Please explain why such a "serious" use cannot be implemented with today's technologies. You can trivially ask people to give you their license number and run a lookup to confirm that they're who they claim to be at signup time. Yes, it's not gratis (see publicdata.com). But you stipulated that this is "serious" use, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Huh? I never said it couldn't be I said it wasn't.

But again it's not simply a question about identification as in per the right username/password/license plate.

I can log in and pretend to be anyone, in fact I can have multiple different accounts and be multiple different people.

But when you add social proofing on top of it you have created a verification mechanism that is much stronger since it includes my very existence, my friends, what I do etc. Things that can't as easily be faked.

> But when you add social proofing on top of it you have created a verification mechanism that is much stronger since it includes my very existence, my friends, what I do etc. Things that can't as easily be faked.

The point many of the critics here are making is that anonymity and privacy is required for a functioning democracy.

Why does it matter WHO is saying something. Shouldn't the most important thing be WHAT is being said?

Even in today's "everything goes" situation, libel/slander etc hasn't reached epidemic proportions to require policing everything people say.

And even then, I would much rather have a central clearinghouse where aggreived parties can register to have their names etc not be displayed by web sites (think of it as a robots.txt for humans). Note that this can be implemented without an online ID and is different from the current proposal.

I still haven't understood what is your problem with today's situation where people can create as many alter egos as they wish.