aspire to function seamlessly. The stated ...