What I mean by National ID card is not necessarily a piece of plastic, more like a centralized data node for, well, your data. The only institution that can provide this for all the citizens of the United States is the government, so that's why it's discussed as politics.

It would end the numerous data-collection snafus we encounter. It would make the census obsolete - just automatically tally the numbers every six months or something. Issue every baby one, deactivate them at death or in case of renunciation of citizenship, and give legal immigrants a version of one. That way there becomes two kinds of person - people who have ID, and people who don't. People who don't have broken a law - either they are illegal immigrants or are trying to hide or change their identity.

In fact it would mostly solve the illegal immigration problem because you could let in everyone and just easily track them. No one would slip in by overstaying their visa because it would just deactivate their ID once they've been here over their visa stay. They would then enter a database of illegal immigrants. Simple enough. Illegal immigrants would suddenly become documented immigrants. Furthermore people arrested by police would certainly be scanned and if they had no idenfitication they would be asked to provide proof of legal residency.

If this was some kind of implant (which culturally could only come after perhaps a generation) there would be no such thing as losing it, especially if it's in your chest - you can't even lost it in an injury.

Removal would be a crime.

There could be, for libertarians, a kind of opt-out, but you would have to be subject to some kind of sanction. You wouldn't be able to drive, certainly, if we still have self-driven cars when this eventually happens, that is. I highly doubt you would be able to have access to government restricted products like benefits or alcohol or marijuana once that is also legal.

Etc.

It just seems to me that the circumastances of the Information Age demand that this kind of thing will come into being eventually, even if slowly and pieced together from disparate sources, which is already happening to an extent with online identities, IPs, SSNs, bank info and so on. The last step is consolidating all of this in one place.

I am not particularly uncomfortable about the implications for governmental abuse, because I, unlike some, am very aware that all my shit is tracked anyway. I already live like my texts and searches are seen by cops, so whatever. It's not like the government doesn't already keep files on people, or doesn't subpoena people's records that are kept by other institutions like doctors and banks. They could get my purchase history if they wanted, of that I'm sure, same with my call logs. It doesn't bother me. It really doesn't. Libertarians are always shocked when I say this, but whatever. I don't know how else to say it, it's a fact of modern life. Without this kind of data collection, there is no modernity. So you make your bargain. As some have jokingly, but presciently, observed, you can opt-out of the "google-sphere" in one specific way - go live in the woods. If that's your thing, that's cool. I can respect that.

That's sort of how I feel about it. Perhaps in a perfect world I would have full control over my information, but I know that this just isn't going to happen ever, not in a world where information is the most valuable thing. This is why I have argued since I was in high school that the concept of privacy is among our cultural mores that are passing away as technology advances and society changes. They are a byproduct of centuries of relative isolation, and thus, cheap privacy for most.

Your average peasant in the Middle Ages enjoyed rather a lot of privacy in the information sense. You could just go in the woods, and if you weren't followed and no one saw you leave, you were free. There were no tiny cameras or microphones, no telephones, no internet, no records of mundane life, and so on. More and more people, as technology progressed, had less and less privacy and we have gradually adjusted. We have only just begun to adjust to the truly modern technology of hidden microphones, phone taps, and such. We are beginning to understand that nothing on the internet is truly private. And increasingly, everything is on the internet.

In short, back in the day, only someone rich enough to be spied on by actual spies had to worry very much about their privacy, these days, basically everyone does to a degree. As this advances, people will less and less see privacy as a right, until one day generations of the far future will wonder in bemusement what our obsession with this archaic notion of "privacy" was anyway.

Similar to modern-day bemusement at a strong sense of "honor" that in the olden days drove people to what appears today to be madness. Honor killings? Honor suicide? Charging into certain death, just for honor and glory? These ideas are still with us, but are an afterthought in the West. They are clearly dead. Privacy is a few hundred years behind.

That's just what I think, which is why I'm not exactly animated in opposition of things like a national ID card.

I'm curious what people's response to this line thinking is, which is why I posted the thread. I mean, if you hate national ID cards, you must also hate your smartphone, Google, and electronic banking, right? What about ATM security cameras? Traveling (TSA, customs, bag searches, international law)? Facebook?

I understand the 1984 argument. Believe me, I've read it. It's a great book and a great warning. We need to steer ourselves away from that path. But this probably shouldn't be a case of fighting to keep the status quo, but rather attempting to adapt the inevitable changes brought by the future into something good rather than bad - has it not always been this way?