I never used to think too much one way or the other about a national ID. On the one hand, I thought a centralized system of ID could help mitigate much of the cross-agency bureucratic confusion currently plaguing the government (see also: how the VA Tech shooter got to buy two guns after having been committed). On the other hand, I figured it would get the "Mark of the Beast" crowd riled up, and growing up in Georgia I learned early on that the paranoid fundamentalists are a potent electoral force when they get riled.

But then the VA managed to lose enough personal information on one laptop, including my own information, to financially ruin millions of people who did nothing more than enlist to serve their country. And, within a matter of months, multiple other agencies managed to similarly lose massive amounts of personal information belonging to employees and private citizens. If the government is so incapable of safely handling personal data, then I cannot justify giving them direct access to so much more, in one central location. The potential for a massive data loss just seems greater than the potential for streamlining the bureaucracy, given the current disregard for basic ID security.