> I can't help but feel your argument is with data protection [and the broad lack of it in the US] rather than government-held databases. It goes deeper than t

> I can't help but feel your argument is with data protection [and the broad lack of it in the US] rather than government-held databases. It goes deeper than that. Recently in Australia we've had two data breaches, one from a Telco [0] and another from a credit card company [1]. Both were required to collect ID by law, so they gave you a portal to upload photos of drivers licences, government medical insurance cards, credit card and so on. In both cases they leaked the lot. To say they were unpopular was an understatement. Perhaps 10% of Australia had to get new drivers licences. The were hauled up to front senate committees, CEO's fell on the sword. A lot of political theatre in other words, but while this "take a copy of a government licence as a form of ID" madness continues it will keep happening. In other news, social hacks against the government electronic ID for their website were used to collect around 1/2 a billion in fraudulent payouts (tax refunds and the like) [2]. And a few years ago the tax office was done for $2B or so for ID fraud waged against our VAT collection. [3] That one was perpetrated by thousands; the instructions went viral on TikTok. We live in a digital world now, where it's easy to take a copy of any bag of bits. Relying on ID's that don't mutually authenticate and vigorously protect the information they do hand out is downright dangerous. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Optus_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Optus_data_breach [1] https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/news-items/guidance-for-consumers-impacted-by-the-latitude-financial-services-data-breach/ https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/news-items/guidan... [2] https://theconversation.com/the-500-million-ato-fraud-highlights-flaws-in-the-mygov-id-system-heres-how-to-keep-your-data-safe-210459 https://theconversation.com/the-500-million-ato-fraud-highli... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/13/ato-staff-investigated-social-media-scam-australian-taxation-office https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/13/ato-s...