The freedom of citizenship – the new path of Brazilian identity
30 de maio de 2022Almost 40 years ago, the Law that instituted the Identity Card in Brazil – Law 7,116/83 – thus began its systematic
For Eduardo Lacerda
Art 1 – The Identity Card issued by identification organizations of the States, the Federal District and the Territories has public faith and validity throughout the national territory.
Almost 40 years ago, the Law that instituted the identification document in Brazil – Law 7.116/83 – thus began its systematic.
A registry that must be issued by the federated entities – for obvious reasons of public policies and services – but which has the power of having public faith – which is claimed to be authentic and true – and valid throughout the Brazilian territory.
The legislator gave the guideline of what an identity is. An instrument of citizenship that citizens can carry and that guarantees their uniqueness in Brazil, regardless of which federated State issues it.
A device that endorses authenticity, to generate trust in relations between citizens and in public and private segments, in physical or, in the present/future, digital services. Identifying a natural person is to guarantee uniqueness and trust!
In addition, to complement this guiding aspect, the legal norm commands:
Art 10 – The Federal Government will approve the model of the Identity Card and issue the complementary rules that are necessary to comply this Law.
An important point, this Law lacks several updates for something that can shape a modern identification system, including its natural evolutions. That said, a text was positive here to support the reason for an Identity Card valid throughout the national territory. It is up to the Federal Government to subsidize the identification policy that will be carried out by the States of the nation. To work…
After almost 40 years, unfortunately for the Brazilian society, this task has failed. There are numerous technical and political reasons – another article in this spectrum would be needed.
For almost 40 years, there has been a malefic fragmentation in identifying procedures and proving the identity of a natural person. State Identification Entities, without a methodology and a model of a national document, decided to adopt their means. Several other segments, public and private, also decided to follow their line to prove the person’s identity. Several Laws were created, creating several civil identification documents.
This erratic fragmentation produced the largest portfolio of national identification databases in the world. And due to perceptible reality, it produced a fraud system, mainly because of misrepresentation, bureaucracy, queues, and costs that affect the Brazilian citizens.
As an unfortunate consequence, how do public policies recognize that a citizen is who he says he is? How do trust the identity presented to provide access to credit? In this Brazilian division, the answer is bureaucratic, costly, given the lack of trust in the identification system. In addition to a public security problem, it has become a social and economic embarrassment. And an obstacle to citizenship.
In this scenario, the Special Secretariat for State Modernization, of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, together with the entities of the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, in addition to the fundamental support of the State Identification Entities, decided to rewrite this story.
Instead of another movement of disharmony, a vision of national integration was implemented. Instead of creating a new legal system, with a new document and a new basis, came the modernization of all these elements and actors that make up the current scenario of the identification in the country. Modernization is linked to integration, communication, facilitation, debureaucratization, efficiency, transparency, and data protection. To work…
Two pillars were established, with a focus on reducing fraud and favoring the lives of our citizens, without increasing costs. For reasons of functioning of the public administration, these were affirmed in two infra-legal acts.
Decrees 10.900/21 and 10.977/22 begin a journey of organizing the theme in the federal public administration and in the issuance of the National Identity Card, which will bring to Brazil what the legislation requires, with brutal benefits within the entire society. Gains that will be felt from the start until the next decades.
The first Decree initially creates a governance nucleus for the topic, the Federal Executive Chamber for Citizen Identification – CEFIC (in the Portuguese acronym). This entity will take care of all matters related to the civil identification of the citizen at the level of the Federal Government and federated States within the scope of Law 7.166/83. This same Decree creates the Citizen Identification Service – SIC (in the Portuguese acronym), supported by the successful GOV.BR platform.
This is an intelligent identification service bus that will connect, under a national procedure, all links and biographical, biometric, and flow results, between the desk (physical/virtual) and the national and state databases. And, finally, the CPF number (Brazilian social number) is unique and necessary within the natural person identification policy.
The second Decree mentioned above reassembles the Identity Card document, known in Brazil as RG. It goes from being one of the worst identity documents in the world, in terms of security, to be the safest in Brazil and one of the best in the world. All the most modern elements are incorporated into the physical version.
Derived from the physical, the Digital Identity is presented, which will be on the GOV.BR application, free of charge, accessing the digital services. In addition, a national QR Code is presented, which brings the digitally signed information from the citizen for an easy and resolution authentication of the document by anyone, throughout the desks of the country, also free of charge.
Another key point, the Identity Card now observes the requirements of a travel document, which can be used, depending on established agreements, at immigration procedures, as well as facilitating its conference outside of the country. It has the callsign for a natural person with special needs and can carry numbers from other documents.
And the CPF number becomes the general registration number of the document, extinguishing the state RG number. Behind it all? All the States of the country and the Federal Government integrated under the same identification procedure, united by the SIC as if they were one. As, ab initio, must be a process of identification. Unique! It’s one of the biggest ID projects in the world!
And the benefits? Imagine a desk, whatever it is, in the country, reading through a free QR Code application, verifying its authenticity and, henceforth, nothing else is necessary to reflect that the citizen is the holder of the document presented.
Just it! How much does this positively affect systems such as finance and commerce? Public services? Month after month the numbers of frauds, which lacerate the public budget and, also, the private one, due to misidentification in the country, plummeting, collapsing! The bureaucracy with processes, queues, and filling out registrations start to be defeated! Public bases communicating, safely streamlining the granting of public benefits!
Costs being reduced, year after year. Trust is being generated, year after year! The resolution of the issue, and creating a Digital Identity linked to a portfolio of services, as is the case here, according to McKinsey consultancy, can make the Brazilian GDP grow by up to 13% over the next 10 years. As mentioned, another article would be necessary for this area, but the fact is: once and for all, there is an obligation to deliver this to Brazil.
Well, what else? Preparation for the future is necessary from a technical and legislative point of view. In addition to thinking about the integration of all the country’s systems into this new form of identification, there are other conceptions.
The decentralized identity (sovereign identity) seems to be, in the coming years, an irrefutable path, even for greater control of the citizen’s data, inverting the flows of single-sign-on platforms.
Map the processes and describe a coordinated action within the Federal Government, set up a sustainable business model with a robust architecture, establish contacts with other governments, manage the participation of entities that have identification bases, study technologies, and define standards of the systems that can be used (e.g. Decentralized Identifiers – DIDs – and Verifiable Credentials; Universal Resolver and Identity Hubs; DID Auth; Open Badges), organize a framework and consensus algorithms, build second layer protocols, create access methods and security, define APIs, set up authoritative models, manage identifiers, among many other activities are being conceived. Inserting this vision presented and the future in current legislation, capable of organizing the irremediable path of innovation, is as logical as solving the current hardships.
It’s not easy. It’s not simple. It’s not trivial. It requires country-sized management and technical commitment. And that effort will be made. The path is clear and the advantages are portentous. Freeing our services from fraud and bureaucracy through a modern identity is a mission. The objective is unique: to improve the life of Brazilian citizens.
About Eduardo Lacerda
Eduardo Lacerda, Federal Criminal Expert, currently Executive Secretary of the Federal Executive Chamber of Citizen Identification, Master in Electrical Engineering from UnB with research in the area of cryptography applied to data protection, former Director of Public Key Infrastructure at ITI.
About the Special Secretariat for State Modernization of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic
A more modern State leverages internal and external investments and improves the lives of Brazilians. With this objective in mind, in 2019, the Special Secretariat for Modernization of the State of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic (Seme/SG) was created. The Secretariat articulates and coordinates initiatives to modernize the country through planning and engagement of the most diverse representatives of the public and private sectors.
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