{"id":229216,"date":"2026-03-30T11:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/utah-passes-nations-strongest-digital-identity-bill\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T11:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:25:09","slug":"utah-passes-nations-strongest-digital-identity-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/utah-passes-nations-strongest-digital-identity-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah Passes Nation\u2019s Strongest Digital Identity Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Utah Passes Nation\u2019s Strongest Digital Identity Bill<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/privacy-technology\/utah-digital-id-law<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-30 11:13:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.aclu.org<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Utah state legislature recently passed new enabling legislation for the state\u2019s \u201cState Endorsed Digital Identity\u201d (SEDI), which, while lacking in some respects, includes many important privacy protections and represents the best effort we have yet seen in a state to square privacy protections with the looming dangers to civil liberties that flow from digital identities.<\/p>\n

This past November I wrote about Utah\u2019s laudable drive to build the state\u2019s digital identity program with privacy protections. In 2021 we issued a report on digital identity, and in 2024 we issued guidance explaining a series of legislative protections that should be mandated before a state adopts any digital ID.<\/p>\n

Utah\u2019s new law has some very positive provisions that match many of our recommendations \u2014 but it also has some meaningful limitations.<\/p>\n

A \u201cduty of loyalty.\u201d
<\/strong>In perhaps its most striking feature, the law includes a potentially powerful provision creating a \u201cduty of loyalty\u201d to individuals by the government ID issuer, wallet providers, and verifiers\/relying parties. They are required to \u201crefrain from practices or activities\u201d related to digital ID that \u201cconflict with the best interests of an individual\u201d or \u201ctake advantage of,\u201d \u201cexploit,\u201d \u201ccause harm,\u201d are to their \u201cdetriment,\u201d or that \u201cresult in a disproportionate risk\u201d to them.<\/p>\n

Such a duty appears to stem directly from a proposal by Neil Richards and Woodrow Hartzog, in a 2021 law review article proposing \u201cA Duty of Loyalty for Privacy Law,\u201d as well as from related concepts advanced by a number of legal scholars including Jack Balkin, author of \u201cInformation Fiduciaries and the First Amendment\u201d (2016).<\/p>\n

Richards and Hartzog wrote that \u201ca duty of loyalty framed in terms of the best interests of digital consumers is coherent and desirable and should become a basic element of US data privacy law.\u201d They noted that adoption…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Utah Passes Nation\u2019s Strongest Digital Identity Bill https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/privacy-technology\/utah-digital-id-law Publish Date: 2026-03-30 11:13:00 Source Domain: www.aclu.org…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/assets.aclu.org\/live\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Utah-SEDI-bill-copy.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229218,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229216\/revisions\/229218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}