Read what Bruce Schneier has to say about the issue. Schneier is one of the foremost security researchers in the USA - his crypto algorithm, Blowfish, was one of the finalists for the recent DoD encryption standard (AES) which replaced the decades old IBM developed DES.
I'm not sure I buy the argument about having one single ID card as being less secure than 50 state ID cards. When it comes to counterfieting, there are some states with ID cards simple enough to replicate using Photo Shop.
And thus they are not highly trusted, which is a good thing.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea from all kinds of perspectives.
And if these national id cards can't be highly trusted either, what then is the point in the first place?

But have you checked out a much more secure card, like an alien registration card, for instance? That bad boy would be VERY difficult to duplicate. Combine that card with a few choice biometrics, some cryptography, and maybe even a personal passphrase or pincode and you'd have one hell of a secure card that would be extremely difficult and expensive to replicate.
1) How much do you want to pay for your card to make it secure? $50? $100? $200? What exactly will that $50 tax buy you in additional security?

2) Sooner or later it will get forged, with at least 16 million illegal aliens in the USA already the market demand for such a forgery is enormous. If this document becomes the centrally important document, then people will easily pay over $100 per forgery. That's a "research budget" of at least $160 million. No way will it remain secure in the face of that kind of money.

According to that article, the card will store your ID number, name, birthdate, address, sex, and a digital photograph. I personally don't see a major problem with this, as most of these items are already stored in thousands (if not tens of thousands) of national databases.
There are a couple of problems:

1) Those databases are not centralized. Centralization creates all kinds of new problems that people haven't even thought of before. Its like county land ownership records. Public knowledge, but only available on paper down at the county court-house they were not seen as a risk. As soon as someone digitized them and put them in a computer, you could now look up anyone's address by name and the amount and total value of all property they owned at a whim. Centralization and digitization, no matter how carefully guarded almost always invokes the law of unintended consquences.

2) Those databases are supposed to be voluntary. Just because some people have given away some of their privacy does not mean that all law abiding citizens should be forced to do the same. Even if some of them are de facto involuntary - for example I had to give up my prints to get my DoJ and DoD clearances which I needed if I wanted to work - that does not mean all law-abiding citizens should be forced to do the same.

I do see some possible benefits from this type of system. For instance, if public key cryptography were used, the card would be a much stronger identifier for anything from online transactions to airport security.
Is this rather trivial benefit really worth the price of our freedom? Not to mention the actual dollar cost of implementing the system?

Do we actually need stronger id for online transactions? I use single-use credit card numbers for all my online purchases. The two major banks implementing these single-use numbers - MBNA and Citi - have reported that over the 5+ years that they have been using them there has not been a single case of fraud involving single-use numbers. Even if that were not the case, why should our tax dollars go to make life easier for businesses? Shouldn't they have have to fund their own systems? Isn't that the free market?

As for airport safety, anyone who has flown recently knows that airport security is a sham, meant to waste our time to convince those among us who have not mastered critical thinking that "the government is protecting us." Considering that the 9/11 hijackers all had valid, authentic IDs, having a cryplographically signed id does not seem like it will make any more difference than the song and dance we all do for the TSA at the airport today.

I don't really see the correlation between a national ID card and communist states. I don't think anyone is suggesting that our movements within our own country would be monitored.
We are already at the point were ID is all but necessary to travel. Airplanes require ID, trains require ID, busses require ID and of course driving yourself requires ID. You can walk, bicycle and hire a taxi - not very practical for most people. A national id will soon lead to swipe terminals at all these points of travel, to make it "easy" and once it is computerized, it will be linked. We should be rolling back the requirements for travel, not tightening them up.

If the feds want to do that, they've already got that ability with credit card records, cell phone records, etc.
So, if the feds can already do all this, what benefit is there in such a system to you and me?

I'm willing to give up a little bit of personal freedom to benefit our nation
I don't know if you chose that wording on purpose or not, but it so closely mimics Benjamin Franklin that I think it is worth posting his famous quote on the subject:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety"

(hey, I joined the Army for 4 years shortly after 9/11, so what does that tell you?)
When someone joins the military, to me and my family it has always meant that they wanted to preserve the American way of life. Freedom being the founding principle of that way of life.

redline said
Both of my parents immigrated from Hungary. Some people don't realize How good they have it here.
On the contrary redline. I do realize how good we have it here, and that is precisely why I wish to keep it that way. What good will it have done for your parents to immigrate here if we allow our country to eventually devolve into the kind of repressive system that they left behind?