[crooked-v]

More important, I think, is that the issuing authority is also legally obliged to actually give a shit, or else you just get a repeat of the current state of affairs where, for example, forced 2FA and no customer support means homeless people get locked out of all their accounts every time a device fails or is stolen.

[vintermann]

Yes, and if there's any easy way to recover from that, then implicitly the identity system can't be used to prevent Sybil attacks/spam, since it would be easy to make a new account when you didn't lose your keys too.

But the article suggests that relying on government issued IDs as a base lets government track all that we do. That's not the case, and is the point with all these systems. It should be possible for instance, using cryptography, to make a distributed chat room service where it's public who has signed up for a chat room, but not who of the posters in it are who.

To be able to selectively prove your identity, including connection to the government-accountable you, without directly involving the government or even anything licensed by the government, would make us more free online, not less.