I would think this question would have to be more specific. Most people are against a Gov't ID, an ID that is National as oppose to by State. Why? I am not really sure but I guess anything that is directly related to the Fedral Gov't as oppose to local Gov'ts is probably a scary thing to many people. I know it scares me.

We've already got the SS card as ID.  The kids now get it right in the hospital a day after they're born.  What more do you want?   And that is now being used for things they said originally would never be used for. 

What Aroddo didn't mention is that it is mandatory for german citizens to have a federal ID card from 16 year old onwards (at least I believe it is mandatory) and to carry some form of official ID with you at all time. In lieu of your "Personalausweiss" a drivers license will do in most cases, but not everybody has one of those because you can get by fine without owning a car here. You also need a federal form of ID to vote and the Perso is good for traveling inside those EU nations + Switzerland that are inside the Schengen treaty (no border controlls inside the EU).

I had to get a new one recently, and now the requirement is to have a biometric picture taken (no smile). Usually people look like they just had been arrested and cops just had taken the mugshot lol. The new biometric passport contains a chip that stores the pic of course but also a scanned fingerprint. It is supposed to make it near impossible to counterfit that way, but the downside is that my fingerprints are in the system as soon as I use it somewhere (like going to the US) and I don't really trust governments in handling personal data.

It is also required in germany to register with the cityhall as soon as you move in there and even if you move within the same city. They know where each and every one of their citizens live - important for communal taxes and fees I suppose.

 

 The chip doesn't hold the information about your work etc.. why should it? It isn't a federal file about you and a means for the government to know where you are at any given moment, it is done to make it counterfit proof.. and because the US had pressured the EU countries and threatend to quit the Visa Waiver programm with which EU citizens don't need a visa to travel to the US if the EU wouldn't comply. So our parliament passed the bill in that regard in 2007 - after all, it is a nice thing to simply buy a ticket and to fill out a form answering questions like "did you ever commit genocide" "do you plan a terrorist attack on US soil" "Are you a war criminal" "Do you carry infectious diseases" "do you have a criminal record".. I wonder if anybody ever answered any question with YES.

All that is saved on the chip is your dob, sex, hight, eyecolour, adress and 2 indexfinger fingerprints, not your whole biography. Lowjacked passports are a bit too much 1984 - sounds like conspiracy to me. There isn't really that much use to it anyway even if it were true, because there is no guarantee that the owner of said pasport will be near it anyway.

 

 

Interesting, thanks. I don't know if the European Union passorts work the same, but it is pretty likely that they do. In any case, I didn't give them more information than I stated, and as far as I know there isn't some other file about me stored in some databases. I am a bit freaky about personal data and secure storage of thereof - and there I don't trust the government.

 

Look at your passport, somewhere in very fine print you will see that it was made in the USA, The US prints most of the worlds money, and passports and have been doing so for about 60 years.

Credit card, debt card, mobile phone, or an E-mail account if you have them they know who you are, where you live what you buy and where you buy it. From there they know what schools you went to, where you work, what you drive if you have a car, and the sum total of money you have.

We get briefed on it and a lot of other things each week. I work for the Department of Homeland Security as a consultant. You would not believe the numbers of people each week that get arrested for trying to carry guns on airplains. AQ is still trying to get bombs on airplains. The last one to get a bomb on an airplane was Richard Reed. It does not stop AQ from trying about 500 times a year. For those of you that think the war on terror is a joke just remember that DHS has a perfect record for the last 7 years. Thousands of attemps no success for AQ to date. Cross your fingers.

Don't you personally think that this is just a little bit risky? People don't even know where their personel data is stored and who has access to it, and wether those that do have access to sensitive data like credit card and bank details, are responsible persons. There were several scandals recently in Germany where Post (mail) employees sold private data to add firms, or that insurance companies employees sell sensitive data onwards to whomever is interested. I don't really want my information accessible by jus about anybody.. and I don't have a credit card, and I certainly find it creepy that the US Government could find me via my gps passport lol.. Orwell says hello.

I once asked a border control guy in Newark if anybody ever answered those questions with yes when I was visiting NYC about 10 years ago - honestly, those questions are ridiculous! If I were a terrorist or someone with nefarious plans, I would certainly not announce it in a form like that, or admit that I commited genocide and am in fact a war criminal. I doubt that you catch anybody through that questionaire.. or those bozos that you do aren't really very clever.

Even so, my name is probably stored in some database already because I once tried to enter the US without a visa.. even though that wasn't my fault. Friends of ours had chartered a plane and invited us  to fly back to the US with them, and we didn't really know that we needed a visa when traveling on a private carrier. It was quite the experience lol.. nothing happened, we had to pay 200 dollars each to apply for the waiver, and the pilots had to pay a huge fine for bringing someone inside the country without a visa. There was nothing criminal about it, but the border control lady was pretty tough. She initially told us we could either go back where we came from (Shannon in Ireland) or go to Canada and apply for a visa or we could do it right there but then we had no guarantee that we would get it, and we would have to pay the 200 bucks wether we got it or not. I'll never forget it, they opened up and lit a checkin hall just for us.. it was huge and empty except for us. it was quite the experience. Thankfully this didn't hinder another visit to the US a few years later with a regular commercial flight.