Looks like the future is coming. Fast. See this post that appeared in digg TODAY http://digg.com/tech_news/How_to_Access_the_Internet_A_Guide_from_2025

So this is what the future is going to be like. First step, make this voluntarily. Then a lot of services will use this. I live in Spain, and I see this coming. Here Franco's dictatorship stablished what you're fighting against in many countries right now: a national identity card (called DNI). Our DNI is already an electronic, comes with a chip with all the information and can be read with a card reader, and contains some legally valid certificates with which you can authenticate and sign anything.

For us, this is a normal thing because we've been living having DNI for decades, and if you ask just about ANYONE, it's good. The police have our fingerprints, photos, and all data, and this way they can identify anyone, they can use the fingerprint for crime-scene-techniques like in CSI, etc.

Now the government of Spain is spending a lot of money and time trying to make people use the electronic DNI. They have a nice web page with info for developers (https://zonatic.usatudni.es/). An increasing number of websites are using https (SSL) for authentication via e-DNI (like banks), and Java Applets for signing all kind of things. For example there's a webpage (tractis) in which you can sign electronic and legally valid contracts.

You might be an optimist and think you have two choices: you can either fight against it, or use it. But really, read all above. This is not something you can easily fight against. I am an advocator for liberties, but I'm also used to having DNI, and I've surrendered. I'm helping a new political party called "Partido de Internet" (Internet Party) whose aim is to be able to have a liquid democracy in which our representatives will vote what people vote over the Internet.... using DNI-e. So yes, I'm helping the governmental machinery trying to spread the usage of electronic national identity cards. Welcome our 1984 overlords!

This is the first step. Next step will be to make its usage mandatory for every login. They're requiring everyone to secure their wifi in Germany to prevent unauthorized people from using their Web access to illegally download data. And then, probably much earlier than 2025, we'll be as bad as in the first digg link in this post. We're already living in a distopy worse than 1984 in many ways, but we see it normal because it can always get worse - and it certainly will.