Nick Cohen at the Guardian explains why people who justify national ID schemes are completely mistaken:

The British, who survived the First and Second World Wars, the cold war and IRA bombs appear willing to tear up their civil liberties because of Islamist murderers. ….

The standard reply to the public’s belief that “if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear” is to ask: “So you don’t draw your curtains then?”

It is good as far as it goes, but a better warning against unconstrained police surveillance comes from our experience online. Malice and mobbish rage drive the Twitter storms that break more often than the autumn rains…..

The same people who scream “censorship” and “persecution” when one of their own is targeted lead the slobbering pack when the chance comes to censor and persecute their enemies. They want them fined, punished and sacked, and never pause for a moment to consider their dizzying double standards or reflect that the weapons they use against others will one day be turned on them……

Employers examine Facebook pages before they hire staff. A politically incorrect post can lead to your sacking or demotion. …..

Give it the chance and the authoritarian political class will ape the authoritarian managerial elite and be just as malicious as the Twitter heresy hunters.

The Dorset council that used surveillance powers designed to catch gangsters to spy on a mother who was trying to get her child into a decent school is a symbol of our times.

However outrageous and ham-fisted its behaviour was, the authorities could say that parents are breaking the rules if they game the school system. The police will make the same argument once they have the freedom to roam the web. They will say they have a duty to collect evidence of any crime, however minor. They will do it because they can.”

I found the Cohen article archived at aadhaar-articles.blogspot.com, which is an archive of articles focusing on aadhaar and related concerns.