> Passports are also handled through the mail / online. For the first one I had to get the photo counter signed by a ‘respected member of the community’ who’d k

> Passports are also handled through the mail / online. For the first one I had to get the photo counter signed by a ‘respected member of the community’ who’d known me for 2 years That sounds similar to how it used to be possible, in California, for a notary public to confirm identity based on personal knowledge, but that hasn't been the case for a while. That model seems ripe for abuse, although it can be significantly limited if things like vital statistics are national/centralized. In the US, they're often done at the county level, which is its own nightmare, but changing that is likely to be politically untenable (and, before computer networking, arguably, impractical for a country with 6x the population and 38x the area of the UK).