Hacker News Reader

Comment by 3JPLW | Hacker News Reader

USPS is a good contender for identity validation, too.

This is actually how it's done in New Zealand. We have something called realme https://www.realme.govt.nz/, which is made by New Zealand Post (our government post service, with the benefit of offices all over the country to do the initial ID verification for account setup) and the Department of Internal Affairs (they do things like births, deaths, marriages, passports, and citizenship, so they're used to dealing with identity)

It's an awesome system that the US would be lucky to have. I say this as a dual citizen of both countries.

I'm a kiwi citizen too, and for some reason I thought you had to renounce your NZ citizenship to receive a US one; kind of neat to hear the opposite!

The parent poster might have dual citizenship by birth, which would be a different case than starting with only NZ citizenship and acquiring US citizenship later (or vice-versa).

Dual Citizenship in the US isn't explicitly allowed, but it's not disallowed either and in practice isn't an issue. [1].

1- http://immigration.findlaw.com/citizenship/dual-citizenship....

I would not trust USPS with anything. I came by to pick up my mail and they gave me someone else's mail - a stack of 40 some letters / documents - all sorts of sensitive stuff that I could in theory open up and steal that person's identity.

Please, think before you say USPS... this agency is broken as hell. The last thing we want to do is trust our identities to them.

This is actually brilliant considering USPS can process passports and does banking light services (money orders).

USPS is no longer really part of the federal government.

Yes it is, 100%.

I love that I got downvotes for this. People are mad about the post office.

They should downvote it, it's entirely inaccurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#G...

The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business. It is, however, an "establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States", (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is controlled by Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a government agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail. Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.[90]

My mistake, I misread you as stating it's 100% not government anymore. My bad!

Thank you for correcting me.

Well . . . 85.7% (6/7). On Sundays, it's Amazon's: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-30/it-s-amaz...

No, it absolutely is not, it's a government entity but an independent one like dozens of other agencies.

“independent” agencies are actually part of the executive branch.

Yes, which is part of the government, as I mentioned. The important point was that it was gov't and not private as several people were claiming.

How so? It is one of the very few constitutionally enumerated functions of the federal government, and I don't remember it being privatized?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com