Security Guru Bruce Schneier (who wrote the book that was my intro to serious crypto) argues in an op-ed that A National ID Card Wouldn't Make Us Safer primarily because the GIGO problem for the data we'd use to issue the card makes it near worthless as a security device. What's worse, he says, a national ID card becomes a single point of failure for security if people trust it.
I agree about the GIGO problem (everyone serious does too as far as I can tell). And I agree that the ID cards have about no value as an anti-terrorism tool, although that's where the political push is coming from (their real virtues if they exist, are elsewhere). And I've argued before that over-reliance could be a problem in other ways, but didn't make the single-point-of-failure argument. May have to add that to the list…
