Maybe if you converted passports to smartcards, and then slowly turned it into a national ID you could make this work.

Fair point, but it's worth noting that lots of people don't have either document. Hence, say, the voter ID law fight: many people genuinely have no standard identity document except SSN.

One other aside is that driver's licenses are a remarkably bad identification document. Even plenty of bars won't take out of state driver's licenses, or will outright declare real ones to be fake. And dealing with government offices, I've had several iterations of "that state's license ID has a different number of digits, so I can't use it in our system".

> One other aside is that driver's licenses are a remarkably bad identification document.

This is changing with REAL ID; all states are either compliant with new ID issuance and doc standards or have received an extension. https://www.dhs.gov/real-id

Italians that have an id card predating electronic id are routinely bumped off American bars because to them it looks like it's just a piece of paper with a photo stitched on top. Yet, identity theft is a problem in the US and not in Italy...

In fact, even though that id card actually is relatively easy to forget, it does have some watermarks and special government stamps. In fact, it's probably easier to fake an electronic id card with a piece of plastic, if you know no one is going to try using the smartcard functionality.

It's called "history." And as they say, those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it.

No federal IDs did absolutely nothing to inhibit Japanese internment. The federal government has vast powers already.

I don't see how modern society can function without some form of universal authentication. Alternately, if you live in a forest and don't need or want to participate in the financial system, I'm all for making a hypothetical national ID opt-in.

There is no law saying that Us citizens have to carry identification pricing they are citizens.

And yes, if they have reasonable suspicion that you’re lying, they can detain you.

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

I'm Canadian though, so it's quite possible that this would be reasonable here and not in the U.S.