[ajhurliman]

If this were being used for SSNs, you'd have a central authority to restore access. If you lose your passport, they can issue you another one and mark the old one as lost/stolen. You can do the same thing for key pairs.

The main problem it solves is giving a sketchy client your SSN on your I9 without allowing them to use it/leak it to scam groups to spin up a credit card on your behalf.

[voakbasda]

The main problem with the “key escrow” scenario is that the government can access your private key, so this solution is still not meaningfully secure. What do you think is more likely: that this new institution will be magically invulnerable? Or perhaps you will have just created an irresistibly valuable target for social engineers and hackers that inevitably will fall?

[ajhurliman]

Not magically invulnerable, just a lot less vulnerable than a plain text 9 digit number that you hand out to hundreds of people over your lifetime.