id cards and online ids

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I don't understand the fuss about national ID cards. Of course we should have national ID cards, but they should be optional. If you want to move through airport lines quickly, enter the ID line. If you are too paranoid, stay in the slow line. Along with the ID card should come laws about types of things that the card can not be used for.

The id card should have as little or as much information as you want on them. When you slide the card through a reader it should display your face on the computer screen and your name and town/state/country where you live and your visa/citizen status. If the machine operator or cashier requests more information, you can at your option enter a code to enable a selected set of information to be sent to the machine.

As for online ids, Microsoft tried to have the world run on passport (the old login system from hotmail), but that sort of went down in flames. Duh. Like everyone wants to run all of their ecommerce transactions through Microsoft servers. No thank you.

The real solution is to have all of your identities securely managed only on your own PCs, not stored on some server. And then to have them securely synchronized across all of your PCs. This would allow you to have one-click ability for ecommerce from your PCs. Disadvantage: it would not allow you to have one-click ecommerce when visiting a cyber cafe in Budapest. Advantage: it would not allow a bad guy to have one-click ecommerce with your info when he was visiting a cyber cafe in Budapest.

Update 29nov05: I am now a paying member of flyclear.