Legal treatment of personhood credentials under identity theft and protection laws

Determine how personhood credentials should be treated within existing identity theft and protection legal frameworks, including their interaction with statutory and regulatory regimes governing identity misuse, fraud prevention, and consumer protection.

Background

The paper proposes personhood credentials (PHCs) as privacy-preserving tools that allow individuals to prove they are human without revealing their legal identity. As governments and private entities consider issuing and adopting PHCs, the authors emphasize unresolved legal questions, particularly around how PHCs would interact with current identity theft and protection laws. Clarifying their legal status is necessary to guide implementation, enforcement, and user protections.