Once again our government is trying to push a national identity card upon us with bogus justifications: That it'll aid in the fight against terrorism.
Well, it won't. Terrorists don't do things legally. Successful ones are not going to truthfully identify themselves as they go about their business, unless they want others to know who they are. And knowing who someone was after they've done their deed hasn't prevented them from doing it in the first place. Therefore the card is useless.
It's useless against fraud, too. Currently, to do many things that have some potential fraud risks you have to produce several items of identification before being allowed to do what you're trying. None of which are ever vetted properly, in my experience (you could have stolen the lot of them in one go). With an ID card, you'll present one form of identification that they'll accept without proper vetting, again. So fraudsters only have one item to counterfeit.
I, like many others, will have no completely corroborative identifying material to use when being issued any identity card, so would either not get one, or get issued one that can't really prove who I am, but would be treated as if it does. Again, making the card essentially useless against crime.
Fraudsters can do the same thing, get a card issued to them under a false name, and have everything that they do attributed to that identity. Or worse, get a card issued to them under someone else's name, and have everything that the fraudster does blamed on the other person. But because this card “proves” identity, the record created on such people, can't be incorrect (in the eyes of the fools who believe in identity cards), and the wrong person will have done what the record says, and will have their life ruined as if they'd actually done so. This time, the card is worse than useless.
Thus far there's being virtually nothing that counterfeiters can't produce, so I don't see any reasons why this proposed national identity card will be any different. Again, it's useless.
Then what happens when the government keeps on heading in the direction of this fascist notion, using the cards for more than the original purposes (like they've done with driver's licenses, tax file numbers, medicare cards, etc.), or mandating that you need the card to do all sorts of things you shouldn't need it for, or mandating that you must carry it on you at all times, and so on? Suddenly you find you're living in a police state.
There's a great many people with European origins (amongst others), who can tell you what's so bad about identity papers. It's worse than useless, it's not in any of our interests, this stupid idea needs to be destroyed again.