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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

What's really sad is that the USPS could be in the identity business. What other organisation has agents who canvas the entire country on a daily basis, visiting every home and business?

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That assumption doesn't work for a big chunk of rural and small town America. I make the once-a-week trek to the post office to pick up my mail.

I tried to sign up for the informed delivery service, since it would be nice to know if it's worth my while to make the weekly trip into town, but those stupid KBA questions would never let me through. Verifying you by random, incorrect, data that they somehow scrapped out of the ether seems much less reliable then just letting me show up at the post office with ID in hand to sign up for it.

    > USPS could be in the identity business.

I have heard this idea before, and I wonder who first floated it?

Certainly, some role as an "authentication service" could be far more robust and future-proof than their current bread-and-butter: the delivery of junk mail.

It's already done in other countries.

http://www.royalmail.com/personal/identity-verification https://www.deutschepost.de/en/p/postident.html

(Deutsche Post also runs a consumer bank, and does quite a bit of electric / electric-assisted vehicle R&D.)

I don't disagree about their ability to be in the identity business, but the image of them doing home delivery everywhere is a bit dated. There are swaths of the US where you get a PO Box and no delivery of any kind.

Or basically any new development since they require cluster boxes now. Unless it’s a quick stop for the driver, expect lots of “attempted delivery” slips.

Wow, that would suck, but at least they probably have a street addresses. That whole 911 thing is oddly implemented.

I would love it if I could take a QR-code printed copy of my PGP key, and have the local post office scan and digitally sign it after verifying my identity. Or a local Notary Public.

Assuming you would pay the fee and supply the ids, I see no reason for a NP not to sign a printout of your GPG key + QR code, will, or whatever.

He wants someone to digitally sign it, like for the notary or the USPS to act as a certificate authority.

Isn't this a prime example of what happens when USPS puts a toe in the water of the identity business? Be careful what you wish for!

And has offices where one could go and have physical checks for establishing identity...

This actually how it works in Germany. The postal service provides PostIdent [1]. E.g. when opening a bank account, you get a letter with which you go to a post office where you sign and your ID gets checked.

1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postident

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