You're right that ryacko missed my point. And, you nailed exactly the benefits of an in person government issued asymmetric key process. Even if showing up in

You're right that ryacko missed my point. And, you nailed exactly the benefits of an in person government issued asymmetric key process. Even if showing up in front of US authorities was completely hackable, it'd still be better than the current state of affairs, because you'd have to hack people one at a time in person. (Unless you discovered some 0day in the key generation process or the hardware or something) That naturally limits identity theft to a targeted attack on one individual, rather than being able to steal half of US adults identities all at once. Also, the hacker (or their accomplice) would only be able to hack one person per DMV (or Post Office) per month. And they'd have to at least vaguely fit your race, height, gender, etc. A gang would maybe have the organizational skills to farm it out to a bunch of people. But, that's still limited to something on the order of thousands of people. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.