As all of us go through life, we have our share of problems. A bitter
> divorce or romance breakup. Fired from a job. Fight in a bar.
> Dispute with our landlord. Disputes with our neighbors. Thanks to
> modern LAWS all of these incidents are carefully tracked on our
> permanent record and may come back to haunt us. (And give our
> creditors an excuse to charge us more!) Sadly, controls are weak and
> inaccurate and malicious info can be added as well. As mentioned, we
> don't even know the companies who keep this stuff and we can't get at > it.
Sure -- I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm willing to deal with the resulting fallout if I get in a fight in a bar or with my landlord or whatever.
What I'm not willing to deal with is the same fallout because somebody else (with the same name) had one of the above issues happen.
In this respect, a universal ID is a good thing, names simply aren't unique enough.
Whether the other issues are significant enough to be concerned about or not is another question altogether, but in my opinion, the benefit outweighs the risk right now.