Curious about your thoughts on (a). I understand privacy concerns but not your point about scams. How are people going to lose their life savings? A photo ID is useful because you can compare the photo on it to someone human. Passports contain mirochips. If losing your ID was so dangerous people would be in trouble all the time, because people lose them all the time.

I guess it comes back to again not whether things are technically watertight, but how socially normalised something is. People are used to giving their ID out for significant transactions. This law says now that pretty much any random website has a good reason to ask you for ID documents. So when someone seeking to steal your identity already has two forms and is just trying to fill in that 3rd document to get over the line to where they can call up the bank to reset your password - the bar just got lowered. They no longer have to trick you into thinking it's a message from your bank or anything else significant. It can literally be "oh my cousin sent me pictures of their grand kids, let me just get my passport to upload so I can see them".