Comment Re:National ID cards in Spain (Score 1) 746
Just to add that the government in Spain has been issuing digital certificates to the citizens for some years; these certificates are intended mostly for bureaucratic use (paying taxes online and the like) and are issued on demand.
The new generation of spanish national identity cards have a builtin chip able to store these certificates and other data (such as the digital image of your fingerprint). These new cards are now on evaluation and are dated to be fully available next year. By then, citizens won't need to ask for a digital certificate anymore, as these will be issued with each new card. This help moving to the net as many bureaucratic tasks as possible.
Finally I'd like to mention that identity cards are such a long term and usual item in Spain that aren't seen as an offense to privacy: seems perfectly natural to identify yourself as a "regular citizen" when you want to benefit from "regular services" from your government, such as education, health, etc. I don't think it's worse to be identified by a democratic goverment than by, let's say, a bank (everybody has a credit card, and your bank could make an unfair use of all the data about you collected through your card usage patterns).
The new generation of spanish national identity cards have a builtin chip able to store these certificates and other data (such as the digital image of your fingerprint). These new cards are now on evaluation and are dated to be fully available next year. By then, citizens won't need to ask for a digital certificate anymore, as these will be issued with each new card. This help moving to the net as many bureaucratic tasks as possible.
Finally I'd like to mention that identity cards are such a long term and usual item in Spain that aren't seen as an offense to privacy: seems perfectly natural to identify yourself as a "regular citizen" when you want to benefit from "regular services" from your government, such as education, health, etc. I don't think it's worse to be identified by a democratic goverment than by, let's say, a bank (everybody has a credit card, and your bank could make an unfair use of all the data about you collected through your card usage patterns).
