[ConservativeWarrior]

And when the .gov’s private key is compromised, and it will be, the whole system collapses.

Remember when the Verisign private key was compromised 5 years ago? Their entire CA was made obsolete, and they had to revoke ALL certs ever issued through it.

[Garth Tater]

Kind of hard to forget, but my question was, "Why would the govt need to sign the public keys? Just publish them on a govt web site - no signing or management needed"

If the govt isn't signing the citizens' public keys then the govt has no need for a private key to do the signing with. If you can tell me a good reason to require the public keys to be signed by the govt (or anyone else) I'd love to hear it.