Blake Hall — what you are talking about is a multipoint Profile service. When you are talking Authentication it is much more than proving “you are who you say you are”. For instance, my initial login to ID.me was with a google Authentication which included some of my profile information (name, age, location, etc). So, now I have an ID.me account — based on my google account. With that information you looked up more profile bits from different services including military records for my “Troop ID”. But under it all it is still a google authentication to log into ID.me. With the various profile bits I now have Authorization to do certain things based on my “Troop ID” which I look at more as a role rather than an Authentication.
And to say that a passport, drivers license, SSN is more secure is not quite the truth. All of them can be forged to enough of a degree to get through check points, set up utilities, and much more. We don’t have the manpower to check every physical ID to see if it is forged.
If Authentication can ever become 90% certain we will finally have something that moves up in the trust graph. So far I am not seeing Authentication being addressed. Authorization and Profile — yes. Authentication — no. Even with some new standards we are a long way away from matching one human to one account.