Setting aside the ethical/political implications of a universal identifier for everyone, your description makes me wonder about the technical implementation of

Setting aside the ethical/political implications of a universal identifier for everyone, your description makes me wonder about the technical implementation of the ID itself. My first thought was whether it's possible to design the syntax of the IDs, so that they're not just sequential or random, but have some inherent properties that make them easier to organize, i.e., for sorting/categorizing. Kind of like Open Location Code [0], but for people. Since they should be immutable (same ID for lifetime), I suppose it could encode birth date/location, or maybe genetic "markers".. (Edit: On the other hand, that would by itself be a leak of private data..) Once that's globally practiced (easier said than done!), there could be a searchable database of all registered individuals on the planet. I could see the practical advantages of having such a system, but it sure does have a hint of dystopian future. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code