I definitely heard of "lemotdepasse" being used by people afraid to forget their passwords.

that was a good one.. I almost choked on my baked beans.
Anyway I think this is beautiful - maybe I'm being naive but if an important ministry gets attacked (either by smart black hats or just through tedious social engineering or whatever in between) then I would expect political pressure to eventually apply (through public opinion) to make sure this sort of embarrassment does not happen repeatedly, or not too often. So I think this is one step in the right direction, even if it might take a few catastrophes to actually get there.