I doubt the "it'd give all those Post Office workers a job" part.
It would if one would require a Post Office employee to be present whenever an identity has to be verified, but in practice, people would have a passport or identity card with a photo/fingerprint/DNA scan.
The only effect might be that the Post Office will have to handle more ID cards, but even that is doubtable, as almost everyone already has a driver's license, passport, or similar.
> It would if one would require a Post Office employee to be present whenever an identity has to be verified, but in practice, people would have a passport or identity card with a photo/fingerprint/DNA scan.
And who would verify the passport's authenticity? That takes training.
Every state has a different drivers license format: including watermarks and other security features. Post Office Employees in Texas will know how to read the Texas Drivers License (but not necessarily one from New York).
Valid documents for identity include:
* Birth Certificates (differs from state to state)
* Most Drivers licenses (differs from state to state. Some states are not federally valid forms of ID btw)
* Passports
* Social Security cards (uuuhhhhh... we probably should stop this one)
* etc. etc.
"And who would verify the passport's authenticity? That takes training."
The same way you verify ID now: for low risk (relative to your business) things, you judge a person and the quality of whatever piece of paper they present, for slightly higher risk, you limit that to a set of more official documents you recognize (say passports and driver's licenses of nearby states), for more official things, you go to a notary.
I fail to see what group of transactions falls between "It is OK to follow common sense and your gut w.r.t. the validity of the documents someone presents to check identity" and "you have to go to a notary" that visiting a post office would cater for.
"Every state has a different drivers license format: including watermarks and other security features. Post Office Employees in Texas will know how to read the Texas Drivers License (but not necessarily one from New York)."
So, post office workers, at least currently, cannot help solve that problem.
A nation-wide ID that almost everybody can show would help there, but it also would make people more familiar with recognizing it, decreasing the probability that one will think "I need help handling this kind of ID"
Also, a decent modern nation-wide ID could have electronic ways for relative laymen to verify it, for example a chip that allows one to query 'does this passport ID go with this name/city of birth/photo?'
TLDR: how often is the desire to verify identity so great that it warrants visiting a post office or paying a post office employee to visit you?
> TLDR: how often is the desire to verify identity so great that it warrants visiting a post office or paying a post office employee to visit you?
You pay post-office once for a $100 PKI-based certificate / smartcard with strong federally mandated identification regiments.
From there on out, the smartcard serves as your national identity, and can be used for like 10 years on any smartcard compatible system.
That's the kind of system I'm envisioning. The Post Office won't visit every single time you use the card, you visit the post office once every 10 years.
With 300 million Americans, that still 30-million hard identity checks per years. That would require an agency of massive size.
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And to answer your question: every time you use a SSN for identification (applying for a job, opening bank accounts, etc. etc.) would be a time to use this PKI-based smartcard verified by the US Post Office.
It would if one would require a Post Office employee to be present whenever an identity has to be verified, but in practice, people would have a passport or identity card with a photo/fingerprint/DNA scan.
The only effect might be that the Post Office will have to handle more ID cards, but even that is doubtable, as almost everyone already has a driver's license, passport, or similar.