Part of the problem is the government issued licence. The old paper / dumb card versions are easy to duplicate, and that's what happened. Now they can be a sm

Part of the problem is the government issued licence. The old paper / dumb card versions are easy to duplicate, and that's what happened. Now they can be a smartcard signed with a government key which can't so easily be forged. "Now" means any time in the last 30 years. Ditto all government credentials - birth certificates, passports, other licences. All should have been changed decades ago. But we are talking about the USA. The credit / debit card industry figured this out and published the EMV standard (aka "chip and PIN") in 1995. A few countries made EMV mandatory for credit/debit cards in 2003, most had done it by 2015. The USA waited to 2021 to force the issue using a liability shift. Now identify fraud is approaching epidemic proportions. In Australia at least the major source of these identity document leaks is data breaches of organisations who were forced by the government to collect copies of licences by Know Your Customer regulations. The penny has finally dropped finally here, with our Feds finally moving to mandating electric ID's and licences. If the governments in haven't realised they a similar position now, they will be soon.