Not necessarily. The chain of trust doesn't require such a drastic deployment. In Europe, it's common place to be able to subscribe to loans, or similar contra

Not necessarily. The chain of trust doesn't require such a drastic deployment. In Europe, it's common place to be able to subscribe to loans, or similar contracts online. However, the legislation is VERY strict about requiring very tough MFA-authentication. Say for example you would want to subscribe to a new credit card. You would either have to go personally to do it (which means they can verify your identity), or you can do it from your Online portal. HOWEVER, if you choose to do entirely online, you HAVE to use your phone as a 2nd factor to authorize the operation. I'm not saying there's no identity theft. There absolutely is. But they are extremely strict about authenticating each and every (considerable) move. I guess what I'm trying to say is, a PKI for the US. government is not necessary (in fact, given the time and resistance it took to deploy SECURE ID, I'd say it's dead in the waters right now), and would only require legislators not in the bed with credit card companies, to setup and enforce strict rules for authenticating orders / proceedings.