Living in a country where there are IDs, I wanted to give some perspective.
My ID include the following informations :
Picture, Name, Surname, Date and place of birth, Size, Adress (at the time the ID was delivered…not the current address) and the ID number.
The ID is used to identification purposes. The issues of databases is a separate problem. There are no huge databases linked to the ID. Only a database which contains all the ID delivered and their numbers.
A government can create a huge database with everything you ever did, etc…without ID. It can use your name, or your SSN, or whatever else and store any information it wants in the database. Why some people think an ID would make it easier escapes me.
Here, you’re required to show an ID at any time if required by police officers. If you don’t have one at the moment, they can require you to brign it the police station within 24 hours, and even, I believe, retain you until your identity can be established. I believe that a driving license, a passport, the equivalent of a green card, etc…can be used to prove your identity instead of the ID.
ID checks don’t include entering any kind of informations in some database. Actually, it’s even forbiden. So, they can’t ask you questions like “you visited this place three times during the last month, do you intend do move here?” or such things a poster was affraid of. What they can do is checking the police database with your name in order to make sure you’re not researched, for instance. Once again, the existence of a database is a different issue.
Apart from that, the ID is used more or less in the same way the SSN seems to be in the US. When you open a bank account, or such situations, for instance. Also it’s often asked by the clerck when you write a check (though once again a driving license do the trick).
So, what’s the purpose of the ID? I don’t think it helps a lot when dealing with issues like terrorism. I suspect a terrorist would use a fake ID (not that easy to fake an ID or obtain one with false informations, here, so the ordinary citizen wouldn’t have one, but a terrorist or serious criminal probably could). It seems its mainly useful to find out illegal immigrants. So, not only it doesn’t prevent but it facilitates profiling. There are often ID checks in the subway, for instance. For some unknown reason 99% of the people checked are blacks, arabs, etc…Not even once I’ve been asked my ID by the police. Apart from that, I suppose it sometimes helps to identify some petty criminals who are researched by the police, but I don’t think it’s very useful for that purpose, except if the police officer is suspicious and very lucky.
By the way, I think this ID issue is mainly a cultural, not an objective issue. For instance, nobody would ever ask your SSN, here. And I’m quite sure that most people would be outraged if someone else than their doctor was to ask it. “Why do they want it?” “What kind of infos are they trying to find about me?”. They would probably suspect that someone is creating or feeding some secret database, including personnal and private informations, etc… Actually, liking the SSN number to other informations not directly related to SS, even in a private database, is forbidden by law. So, if say, your bank or local library was to enter your SSN in a database, they would be prosecuted. In my opinion, all this fuss about IDs mostly comes from the fact people tend to be very suspicious about things they aren’t accustomed to.