The integrity matters because anything other than that is considered a falsification. It's a legal requirement, not a technical one. Of course you could flip a LSB in some grayscale image and get away with it. But from a legal point of view you've just done something that is not allowed.
It's illegal because the law says that it's illegal, and the law doesn't really have any justification based in fact or actual use-cases, it's just legislation and legislation has a mind of its own.
So this new model might lead to additional legal changes, but the main changes a customer might see is that if the government decides it was wrong and decides on another definition of "falsification" (not likely) or the government doubles down and requires an audit trail of the ID photograph from the taking of the photograph and all devices used to process the photograph.
> It's illegal because the law says that it's illegal
That goes for all laws.
> the law doesn't really have any justification based in fact or actual use-cases, it's just legislation and legislation has a mind of its own.
No, the law is embodying many years of experience with people attempting to forge IDs. So 'tampering' with the inputs to the process is tantamount to forgery, it makes good sense and it draws the lines in an extremely clear and non-ambiguous way. Far better than to leave some vague statements open to interpretation about what manipulation is allowed and what not (fun bit: people asking the service if we can edit out their wrinkles...).
> the government doubles down and requires an audit trail of the ID photograph from the taking of the photograph and all devices used to process the photograph.
In some places they do this, you get a certificate of authenticity with your passport photographs that you have to hand in to the officials.
