I posted an entry on biometric ID in an immigration discussion forum recently & got this response:

"As you know, I too am strongly opposed to that totalitarian big brother invasion of privacy called the biometric ID.

These measures are also seen in various opposing states as increasing the risk of identity theft."

To which I said:

Words like "totalitarian" pack a wallop. But precisely because of that they should be used sparingly. "Totalitarian" means "of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy" with synonyms like "authoritarian, dictatorial, despotic." Worst case it's "of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation, especially by coercive measures (as censorship and terrorism)."

And of course "big brother" refers to Orwell's "Brave New World," possibly the best-known dystopian novels about a future society that's a Soviet-style state with a Disney World-type smiley face pasted on it.

Using these words by themselves to refute biometric ID proposals employs the logical fallacy of refutation by association. "Hitler wore pants." "You wear pants." "So you're a Nazi."

But if you look at it factually the association of universal ID with totalitarianism melts like a snowman in Houston. If a universal ID is uniquely totalitarian, then totalitarian societies will have it and democracies won't. Right? OK, by that standard here's a partial list of totalitarian nations, taken from Wikipedia's listing of countries with compulsory ID cards:

Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Taiwan, Colombia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand.

'nuff said.

As for "increasing the risk of identity theft" --the devil is in the details. Wikipedia summarizes arguments for and against universal ID at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_card. Overall, a badly implemented biometric ID system probably would increase the risk of ID theft--and a well-implemented BID would decrease it. The biggest unsolved problem with ID theft has nothing to do with the risks/rewards of BID, but with the fact that ID theft has become an international criminal business, and we don't as yet have a comprehensive international police effort designed to track down and prosecute the thieves. Russia is a prime harbor of ID theft organizations. Nigeria's another, just to name some of the worst. And neither country plays well with others.

ID theft has become a highly technical issue. As I pointed out in an earlier post, biometric ID eliminates the kinds of theft that occur at the street level, with fake ID cards readily available to illegal immigrants across America. Biometric ID moves the dangers of ID theft to the large databases required. Criminal organizations with sophisticated technical people--again Russia looms large in this area--have hacked into several commercial databases, though the main source of entry has been corrupted organizational employees. It's a technology race that will never end, with the hackers pitted against the rest of us. Russian hackers recently attacked Estonia because Estonia moved a statue (I couldn't make this up!) and would have brought down Estonia's e-infrastructure if it hadn't been so well designed.

That said, it's not a zero-sum game. ID theft is rampant today, so it's not like not having a universal ID system protects us from ID theft. BID gives us an opportunity to reduce ID theft, and at the very least it pushes the small operators out of the ID theft business and lets us focus on the big, often tacitly state-sponsored criminal organizations.

These are not simple issues, and it does such issues a disservice to condemn new technology based on past experiences with previous technologies. It would be like condemning automobiles because horse poop was a big problem in 19th century cities full of horse-drawn vehicles. Automobiles have plenty of pollution problems, but rampant horse poop isn't one of them.