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by zb3 1105 days ago
My number is tied to my government issued ID. If I lose the SIM card I can get another one simply by showing my ID. If my ID gets stolen I can get another one by visiting the Police and so on.

The point is - I have some kind of an enforceable legal right to that number, whereas I currently have no such right to any particular account (and such rights can't be practically enforced for physical objects such as devices)

1 comments

It sounds like what you really want is to outsource your security to the government. Maybe you should just say that's what you want.
Yes, that’s what I want. There’s a much lower risk, for me, or government tyranny than me losing my yubikey.

Note though that it varies depending on the thing protected. For GitHub, I’m cool with the risk that the government gets a subpoena to seize my phone or SIM card and log into GitHub.

For some other services like messaging, I’d rather have stronger controls.

I'm pretty sure you're doing this already. We have courts for a reason, technocracy is a step backwards.
If the government ordered it you or anyone else would be given access to your account, no matter how many factors you have.