If so, it was only to apply, and only when I visited the local Social Security office (initial application in the middle of the last decade was online). I don't remember being asked for it, but if I was I most likely wouldn't remember.
After that, in the journey of a successful appeal because the denial was totally bogus (as in the denying staff doctor, who never saw me, wrote up a report that the administrative law judge, his assistant, my lawyer or myself simply couldn't understand), and dispersal of benefits, absolutely no demands for an ID card were made.
Side note: I have an official Missouri "NONDRIVER LICENSE" (that's what it's called :-). Amusing name aside, everyone understands what that means and for everything non-driving related it serves the same purpose. It's also very cheap to get. Heck, my father has one because Missouri's concealed carry renewal period is shorter than the driver's license renewal period so this saves him money and hassle.
EDITED: Massachusetts has one: http://www.mass.gov/rmv/license/13bMAID.htm along with a "Massachusetts Liquor ID" (!) that appears to be the same thing except for the obvious age limit. A bit expensive at $25/5 years but that's Taxachusetts for you (says this refugee from that benighted state). One also heard horror stories about suburban DMV offices but I always found the central Boston one to be on the ball, pleasant and efficient.
In the UK people will usually say "Passport or Drivers License" (or if your in a bar just 'ID?') since almost everybody will have at least one of the two.
Pherhaps this is because less people in the US have a passport?
It's an embedded cultural assumption that gets written down for people who abdicate thought to what their computer screen literally says.
Historically, almost everybody in the US has a driver's license, and almost no one has any other meaningful form of ID. Many, if not most Americans will never leave the country, making a passport useless, and up until a few years ago, a US citizen could travel throughout much of North America and the Caribbean without one anyway.
They say it because it's what people say. Treat it as an historical quirk of American English.
its really rare to be asked for ID, it happens but only on the really big stuff (loans, getting a car, buying a _house_).
You would not need to provide a driving license to buy an iPhone.
I have just moved to the US for work and I am amazed at how often you guys get asked for driving license / SSN etc.
Because more people are confused by government ID thinking it means passport, military ID or something like that, than are confused by thinking Drivers License means only a drivers license and nothing else. They may also try to offer items that don't count, such as a photo-ID health card.
It just seems to me surprising to declare someone as stupid for assuming that 'drivers license' literaly meant 'drivers license' as opposed to 'drivers license or equivilent' especially when the customer service person did not help them understand, lots of people end up with various forms of ID from passports to membership cards, it doesn't seem that surprising that someone might not know exactly which forms are equivilent by memory.
Reminds me of confusion in the early 90s with some software requirements specifying "IBM PC" when really meaning "IBM Compatible PC".
I really can't emphasize enough the degree to which the US revolves around state-issued photo IDs, whether in the form of a driver's license or a simple ID card. This assumption is baked into everything.
Take a look at this page: http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/ppi/stats/stats_890.htm...
In 2000, there were fewer than 50 million valid US passports. That's less than 18% of the population at the time, and a chunk of those passports were probably not truly valid -- US passports are good for 10 years, and nobody bothers to tell the State Department when somebody dies.
10 years earlier, in 1990, there were only about 11 million passports, less than 4% of the US population at the time.
This is because nobody needed one. Few Americans leave the US to go anywhere other than Canada or Mexico. Until 2009, land-based travel to Canada and Mexico did not require a passport, and until 2007, air travel to Canada and Mexico didn't, either.
This isn't Europe, you can't drive across multiple international borders on a day trip. It's possible to traverse over 4,400km in a straight line (on land) without leaving the 48 contiguous US states, and over 6,600km in a straight line (on land) going from northwestern Canada to southern Mexico, with only the US in between.
In contrast, by the time it became common for Americans to need an ID card at all, drivers licenses were also becoming common. Win-win.
My ex was career military. So was his father. He spent most of his life on or near military bases, where everyone will take a federally issued military ID. He renewed his driver's license by mail one year when we lived very far from the state where he was registered as a voting citizen (paying taxes and keeping his driver's license from there). It showed up with no photo and in place of the photo it clearly stated that it was valid as proof of license to drive but was not to be used as "identification". He was on recruiting duty, so we weren't actually near a military base. Which meant that for the first time in his life, no one wanted to take his military ID (with photo and SSN on it) as ID if he wrote a check or something. They all wanted his driver's license, which he would then whip out and show them it couldn't be used for ID purposes. This stumped a great many people in entry level retail jobs.