‘A promising playground’: IDEMIA and the digital ID infrastructuring in Colombia

This article explores how IDEMIA, a French security company, constructed an infrastructure for the identification and authentication services of the Colombian National Civic Registry (NCR) for more than 20 years of contractual relationships. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first part, we detail the history of infrastructure identification development by the NCR. The contracting model imposed a state action that allowed IDEMIA to grow together with NCR to create an infrastructure that ties all types of agencies and institutions as users of their technological solutions and services. By controlling the infrastructure and expanding its reach to other sectors, IDEMIA has been able to experiment with new technologies, such as a facial recognition engine and digital ID wallet, to generate new dependencies. In the second part, we expose three controversies in which the NCR has defended its exclusive competence against the National Police, the Government, and the private sector. Thus, it secured IDEMIA’s position as a key provider of technological solutions for the NCR’s public service. This case shows the commodification of legal identity, the entanglement of public and private interests that makes it hard to differentiate them, and the importance of historical analysis to explore the infrastructure power of technology companies.