> This feels weird in a society where you can require government id to buy alcohol Other examples notwithstanding, showing id to buy alcohol doesn't really aff

> This feels weird in a society where you can require government id to buy alcohol Other examples notwithstanding, showing id to buy alcohol doesn't really affect your anonymity because it's a 2-second face-to-face interaction. You can be reasonably sure there's no chance of all the id's containing information to stay in their systems indefinitely. Even immediately after putting the id back in your pocket, even the cashier themselves probably doesn't have any idea who you are, just that they've verified you're over the legal age for drinking. For most of your other examples, you're showing your id to institutions of your government. That's different than showing your id to private entities. With regards to showing your id when flying on a commercial airline, there's very few airlines when compared to number of websites, they're highly regulated, etc. Institutions of government, highly regulated private entities of huge proportions with huge liabilities, they all get different levels of trust when compared to random websites from who-knows-what jurisdictions.