Birth certificates are pieces of paper that literally anything identifying as a hospital can create 'offically'. It would be trivial to create a forged certificate, there are a ton of dark net sites offering them for sale. If the US $1 bill were this easy to create (it's not), it would be worth pretty much nothing.
> Birth certificates are pieces of paper that literally anything identifying as a hospital can create 'officially'.
I don't know how it works in European countries, but here in Brazil, birth certificates are made by notaries, not hospitals. You might be able to get forged hospital documents to take to the notary, but getting a "backdated" birth certificate for an adult is harder (getting a second copy of your birth certificate is easy, however; just go to the same notary, who has every birth certificate it emitted registered on its books).
In some places, it is trivial to request somebody’s birth certificate. It’s one of those weird US things where localities control stuff that they lack the ability to do well.
Regardless of issues, it’s still the penultimate representation of you.
Yup, and that’s the anchor of trust. The walled garden doesn’t make that better or worse... we’re not going to having key signing parties at birth.
That’s why police and public trust background checks look to confirm bona fides with real people over an extended period. You still don’t know that the birth certificate is real in many cases, but you can trace it back to grade school if need be, or if the birth record is from a suspect issuer.
