This WP article,Single Government ID Moves Closer to Reality (washingtonpost.com), discusses the new NIST ID card and raises some of the objections some workers might have. One objection I don’t see addressed is the federal employee that doesn’t want to carry the card when not at work. Are they going to have a bank of safety deposit boxes at the door for the employees to leave the cards in?

What’s the problem? Tracking the cards off-premise. Not only is it a potential privacy issues, but those with the right scanners can track government employees from afar and indiscriminately. There needs to be an off switch on the card, or maybe the users can put the card in a lead-lined holder off-premise and block any RF.

I’m sure that the ‘powers that be’ will think of all this. It’s kind of silly to think of a squad of soldiers sneaking about in the dark and the enemy watching the IDs broadcasting their location, surprise.