Mark Twain* said &quot;Keep all your eggs in one basket. Then guard that basket.&quot;<p>A good solution to identification would be a central state operated database. But it would have to be backed by strong laws defining what it can be used for with no loopholes, not even for police of &quot;national security&quot;, and a default deny policy. It would help secure taxes, welfare benefits, health care, voting, and background checks. The database information cannot be sold, data mined, or used in a criminal investigation without a non-rubberstamped warrant. The database can be used to confirm identity but the ID number cannot be stored anywhere else. Other agencies, both government and non-governmental, will be required to generate their own internal IDs without recording the national ID so if one database is compromised it doesn&#x27;t collapse the whole house of cards.<p>These are common sense policies but they are all human policies. No amount of technical wizardry can stop a human from doing something stupid. That&#x27;s what laws and regulations are for. However the US has been stuck in a counterproductive attitude of treating regulation as a bad thing. So poorly implemented policies keep screwing up all the best technological intentions of the engineers.<p>(* Like most Mark Twain quotes there&#x27;s a good chance this is misquoted or misattributed.)