In my country (Oz) we had a referendum a few decades back about a national ID card, which failed to pass. I for one am against any form of centralised ID system. The basic premise (of the time) was, "if you want to know me, here I am". The government department of Birth, Deaths and Marriages goes to some lengths to ensure that these 3 things are not tied to any one number. Ironically, the government got what it wanted when it introduced a Tax File Number and has bled into some other systems like banking, but thankfully it's not as bad as the U.S's SSN.

I seem to recall reading here on HN a few weeks back how surnames came into existence: it was because the (? Italian) government wanted to track taxes. Before that everyone had several ways of naming themselves: John, John son of Joe, John of someplace, John the carpenter, etc. Personally, I really like that because I'm not just "one thing", but am a person who has different aspects.