alt Hacker News> Only as a last resort. If possible, governments, just like any other organizations, should have absolutely no say about anyone’s identity.
An unusual position, as historically governments have provided birth and death registries [0], passports, identity cards, etc, etc
[0]: or, earlier, in the West at least, the church
Is that really so?
They maintained census, but for government functions (like accounting and taxes), and actual identity communication almost never involved government.
Passports use for anything except international travel is a very modern thing as well.
For most of the history the source of identify was individual themselves (as it should be), that is, one told their name and origin and others accepted that, unless someone knew otherwise.