Toward US ID cards

A thought

From CNET article this morning: Closer to a national ID plan?

A little-known company called EagleCheck is hoping to provide a standardized identity check technique that governments and corporations will use to verify that you are who you claim to be...If EagleCheck or a similar system succeeds, it raises the specter of something akin to a national identity card...

Needless to say, this massive database would end up bursting with detailed records of all our life's activities. It would be incredibly valuable to police and create an irresistible temptation for misuse...if there's another terrorist attack on the United States, all bets are off.

For now, the key question about EagleCheck is whether its records of our electronic comings-and-goings will be purged or stored. When used at airports, it makes sense to keep the information on hand for a day so--until planes safely land--before deleting it, but in other situations the justification for any data retention is much weaker. The problem is that given such an informational gold mine, the FBI and the Justice Department won't let that happen.