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I am not describing birth certificates. I’m describing a registry of residence. That’s another thing the U.S. does wrong. If you hold a birth certificate for a

by Jolter 2y ago

I am not describing birth certificates. I’m describing a registry of residence. That’s another thing the U.S. does wrong. If you hold a birth certificate for a child, what does that prove? It’s just an officially issued statement that a particular person was born to these particular parents. It’s completely useless as an authentication mechanism of identity. The problem is not that birth certificates can be re-issued when lost. The problem is that they are trusted to mean anything about that person that possesses it.

rtkwe 2y ago
Nothing you said made it sound any different from a birth certificate. What proves that you are the person living at that address and that you are the one that should be allowed to update that information? Just having a list of where people nominally live is meaningless by itself. The US has that information in loads of places, it's just not treated as the ground truth. Also that system doesn't seem to work that great, the numbers I'm finding show Japan has about 3 million identity theft victims a year. Lower than the US but only slightly lower per capita. The biggest problem in this instance isn't that his identity was stolen it was that he wasn't believed, partially because he was homeless, seems to have some mental health problems per the article and they're a maligned group in the US, and the courts and prosecutors didn't take the relatively simple step of requesting DNA evidence to resolve the situation.
fc417fc802 2y ago
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