National Identification Cards. What's the Purpose?

Aug. 15, 2009 - PRLog -- Small and large countries are weighing the pros and cons of national identification cards. Immigration, border control and economic reasons are just some of the items being debated. It is fairly simple to understand the perceived need to clearly identify an individual’s nationality for reasons such as employment and citizenship benefits. When reviewing things as important as who should receive medical services offered by the government versus who not to provide these services, the need for identifying a countries citizens is critical.

The only form of national identification is a printed piece of paper in many countries, and because of this many of these nations are reviewing their possibilities. These documents are simple to forge since they don't contain a picture or other identifying marks other than being the person holding the document. Reducing the abuse of services and controlling costs is reason enough to implement a national photo ID card and database. Because of these needs and many others it is apparent that some of the information on the identification cards would include characteristics of the holder such as height, weight sex and eye color. Some nations have included items such as retinal scan information and finger prints into the national database and into the identification cards themselves.

Some of the countries that are entertaining or beginning this process do not have an up to date account on its current residents or even census information on their citizens. Implementing a national identification card into a country such as this allows for many other needed benefits, such as tracking the activity of its citizens when it comes to border crossings, criminal records, government employment history or military service. Presently many of these countries have databases to track these items, but most are independent of each other. Creating a national ID card would allow the merging of all of these databases into a common solution that would allow for a much simpler identification and review of an individual history.

Outsourcing has also been a topic of discussion as governments review their best solutions. For many countries, undertaking the mammoth task of capturing data, taking pictures and providing identification cards to every citizen is too large for an administration to handle with their existing resources. A few companies have been providing solutions for governments and FullIdentity.com is one of them. Beyond providing identification cards, this company has been providing tracking solutions along side of ID card implementations for over seven years. In many cases systems have been created for countries that are not only easy to employ, but also offer a financial benefit to the nations implementing these solutions. In laymens terms, when outsourcing the ID card needs of a nation to a third party, the expenses are less than they would be if the government were to take the burden of deploying a solution internally. Due to the discounted costs, the government can charge the citizens less for the identification cards and still have a financial gain to the country. Initially, a country can profit by implementing a national system while protecting its resources in the long run.

It is hard to find an economic reason for a government not to implement a national identification card system. Advocates will shout that big brother is stripping them of their rights and privacy; but shouldnt someone be watching our criminal records, military service and border crossings? Doesn't a government have the responsibility to ensure that only their citizens are receiving benefits from their own country or should anyone be allowed to receive these benefits when their citizenship belongs to another nation?

Source: http://www.fullidentity.com

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