I do not really have a strong opinion one way or another on...

I do not really have a strong opinion one way or another on national ID card, but it would seem that gyro has a pretty good take that I would not disagree with.

As an aside, one problem that does seem possible with biometric identification systems, is that if someone does actually succeed in a succefull identity theft, depending of course on the mode of theft they use, it might take major surgery for you to recover/establish independent identity again, depending on what biometric system is used.

The probability might be quite rare, but once the systems are established nation-wide and possible similar systems used over sereral countries, it can be quite hard to establish exceptions that will pass the system of paid-to-be suspicious checkers, so some quite careful thought needs to go into the system and the fraud-prevention measures.

I recall reading somewhere that fingerprints have been proven to be non-exclusive physical identifier once the world population reaches a certain size, I think the population size of around 6 billion was the size but I might not have remembered this correctly and it is based on some popluation statistics. I recall this anaylsis was done after the case where two or more people with identical fingerprints were found during a police investigation in the last few years.

And of course we have the recent case in Malaysia, where some thieves attemtping to steal a mercedes, cut of the finger of the owner and took it with them to be sure they could bypass the car fingerprint-based security system whenever they wished to.

Seems to be some rather serious problems with widespread implimentation of biometric ID systems as a principal mode of security/identification for some situations.