[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 2002-07-16 15:43 UTC: > The US driver's licence is supposed to be for *driving* not citizen > tracking. The clue is in the name.
The US id cards are only for historical resons called drivers licences. They are already id cards in most but name. In no country I have visited, I had to identify myself by photo ID card more often then in the US, including countries such as Germany where you are (at least in theory) even supposed/expected to carry your ID card with you. > 7 days written notice if they want to see a UK driver's licence, which > is only a piece of paper ... Today, its actually a plastic identification card in ISO 7810 ID-1 format (the inch-based US banking card standard format 85.60 x 53.98 mm). If the UK introduced an ID card, then for the majority of the population, the drivers licence would also be your ID card at the same time. The introduction of a government identity scheme means merely, that the government maintains a high-quality register of all citizens and legal residents in the country, including their current resitental address, something which neither the US nor the UK have at the moment, hence their need for electrolar registers, arcane semi-secure authentication methods involving utility bills, bank statements, etc. in many business transactions (such as opening and accessing bank accounts). It's really more a convenience than a privacy issue, IMHO. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
