This morning whilst I sat down I saw the start of a new national identity card in Thailand that goes far and beyond the layers that we already see with normal identity cards. These cards start to move into the sphere of being one card to rule them all from not just national identity to the world of banking and even education (both for students and for teachers). Whilst it is a great idea in principle and it means that the five something cards I currently carry around in my wallet reduces to one, it also starts to mean that one bit of plastic becomes the entire part of one persons life, and that in itself is a bit of a worry when you think about it because with that one card you can take over their life or contol their life or even rewrite their life so that they are never a part of the world again and change their identity. This one card becomes powerful but we find that even now without the one card to rule them all we have a situation where people can find their social security number in the US (which is analagous to the tax file number in Australia). We’ll see how it turns out next time I’m in Thailand.