Stefek Zaba wrote about ID cards:

Maybe we'll see an honest, well-informed debate, seriously examining
the
risks and benefits on all sides.

Benefits: there is none. The arguments for are simply specious.

Cost: large, money that could be spent doing some very useful things
instead.

Risks: anyone undertaking even basic history or political study will
begin to see there are significant risks in giving government / one
group of people complete legal power over another. Anyone with a clue
as to whats going on in the world will realise that IRL no system or
group of people is beyond abuse, ie it will be used abusively. It is
inevitable given the wide variety of human nature, the non existence of
any perfect human-nature filter, and the many limits of the
technologies involved.

Law and order: the day it becomes a criminal offence to walk down the
street is the day the law will have lost all credibility and all
respect. This is what happens when ID cards are introduced. Their
mission creeps until it is a criminal offence to walk down the street
without the card. Our lowish crime rate has a lot to do with respect.
When that is lost, crime goes right up.

Seriously if anyone thinks its a non issue they must have no education
about fundamental concepts of law, government and society. There seems
to be much more awareness about this stuff in the US, where their
struggles are so much more recent than ours, and in some cases ongoing.

In the UK are people so remarkably unaware that they might actually
vote it in.


NT