A National ID Card

Well, I'm not certain in how to respond to this, but one time in renewing my drivers liscence, I had to provide 3 forms of identification. My birth certificate, my high school transcript, and a bank account statement. For some reason, this gave me the impression that I was in Nazi Germany, where a gestapo agent could, at any moment, approach me and say "Papers, please!"

isnt your drivers licence like your ID card? its national.

All in all, I think it is an uneccessary invasion of privacy. Theoretically, it will provide a single, simple form of photo ID which could be used in any circumstance. In practice, with only one piece of ID containing all of your personal information, it would make identity theft a lot easier because it's easier to take one thing and read off or connect the other information than it is to take 2 or 3 seperate pieces of information. I don't think it would work anyway because, apart from what I've already said, it would cost too much. There would be people who couldn't afford to pay for them and, therefore, would not be able to identify themselves which would mean that they wouldn't be able to do a lot of things that most people take for granted. I know how difficult it can be to do certain things because of a lack of ID. (I couldn't get a UK bank account a few years ago basically because I hadn't learnt to drive so I had no driving licence, I had never been abroad so I didn't have a passport, and I didn't have a job and therefore no money to get another form of photo ID card which, even then, would need to be signed by a "professional" which is fine assuming that everyone knows a professional) soif these national ID cards became compulsory, there would be an awful lot of people not being able to prove who they are as well as a lot more people committing identity theft.