[Tangurena2]

> We should stop treating digital pictures of physical documents as some sort of credentials.

This is how biometric "authentication" works - you slide a picture (of a face, or maybe a fingerprint or hand geometry) under a door, and the guard on the other side of the door looks at the picture, maybe compares it to some database somewhere and then says PASS/FAIL. Maybe the device taking the picture has some sort of cryptography to prevent yourself from shoving a picture of some authorized person. Usually not.

People keep trying to find the correct magic spell to make biometrics "foolproof". That's a waste of time. Blackhat/DEFCON type conferences were showing people how to make fingerprints out of (the gelatin that makes) gummy bears back in the late 90s. Make them thin enough and you can fool pulse detection (carjackers in some Asian countries were chopping fingers off to bypass theft deterrent systems that used fingerprints).