What should happen is that an ANSI standard be generated for a universal ID card. That way it would become accepted everywhere. But it should be voluntary. You use your card, which has encoded biometrics like iris scan and one fingerprint, to open accounts and to use them thereafter, protecting your accounts perfectly.
It should be a low-end felony for anyone to persistently query any institution about information originating from the universal ID card of another person, 5-year penalty, and a first degree felony to provide that information, with a 20-year penalty on the first offense.
Information that would ordinarily go to a credit bureau from each institution you choose to do business with would go onto your card directly. Encryption would prevent you from altering it.
You would choose a private company to back up your card information if you wanted to, in case of loss, so that if it's stolen you can get a new one with a new code. The backup company would have the same criminal liability as anyone else, with the exception that it could automatically update all institutions that appear on your card with a new code so that your old card is instantly invalid. The same companies could update encodings of your iris and fingerprint as you age.
If YOU want to vote no-hassle and registration-free, you go to the voter registration office and give them your card. Unless you move, you're registered forever.
Same for social security. If you plan to collect, you register. They become subject to the same penalties for sharing information.
There's no "sharing with owner's permission". If you want an institution to have your ID, you go to their local office and present your card.
If you are worried about somebody informally using your driver's license as ID outside the card system, you go to DMV and present your card, asking them to attach your DMV information to it.
In other words, if you want to protect yourself and are willing to carry a card that's universal, it should be possible (by way of standards) but not mandatory. You pick the level of anonymity you like (as in who gets your card).
If you want to be able to prove you are a citizen, then you present your card to the state department or whoever does that stuff. If you'd rather take the chance that your other ID won't be sufficient, then do that. If you're not a citizen, well, obviously, you would be in that last category.
To ask a person to identify himself should require reasonable suspicion of a crime, with specific articulable facts. If that happens, then you give whatever ID you have and take your chances if you've opted to not give it to the FBI.
Sorry, but "terra" or not, there should be NO "your papers please" without a good reason.
The standard should include the sequestering of types of information. In other words, Sears doesn't see your driving record, only your credit record when you want to open or use an account. The DMV only sees your driving record and vehicle registration information.
This can be done in a way that makes the cards nearly impossible to fake. Encryption and sequestering circuitry can be designed to be extremely complex, a one-time cost in the millions. There should be no problem with the government placing, on this card, the NSAs most unbreakable encryption technique. After all, one of the legitimate functions of government is protection of its citizens from crime.
Clearly, given today's political bent, this is not going to happen. But that's what I support.
