They have a pathological fear of government overreach. An identity card issued by the government would lead to a slippery slope of something, not sure what. HN is fertile ground for such paranoia, so no doubt someone will explain exactly what will happen if all US residents received a free identification card.

Anyway, they get around this by using their Social Security Numbers everywhere. All residents have one. They use this in a novel way, where it’s both a username and a password, that you share with every corporation who asks. You’re supposed to keep it very secret because people can open financial accounts in your name with this number. But not that secret. Your utility company may ask for it and won’t provide service without it.

Since it’s both a username and password, it’s stored very securely. Except when it isn’t, breaches happen, and people have no recourse. It’s immutable, so they can’t do anything other than say “don’t process any credit checks for me” and hope that works.

Anyway, that’s the short version of why Americans are terrified of being assigned an ID, actually have an ID (SSN), but can’t use that ID because it’s super secret, but then use it everywhere anyway because they have no choice.