Glossary
The vocabulary, without the standards prose.
Mobile ID has an unusually dense acronym layer. These are the terms that come up in an evaluation, defined the way we would explain them on a call.
mDL (mobile driving licence)
- A driver's licence or state ID issued to a phone as a signed digital credential rather than a card. The international standard for it is ISO/IEC 18013-5. "Mobile ID" is the broader everyday term and is what we use in customer-facing copy.
ISO/IEC 18013-5
- The standard that defines how a mobile driving licence is structured and how it is presented to a verifier in person. It covers the data model, the cryptography, and the device-retrieval transports (NFC, BLE, and others).
mdoc
- The document format ISO/IEC 18013-5 defines. An mDL is one type of mdoc; the document type LaurelID requests is org.iso.18013.5.1.mDL.
Namespace
- A grouping of data elements inside an mdoc. The standard mDL namespace is org.iso.18013.5.1, which contains elements like family_name, birth_date, portrait, and the age_over_NN attestations.
Data element
- One field inside a namespace. LaurelID requests exactly one: age_over_21.
age_over_NN
- A family of pre-computed boolean attestations — age_over_18, age_over_21, and so on — signed by the issuing authority. They let a verifier learn that someone is over a threshold without learning their birth date.
Selective disclosure
- The property that lets a holder release specific elements from a credential rather than the whole document. It is what makes an age check possible without an identity disclosure.
intentToRetain
- A per-element flag inside the verifier's request that declares whether it intends to store the value it receives. LaurelID sets it to false on the one element it requests.
Device retrieval
- Presenting a mobile ID directly from the phone to a nearby verifier over a local transport, with no server in the middle. This is the mode LaurelID uses: NFC engagement, then BLE.
Device engagement
- The first step of a presentation, where the phone and verifier exchange the parameters needed to open a secure session. In LaurelID this happens over an NFC tap.
Session transcript
- A cryptographic record of the engagement, used to bind the response to the exact session that requested it. It is what prevents a captured response from being replayed elsewhere. LaurelID never transmits or stores one.
MSO (mobile security object)
- The issuer-signed structure inside an mdoc that commits to the digests of every data element. Validating it is how a verifier knows the elements it received have not been altered.
IACA (issuing authority certificate authority)
- The root certificate authority an issuing authority uses to sign the certificates behind its mDLs. Trusting the correct IACA material is what makes a verifier's answer meaningful.
VICAL (verified issuer certificate authority list)
- A signed list of legitimate issuing-authority public keys, defined by the standard so relying parties can trust many issuers from one source. LaurelID validates the AAMVA Digital Trust Service VICAL and also supports exact IACA certificate bytes reviewed directly from an issuing authority's official endpoint.
AAMVA Digital Trust Service (DTS)
- The AAMVA service that publishes the VICAL a relying party downloads and loads into its reader before engaging with an mDL.
Relying party
- The business accepting the credential — in this context, you. The verifier is the relying party's reader.
Reader
- The precise technical term for the mdoc-reader role in ISO/IEC 18013-5. In customer-facing language the physical unit is a verifier, not a reader or a kiosk.
Verifier
- The LaurelID unit and application that performs the check. "Device" is the equivalent term used in APIs, schemas, and technical administration.
Fail-closed
- Behavior where anything short of a valid proof produces a non-pass result. A damaged, expired, unknown-issuer, or interrupted presentation returns unable_to_verify, never an optimistic pass.
k-anonymity suppression
- Withholding a report row whose count falls below a minimum group size, because a small enough count functions as an individual record. LaurelID suppresses below k = 3 at every reporting tier.
Idempotent processing
- Processing where handling the same event twice has the same effect as handling it once. It is what lets at-least-once delivery produce correct aggregate counts.
Effective exactly-once aggregate effects
- The accurate description of LaurelID's delivery guarantee: at-least-once transmission, plus stable event identity, plus idempotent processing. It is a statement about effects on counters, not a claim of exactly-once network delivery.
Outbox
- The bounded, durable on-device queue that holds completed outcomes until they can be delivered. It has explicit row, storage, and age limits, and reaching one is visible rather than a silent eviction.
Operating lease
- The time-bounded authority a verifier operates under while offline. When it expires without an authenticated policy refresh, the verifier stops starting new sessions rather than extending itself.
StrongBox
- A hardware security module in some Android devices, used by the Android Keystore to hold keys in dedicated secure hardware. LaurelID uses it where available, with an explicit guarded fallback where it is not.
Want the longer version?
The knowledge center works through each of these ideas with primary sources attached.