If someone asks for your ID (and you're of driving age), you probably whip out your driver's license. In personal identification circles, what you obtain from your state's department of motor vehicles is considered a de facto national ID because most adults carry one and most places that require ID accept it. 
But it's not really a national ID. Each state has its own DMV, with its own computer systems, and its own unique license characteristics for protecting their integrity. Not surprisingly in the post 9/11 age, there are those in government who wish we'd all just carry a single, United States ID card--maybe even one that contains biometric data about us.

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Some really scary things are happening around Washington these days.
Congress has become a place of great incivility and rancor, which threaten to undermine any hope of legislative remedy to a myriad of problems, from Social Security to soaring health-care costs to immigration to a steadily crumbling manufacturing base once the envy of the world.

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May 24, 2005—Last week, Chase’s credit cards division became the first credit card issuer to announce a contactless payments program. Beginning this summer, it will issue MasterCard and Visa credit cards embedded with RFID tags used to make transactions via radio communication with an RFID-enabled payment terminal. Chase calls the contactless functionality 'blink,' and plans to begin sending blink cards to millions of MasterCard or Visa cardholders in two undisclosed U.S. cities in late June, according to Scott Rau, senior vice president of payments at JPMorgan Chase & Co, which owns Chase credit cards.

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Your body could soon be the backbone of a broadband personal data network linking your mobile phone or MP3 player to a cordless headset, your digital camera to a PC or printer, and all the gadgets you carry around to each other.
These personal area networks are already possible using radio-based technologies, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or just plain old cables to connect devices. But NTT, the Japanese communications company, has developed a technology called RedTacton, which it claims can send data over the surface of the skin at speeds of up to 2Mbps -- equivalent to a fast broadband data connection.

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