Transio, I'm sure you personally are very competent in your field -- but what I see so far with these large systems is one monumental screwup after another. Besides the mess the "no fly" list is in, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of people's confidential info by one of the credit rating companies, the persistent success of hackers penetrating even the most secure data bases including military and financial, the billions that have been spent by the govt to try to update the computer systems of various agencies only to have them tell us that they don't work and they will have to scrap the new systems (meaning flush those billions down the toilet), I have no faith at all that a database and i.d. card system in this country will lead to anything more than chaos on a massive scale.

And the potential for misuse by federal agencies and/or criminals who have penetrated the data base is very real.

And to what purpose is this data base? They've told us it won't make us safer from terrorists -- so it would appear that it's greatest potential would be to help control us. Personally I like to be out of control when bureaucrats are involved.