The New German ID Card

Besides their use in identity verification at police and border controls, national ID cards are frequently used for commercial applications, too. One objective of the introduction of the new national ID card on 1 November 2010 is to extend the conventional use of ID documents to the digital world. In order to meet this objective, the new ID card offers two electronic functionalities for e-business and e-government service providers: an electronic authentication and a digital signature. In the following paper we describe the electronic authentication mechanism used by the ID card, explain the differences between authentication and signature and discuss the security and privacy properties of the two applications used for e-government and e-business.