The US does this at the federal level, for example when applying for a passport. For state related matters the local DMV (goes by DoL in some states) does this. The oddity to me is how difficult it seems to be proving for many (most?) states to link their unemployment payouts back to their own driver's license databases.
I suppose the issue is that not everyone who collects unemployment necessarily has an ID card, and that someone with an ID card doesn't necessarily have a current mailing address (someone might be homeless or couch surfing for example). It seems like a fairly straightforward solution would be to have those people physically come in to a local licensing office.
But that would introduce accessibility issues for many (the most disadvantaged would be the most inconvenienced), hence facial recognition and video chats, but apparently the state couldn't be bothered to build out it's own system for that?
A much better solution would be to just put PKI chips into ID cards. US passports, the US DoD, many other countries, and the vast majority of credit cards have this at this point. Why not state issued photo IDs? I have no idea.
Oh yeah, and most states send unemployment electronically to a bank account. So it seems like you could just require the account to be with a bank that operates in the US and thus already complies with our rather extensive KYC laws. I have no idea why the banks themselves couldn't be used to vet their customers here.
I suppose the issue is that not everyone who collects unemployment necessarily has an ID card, and that someone with an ID card doesn't necessarily have a current mailing address (someone might be homeless or couch surfing for example). It seems like a fairly straightforward solution would be to have those people physically come in to a local licensing office.
But that would introduce accessibility issues for many (the most disadvantaged would be the most inconvenienced), hence facial recognition and video chats, but apparently the state couldn't be bothered to build out it's own system for that?
A much better solution would be to just put PKI chips into ID cards. US passports, the US DoD, many other countries, and the vast majority of credit cards have this at this point. Why not state issued photo IDs? I have no idea.
Oh yeah, and most states send unemployment electronically to a bank account. So it seems like you could just require the account to be with a bank that operates in the US and thus already complies with our rather extensive KYC laws. I have no idea why the banks themselves couldn't be used to vet their customers here.
On the whole I'm completely unimpressed.