So only issue credit cards to people with a passport, and give them a statement credit to cover the application fee (premium annual fee cards already cover the cost of precheck/global entry, this isn't a stretch). It's even possible the finance industry could negotiate with the US government a lower rate for passports at scale, thereby turning it into a defacto national ID system.

This is just finance industry whining that their system sucks and they want to offload the costs onto the government to manage the fraud.

EDIT: "In January, Accenture PLC listed synthetic-identity fraud as one of the biggest threats facing banks in 2018, saying it would be “costing banks billions of dollars and countless hours as they chase down people who don’t even exist.”

That pays for a lot of passports!

Disclaimer: Am in finance industry, but not credit issuance.

Lawful permanent residents and other residents of the US who are not eligible for a US passport may also want to avail themselves of the benefits of a credit card. Fewer than half of US Citizens have a passport, and they may all want a credit card as well.

Lawful permanent residents also have a green-card or other immigration related ID number which can serve the same purpose. They likely also possess a foreign passport which could be used in the same way.

Less than half of the eligible population of the US votes also. That doesn't mean that it's a bad idea, just that it's not taken advantage of.

EDIT: a word.

They would almost all have passports that the US government considered satisfactory though.

I don't actually have a problem with that as a solution to using a stronger ID. I still think it would need to be coupled with an additional security token or key on the passport side to complete the security, but that's a relatively simple change versus implementing a new ID system from scratch.

Although I don't think they're trying to pass the cost to the government. By calling it "identity theft" instead of what it is, fraud, they're trying to pass the cost of fraud to the consumer.

Login.gov [1], a USDS project, supports the additional auth requirement you desire.

Agree with the rest of your comment.

[1] https://login.gov/

I'll have to check that out. Thanks. :)

there are various legal reasons (e.g. parole) why you might be denied a passport that have nothing to do with whether credit should be extended to you.

Edge cases can be addressed. Still issue the passport, but put a travel hold on it. This allows for the identifier to still be generated and managed.

EDIT: After coffee, I'm even more convinced this is a good idea. Better to issue the passport and have the identifier of who you don't want to travel vs not issuing it and then losing that person in the noise....because of not having a national ID card system.

Do you consider Real ID equivalent to a passport or are you really saying we need to make 200,000,000 people get an international passport that they're likely to never use?

The word "make" makes me sigh. Is it too much trouble to get your picture taken and fill out a form? It's no different than a driver's license application process, while at the same time providing needed identification verification capabilities. The sugar on top is you're giving Americans the ability to travel internationally, which one might optimistically assume would provide some necessary perspective.

A passport should be freely provided to you by your government as part of being a citizen.

> some necessary perspective

I'd venture to guess that if you were making minimum wage and living in a place that was either a 700 mile drive or a $1000 airplane ticket from an international border, you might understand why it seems unnecessary. (Do you honestly believe that most non-traveling Americans are doing it because they don't have a passport?)

> Although that goes over like a lead balloon whenever it's brought up.

Coming with a country that has a national ID, the US issue with it always caused me laughter. But on the other hand, identification by the state is one of the highest forms of privacy. Its pretty incredible the US has managed to be without that.

In practice, more than 90% of US adults have a state issued photo id:

http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERIC...

And not having one often puts people at a disadvantage. So it's a little fuzzier than managing to be without them.

Do you also laugh at the EU's "right to be forgotten" legislation?

I think its trying to stop sunlight with your hands.

Technology is the servant of society, not the other way around. The sky is not falling because the tech industry is finally being reined in.

[+] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16531817 | [+] http://locusmag.com/2018/03/cory-doctorow-lets-get-better-at...

Wouldn't the analogy be that we are the servants to the state, as the state tells you what you can or can't do?

No, because we have the right to vote, making the state the servant to us. Whether we have properly executed that responsibility is clearly a discussion for a different thread.

You have the right not to use online services...the right to vote is not a declaration of submission.

Particularly when you voted against and a measure was still infringed upon you.

>The root problem here is that they're using a public number which was never designed for identification purposes and has no security. The solution would be a national ID, or expansion of the US Passport with in-built security measures.

No identifier can ever be used as method to express authorization. This is not a matter of security design.