I guess you're (or I'm, that's well possible too) mistaking identity with something other.
In my understanding, identities are what we - or part of us, as one could have multiple identities - are, not how we're called or what we look like. And names, personal or domain ones, are not identities but their properties. Others could assert your identity by confirming those properties (like when state issues a birth certificate with one's name in) or even associate their own information with person's identity (like assigning a trust level to a signature or limiting signature's timespan or, say, adding contract ID to a signature).
This is why OpenID and other attempts to shift identities from being owned (like one owns a certificate or password) to being merely leased doesn't look fancy to me.
I'm in your camp, identity is an intrinsic property of a person. Documents provide variously worthwhile assertions about that identity (legally recognized name of depicted individual is...).
One key point in this is that an authentic document can be fraudulent (just takes a bit of corruption down at the office).
I guess you're (or I'm, that's well possible too) mistaking identity with something other.
In my understanding, identities are what we - or part of us, as one could have multiple identities - are, not how we're called or what we look like. And names, personal or domain ones, are not identities but their properties. Others could assert your identity by confirming those properties (like when state issues a birth certificate with one's name in) or even associate their own information with person's identity (like assigning a trust level to a signature or limiting signature's timespan or, say, adding contract ID to a signature).
This is why OpenID and other attempts to shift identities from being owned (like one owns a certificate or password) to being merely leased doesn't look fancy to me.