Or even just coordinating the 50 states’ motor vehicle commissions or whatever since they are also verifying identities to issue drivers’ licenses and state identification cards.
Verification could have been done using government data, but Tories have to also make a profit off of everything so they instead chose to give every civil service applicants data away to companies with a track record of data leaks.
I don't recall which it was now, but I had to choose from a bunch of providers (I selected Post Office) when I registered for something Gov related a few years back. I don't remember what now since I haven't used it since, but PO still has the details and provides auth for a government service for me. Insanity.
Even in banking, where the government mandate thorough KYC/ID vetting, no APIs are made available by the government to actually verify a copy of ID is legitimate. So you're left looking at whether it "looks" correct.
For better or worse, of course, but there's an argument to be made that the refusal of the govt to provide "ID verification as a service" is pro-privacy.
It has little to do with "monied interests". It is primarily the product of nigh insurmountable legal and political hurdles.
Of course it's dumb that taxpayers will have to pay for 50 of these things through their state taxes instead of one of them through their federal taxes.
Then again, what's most likely to happen is that the states will outsource it to a private company like this one, and we're no better off.
... or a matter of finding the correct leverage. Drinking age 21, for example, got bullied through by threatening to cut highway budgets [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...
