Brazilians to have safer unified national ID with digital version

Brazil’s government announced the creation of a unified national identification card. The measure can be found in a decree signed Wednesday afternoon (Feb. 23) by President Jair Bolsonaro during a ceremony at the Planalto presidential palace.

The new identification will use Brazilians’ taxpayer number, the CPF, as their sole ID number. The card will be issued free of charge, and identification institutes are required to be fully adapted to the revamp by March 6, 2023. The decree is to become effective on March 1.

The documents will continue to be issued by state agencies, but they should have their format and issuing pattern standardized. After receiving a request from a citizen, civil registry offices should validate the ID through the federal government’s online platform, Gov.br. In addition to the document printed out on paper, Brazilians will be able to view the new ID in digital format.

As it stands today, each of the 26 Brazilian states and the Federal District issues its own identification.

Security

The new document is believed to be safer as it enables QR code validation, even offline.

Brazil’s Minister of Justice and Public Safety Anderson Torres noted that today, Brazilians could own up to 27 ID documents with different numbers issued in different states, which makes fraud and a number of illegal activities easier.

After the change, if someone issues a new ID card in a different state, the document will automatically count as a legal copy, since it is linked to a single CPF number. If they do not have a CPF number yet, the local identification agency will have to register them, in compliance with the rules laid out by Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service.

Validity

After it becomes available, the new ID will be valid for ten years. Current documents owned by Brazilians aged up to 60 will be accepted for up to ten years. For those over 60, the old card is to remain valid indefinitely.

The government also declared that the new national ID card will also serve as a travel document, as it should comply with the international MRZ code, the same used in passports, which can be scanned with the appropriate technology.