[jbnorth]

I see where they're coming from and in a lot of ways agree with them. However, I can also see some benefits to this. For the average user, if they can have a government-issued ID tied to their Apple ID that should, in theory, prevent them from ever losing access to that account. The number of times I've had to work with new parents or elderly who just want the account back for pictures of children, grandchildren, etc but ultimately had no recourse is more than I'd like to think about. If, however, I could guide them to the nearest Apple store and say "show them your drivers license, they'll match it to your Apple ID and unlock it for you" that would make most people happy beyond belief. Is that ideal for the privacy-centric among us? No, absolutely not. But for the majority of people who just want to be able to get back into an account with all of their stuff in it it's a potentially great solution.