ID papers
Bruce Schneier blogs about an issue that, in the context of the current vote craze in the US, seems to be pretty popular: the question of whether or not the US governments should give a drivers' license to illegal immigrants. Bruce argues in favour of giving a drivers' license to illegal immigrants, since requesting that the administration which issues drivers' licenses also check whether or not people are illegal immigrants is going to cost the government a lot of money (both from the extra amount of resources that needs to be spent on doing this job, and the lawsuits to make up for the errors).
The fun bit is, I think that they are creating a problem where there is none. By not creating an official, designated, identification system, the US government is forcing people to look for alternatives, effectively giving a drivers' license a double function; that of an ID card, and that of a drivers' license. This can't be a good idea.
Often the major argument against issuing ID cards is that it reduces people's privacy. I think this is wrong, for a very simple reason:
The US already has an ID card. It's calleda drivers' license.
No, really. For all practical matters, that little piece of paper is an ID card. Better get done with it and issue a real ID card, then.
The difference between the US and Belgium, for example, is that Belgium has comprehensive privacy legislation. The EU Data Privacy Directive is much, much superior to anything the US has. If we had a national ID in the US, it would be required every time you go into a bar, write a check, or do anything else in society, and any information that is accessible on the magnetic strip would be immediately downloaded and available to that business, forever.
Also, in the US, birth certificates and every other vital statistics function are functions of the states. In other countries, this is a national function. So issuing a national card based solely on state information doesn't seem to be the best idea to me. The national government would be required to accept the states' say-so anyway.
You seem to take as a given that we need an official government-issued ID card, and from there you draw the fairly reasonable conclusion that if we need one it ought to exist separately from a driver's license. I agree that your assumption leads to your conclusion, but I disagree with your assumption.
Most of the times I've needed to supply ID for something, they accepted numerous forms of ID, many of which came from non-government entities. Student IDs, IDs from well-known organizations, and other such things often suffice.
Now, admittedly, I've never attempted to buy a product that needed age verification, and for that it seems that in most cases only a government-issued ID passes muster. However, I see no fundamental reason for that, other than that non-government IDs rarely have a date of birth on them.