For the two or three Americans who may be interested on the coverage of this case in other countries, I can confirm it's been nonexistent in at least Italy, Norway and Sweden. It's either a world-wide plot og the liberal media with the exception of the US, or someone just wanted to make noise and discredit the UN in one take.
I suppose you might be interested to know that 0.55ppmv means "0.55 parts per million in volume". If you did not notice, this is negligible for any practical purpose.
Besides, it really broke my heart that you did not read my post. Nice you had the time to reply to it however.</sarcasm>
Oh good. So we have a more efficient way to destroy one of the most critical resources in the world that has no alternative (water) in order to make a highly volatile fuel source that has viable alternatives.
Maybe you missed the point that when you convert hydrogen, you get water back. It's the reaction baby.
Except in the "first world", water is not exactly cheap and plentiful.
You are thinking about drink water. You don't necessarily need that for electrolysis. And anyway, the scales are waaay different, much less is needed for hydrogen production. Not that it matters given my point above.
The idea is notproducing hydrogen with sodium as an energy source. There is no pure sodium whatsoever around, it's too reactive (same reason there is no hydrogen in the atmosphere).
So, instead of buying methanol cartridges, we would buy sodium sticks, put some water in a small tank in our laptop, and this would produce hydrogen and power for the machine.
Furthermore, the most common way of producing hydrogen is not electrolysis, but reforming of hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas), which is done on an industrial scale in any refinery.
The article itself has a good number of inaccuracies. For instance, other than the electrolysis thing, you read:
9 percent of a kilogram of the powder gets converted to hydrogen
This is insane. The powder does not get converted to hydrogen, the water does. And still I'm afraid a unit error may be lurking.
The PEM fuel cells are not a way to store hydrogen, but a way to convert it to electricity; the solid oxide fuel cells will never be used in vehicles, since they are expensive, running at temperatures up to 1000 degrees, good only for large-scale plants, and brittle. And they take 8 hours to start up, and they can start up only so many times before they start cracking (about ten).
Did you know that hydrogen is a greenhouse gas?
Oh my, did they know that hydrogen is extremely reactive, and will burn with oxygen at the first occasion? You don't even need a spark, all it takes is the static electricity of a windy day. CO2 accumulates, hydrogen would disappear rapidly.
Methanol is flammable
Of course it is. It contains energy. There is no such thing as an energy carrier that does not contain some sort of danger. It would not be much of an energy carrier if it were inert. So, gasoline burns, hydrogen burns, nuclear goes bad big time, methanol burns, and lithium batteries explode if you hammer them or if they are produced with poor standards.
oxide fuel cells require a catalyst
Solid oxide fuel cells do not require a catalyst. They are the only ones that do not, since they operate at high temperatures. Assuming the article meant SOFC.
Hydrogen fuel cells produced with the company's powers could also run a car, although not particularly economically in the foreseeable future.
Common misconception, hydrogen costs about 0.8 euro per gasoline liter equivalent: in Europe that's already way convenient. It's the infrastructure that's missing.
"That side of the periodic table people tend to ignore," he said.
Alkaline metals being ignored? Of all the bullshit... they might not be C, O or even Al, but most know sodium better than technetium, praseodimiun or some transition metal forgotten somewhere in the limbo of rare earths.
You make a funny specimen. I just made the case about people sincerely believing their government's propaganda, without the government necessarily being directly behind it, and you offer a specular view of a US propaganda-fed dumbass.
You absolutely believe the embassy incident was an accident. I have no proof of either the accident theory or the opposite, and given the conditions under which it happened there will probably never be. So I suppose both are worth considering. Just like Chinese believe you did it, you are sure you did not. Fact is, you know nothing.
Astounding that there are people still believing the WMD hoax. I almost suspect you are a troll.
You firmly believe your country goes around helping the world restore peace and love, exactly what nationalist propaganda wants you to believe (by definition). I can't possibly count all the lies you believe in in your ludicrous enumeration: you're the good guys in Iraq (oil? There's oil here? Oh why, what a surprise!), that you were "helping" Afghanistan by financing terrorists against a legitimate government (that let women in universities among other things), leading to Soviet intervention, and even claim your troops "beat their asses" in Somalia, when actually the Somali warlords put on a fierce resistance, after which it was conveniently decided that there was no point in staying there (possibly because there is no oil in Somalia?).
Spectacular ending: "to keep terrorists, madmen, and militant communist empires from blowing up everyone else." Who are you, someone straight out from the "Full Metal Jacket" movie?
So, if you have any voice in the administration, please suggest enacting your threat of "yanking the troops". The world will be grateful if you stop pouring shit on the fan every other year.
I'm not sure it's worrying or conforting that the US are looking more and more like the Roman empire, with a larger and larger slice of their business coming from wars instead of production. Even scientific research is often founded by the army instead of proper research institutions, military spending is at its highest and well beyond anything on the planet, and with the euro available as an alternative reserve currency the dollar's value has been going down for some time. It all looks like some crisis is looming, and I'm worried of how a country so full of weapons (and people ready to use them) is going to react to the reduction of its importance.
when an American B-2 bomber dropped five 2,000-pound bombs on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. State-run media immediately used the Internet to suggest that the bombing was no mistake. [...] Thanks to these efforts, today an astonishing number of Chinese still believe that the bombing was a deliberate attack [...]
An even more astonishing number of Americans believe it was an accident.
Seriously, this guy seems to believe that all show of nationalism within China is the work of the CCP. There is undoubtedly some propaganda, but that is no different from other countries. I don't have to mention WMDs, do I?
And what's the problem with Ipv6? If the US and EU are slacking, China is using a new technology (not proprietary AFAIK) to provide more IP addresses for a country in rapid development. One has to be paranoid to see the Party's only interest in this ("In communist China, technology updates you!")
Fine, China has an authoritative set of rulers. For my part, China has never bombed my country, never planted booby-traps, never tried to interfere with our politics, and as far as I know we've never even been at war. Since our current main ally has done all this over and over, I'll keep my worries elsewhere.
My sympathies to the Chinese who strive for a better China, but this article is really paranoid. Wait till the writer finds out that most TVs in Europe don't use NTSC, and that the French have their own system...
[...] generating H2 by electrolysis is practically about 67% efficient, with Carnot efficiency of 83%
Actually using Carnot efficiency outside of heat scope is Evil. The definition of "efficiency" can be very tricky. Modern electrolisers can get up to 90% efficiency, at least according to the producers. However, that's probably the peak value, and measured in reaction enthalpy divided by absorbed power. This makes the results look better because the enthalpy is sensibly larger than the Gibbs' free energy, which is what you actually need to split water.
So, actually, water electrolysis has a 282.1/237.1=119% "Carnot efficiency", if you measure the limit as above (which, I repeat, is a Bad Confusing Thing).
FC have extremally low power density, compared to internal combustion engines. So they weight more.
I would not say "extremely". They can be placed in a car, and that's enough. Weight concerns are best directed at hydrogen storage system, which still are being steadily improved and are already technically viable, for that sake.
Moreover, the cheaper FC use PEM, and have an efficency less than 40%
Unsubstantiated and misleading claim. This sounds like the efficiency you get at maximum power output (which can even be less than that). While internal-combustion engines actually increase their efficiency with power output up to a maximum, fuel cells steadily lose efficiency the more power you take out from them, having their maximum at minimum power.
Fact is, you are normally much closer to minimum than maximum. You almost never use all the kW of the engine, because those are designed for high-speed acceleration on highways. Urban driving hardly requires 20% of this. There, FCs are much more efficient.
PEM is in no way a "cheap" material in the sense it's bad (and neither in the sense it's not expensive...). It's basically the only technology usable on a car. You are not thinking about putting an SOFC on a car are you?
So you pay a lot more, for having the same level of CO2 emitted
Emitting CO2 at a central facility allows to manage it. See the StatoilSleipner project for CO2 storage: you cannot do that if you generate CO2 on the end-user's car.
Last thing: nuclear cannot be used NOW for the production of hydrogen, [...]
Nuclear, obviously, can already be used for hydrogen production (I'm no advocate of nuclear though) by producing electricity. The technology you mention is some other stuff that is completely theoretical at the current stage (and I hope it stays that way).
Just your friendly neighborhood chemical engineer.
Will it be more profitable than making an equivalent amount of hydrogen energy? That depends on who values the two processes...
It's true that "profitable" depends completely on the value you put on gasoline and hydrogen, and is therefore arbitrary in principle. But, gasoline is a complex mixture of chemicals that undergo a long series of modifications. Starting from building blocks as carbon has already been done, but it's generally more expensive and relying on other fossile sources.
In any case, it is quite unlikely to find a practical way to channel electrical energy into chemical bonds of alkanes. Alkane electrochemistry is pretty much nonexistent. It might be possible, but unlikely to be either practical or economically viable.
Energy is divided in two parts, exergy and anergy. Their sum (i.e. energy) is constant, as the first law of thermodynamics goes.
Exergy is the part that you can convert in any form you like. Heat at ambient temperature is 100% anergy, since it's at equilibrium with its surroundings (yet it does contain energy, because those molecules are indeed moving around). Electricity is about 100% exergy, since it can be transformed in pretty much anything. Sunrays are in equilibrium with the sun's surface, about 5000 kelvin; therefore, they are about 1-300/5000=94% exergy. Heat used in cars, coal plants and gas turbines is exergy to various degrees depending on the combustion temperature.
As there is no such thing as a free lunch in thermodynamics, exergy is destroyed and corresponding anergy generated in any (real) process. Destroyed exergy is equal (ideally) or larger (in practice) than the energy you actually use.
So, all energy is non-reusable, because if you use it, you corrupt it to anergy, and you can't use it again; mathematically and physically it's still there, but not in a useful form: you can't use the same sunray twice. That's why quite some time ago someone came up with the word renewable, meaning that you are quite safe if you count on the sun delivering sunrays forever (at least on human scale).
If it takes more oil to obtain hydrogen in proper form than just refining it to diesel or gasoline and using it in an internal combustion engine, is it going to help?
Here we go again...
Gas engines have low efficiencies, between 30 and 10%. FCs have higher, about 50+%. So what you lose in the refinery you more than make up in the engine.
FCs are quiet. Acoustic pollution is not a secondary issue in many cities.
Hydrogen can be made out of many things. Oil is one. Natural gas another one. Nuclear, hydro, tidal, wind--you can make hydrogen out of pretty much anything, while you cannot make gasoline out of electricity. The keyword is flexibility: your country could gradually go over from oil to renewable, always delivering hydrogen as a fuel.
They failed to build their own economy due to the oppressive nature of Communism.
Aside from the fact that freedom has nothing to do with economic development (Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet had all quite good economic results), you have maybe not noticed that the Vietnamese economy is growing faster than the US economy, and not by a small margin (7.7% against 4.4%). The fact they are still underdeveloped might have some connection with the fact their country was pretty much razed to the ground some years ago.
Let me get this straight - they want actually you to pay, and that much, for a compulsory item? Now that's insane. As far as my experience goes, I go to the town hall, order the thing, get it a few days later when they printed it. State sponsors through taxes. Again, what can be the price of a piece of printed paper...
Nonsense. Italy has compulsory ID, and has recently hosted some of the largest rallies ever, againts war and the government (3 million demonstrators in Rome).
Perfect tracking of people means perfect control.
The point with ID is not tracking, is the capability of saying "I am I, and this is proof of it!". If your government plans huge databases with sensitive data in them, that is another matter that has nothing to do with ID cards.
It may also have escaped you attention but once we all have a government issued UID, which the government has said from the start it will encourage everyone to use, your political affiliation, medical history, bank account details etc become very accessible. If you don't understand that you don't understand the issue here.
First, notice my use of the present tense. Current ID's (in Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, whatever) do not do anything else than connecting physical body and legal person. If your government wants big-brother powers, I'm against it of course.
Since you are not mentioning your nationality here, I assume you are American. I was in Texas last year, and I got to know that (at least in some states) people are registered for vote with the indication whether they are democratic or republican. I was quite surprised and had it explained over again. Now, that is sensitive information leaking in the public, and much more to be worried about.
How exacly knowing my present or previous addresses endangers my bank account or the privacy of my personal political opinions is something that is currently beyond me.
But they *could* be used a a fascist tool right ? I mean its a possibility.
Oh my, even the telephone might be used as a fascist tool. Even airplanes and ketchup. Auschwitz or six-pointed yellow stars were intrinsecally fascist things, as there is no legitimate use for those.
But if the goverment has a Push button mechanism of deciding who is "in" and who is "out" then you can cut out a large swathe without confrontation.
Contrarily to whatever they told you, our ID cards do not come equipped with radio-triggered explosives, nor any sensitive information such as political or religious affiliation, medical history and the such. Only information to tie name/surname/birth date and place to the physical person.
Mandatory ID was introduced in the Netherlands this year.
I understand, but your story is mostly of a dorky government than an intrinsecally evil tool. If the politicians have introduced it unproperly, and the police are taking only a punitive stance, that's another problem (and definitely a more serious one).
It is beyond me why the protesters simply don't show up with ID, handing it over to the policemen with their middle fingers. Again, if it's because they are afraid of consequences, there are more serious problems than ID.
[...] [E]very person had to be registered and had to declare their religion.
Who ever suggested writing sensitive information on an ID card, such as religious or political affiliation, or medical history? On my ID I have just name, surname, photo, a few points about physical description like height and color of eyes. The marital status has recently been made optional (before it was bachelor/married/divorced/widow etc, now it's either married/free or a series of asterisks). Of course I would be against that.
About the identity theft: of course credit card is another thing, but setting up a bank account on your behalf is much more serious. Having just to find out info as "mother's maiden name" makes it ludicrously simple.
I'm quite impressed at how the anglosaxon world reacts to ID cards. They are present in most countries, and are a far cry from a fascist tool.
As far as my experience goes, in Italy you can get fined for loitering if you are found without "papers" and you are over 18. Yet nobody ever asked me papers without a good reason (airport, electoral office, and such things). Never seen an evil use of that, and can hardly conceive one.
In Norway, in order to do many things you have to be registered at the Forlkeregister. For instance, to open a bank account, have a job and the such. Banks and employers must in turn report on your savings and earnings to the tax office, so that your tax papers come into your mailbox already filled in, and you have to worry only about minor adjustments. If anyone accesses these data on a non-routine basis, you are automatically sent a letter notifying you of who asked (usually they need your permission).
Finally, it baffles me how people are so nervous about a stupid piece of paper or plastic. On the No2ID site I read taurinities like it would cause racial discrimination, fingerprint people like criminals (I have been taken fingerprints only once in my life, at the military draft visit), and will be useless against crime. Never mind there are heaps of experience in continental Europe of criminals caught because they provided a not-good-enough fake ID (one I remember was mafia boss Madonia). The claim that identity theft would not be affected is simply ludicrous: the very term "identity theft" is exclusive to the anglosaxon world, as identity theft is impossible with an ID-card system; in continental Europe, we don't even talk of it.
And last but not least, how can be that people are worried about ID cards when living in countries where the government has been given insane powers to detain people without trial and rights, like in Guantanamo?
That's something I totally agree with - one should be proud of his own achievements, not those of people he never met that happened to crawl out of a vagina somewhere in the same area.
I suggest you watch the movie by Dino Risi La marcia su Roma, or "the march on Rome", about two blissfully ignorant chaps who, amidst the social turmoil of post-WW1 Italy, join the Fascist party.
They join it because their program was really cool. Serious! They promised the abolishment of monarchy, freedom of speech, abolishment of nobility titles, and the Greatest Promise of them All in Rural Italy, the redistribution of land to farmers. Pretty cool program.
After being busted at the elections with a zero point something percent, the Fascists decide that, if they don't win with democracy, they'll win marching on Rome.
During the March, all the promises gradually wither, and as Mussolini takes power the two, disillusioned and having already striked out all the promises of Fascism, leave. The king is reported saying at the same time: "Ok, let's try these fascists for a few months, shall we?".
Memorable quote from the movie: (The fascist are attacking a section of the Communist Party. A painting of Karl Marx is being burnt) Chap: Excuse me, but did not we had freedom of speech in the program? Fascist squad leader: Of course! but it's this way: they are free to say what they want, but we are also free to beat them for that. If they don't want to say what they want because they are afraid we are going to beat them, their problem.
Slashdot Mirror
For the two or three Americans who may be interested on the coverage of this case in other countries, I can confirm it's been nonexistent in at least Italy, Norway and Sweden. It's either a world-wide plot og the liberal media with the exception of the US, or someone just wanted to make noise and discredit the UN in one take.
I suppose you might be interested to know that 0.55ppmv means "0.55 parts per million in volume". If you did not notice, this is negligible for any practical purpose.
Besides, it really broke my heart that you did not read my post. Nice you had the time to reply to it however.</sarcasm>
Maybe you missed the point that when you convert hydrogen, you get water back. It's the reaction baby.
You are thinking about drink water. You don't necessarily need that for electrolysis. And anyway, the scales are waaay different, much less is needed for hydrogen production. Not that it matters given my point above.
The idea is not producing hydrogen with sodium as an energy source. There is no pure sodium whatsoever around, it's too reactive (same reason there is no hydrogen in the atmosphere).
So, instead of buying methanol cartridges, we would buy sodium sticks, put some water in a small tank in our laptop, and this would produce hydrogen and power for the machine.
Furthermore, the most common way of producing hydrogen is not electrolysis, but reforming of hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas), which is done on an industrial scale in any refinery.
The article itself has a good number of inaccuracies. For instance, other than the electrolysis thing, you read:
This is insane. The powder does not get converted to hydrogen, the water does. And still I'm afraid a unit error may be lurking.
The PEM fuel cells are not a way to store hydrogen, but a way to convert it to electricity; the solid oxide fuel cells will never be used in vehicles, since they are expensive, running at temperatures up to 1000 degrees, good only for large-scale plants, and brittle. And they take 8 hours to start up, and they can start up only so many times before they start cracking (about ten).
Oh my, did they know that hydrogen is extremely reactive, and will burn with oxygen at the first occasion? You don't even need a spark, all it takes is the static electricity of a windy day. CO2 accumulates, hydrogen would disappear rapidly.
Of course it is. It contains energy. There is no such thing as an energy carrier that does not contain some sort of danger. It would not be much of an energy carrier if it were inert. So, gasoline burns, hydrogen burns, nuclear goes bad big time, methanol burns, and lithium batteries explode if you hammer them or if they are produced with poor standards.
Solid oxide fuel cells do not require a catalyst. They are the only ones that do not, since they operate at high temperatures. Assuming the article meant SOFC.
Common misconception, hydrogen costs about 0.8 euro per gasoline liter equivalent: in Europe that's already way convenient. It's the infrastructure that's missing.
Alkaline metals being ignored? Of all the bullshit... they might not be C, O or even Al, but most know sodium better than technetium, praseodimiun or some transition metal forgotten somewhere in the limbo of rare earths.
You know that you read Slashdot too often when a post like parent gets you sexually aroused.
FIY, more modern PC cases allow internal USB connection, so you can have "missionary position".
You make a funny specimen. I just made the case about people sincerely believing their government's propaganda, without the government necessarily being directly behind it, and you offer a specular view of a US propaganda-fed dumbass.
So, if you have any voice in the administration, please suggest enacting your threat of "yanking the troops". The world will be grateful if you stop pouring shit on the fan every other year.
I'm not sure it's worrying or conforting that the US are looking more and more like the Roman empire, with a larger and larger slice of their business coming from wars instead of production. Even scientific research is often founded by the army instead of proper research institutions, military spending is at its highest and well beyond anything on the planet, and with the euro available as an alternative reserve currency the dollar's value has been going down for some time. It all looks like some crisis is looming, and I'm worried of how a country so full of weapons (and people ready to use them) is going to react to the reduction of its importance.
China may not be perfect, but...
An even more astonishing number of Americans believe it was an accident.
Seriously, this guy seems to believe that all show of nationalism within China is the work of the CCP. There is undoubtedly some propaganda, but that is no different from other countries. I don't have to mention WMDs, do I?
And what's the problem with Ipv6? If the US and EU are slacking, China is using a new technology (not proprietary AFAIK) to provide more IP addresses for a country in rapid development. One has to be paranoid to see the Party's only interest in this ("In communist China, technology updates you!")
Fine, China has an authoritative set of rulers. For my part, China has never bombed my country, never planted booby-traps, never tried to interfere with our politics, and as far as I know we've never even been at war. Since our current main ally has done all this over and over, I'll keep my worries elsewhere.
My sympathies to the Chinese who strive for a better China, but this article is really paranoid. Wait till the writer finds out that most TVs in Europe don't use NTSC, and that the French have their own system...
Not sure what you mean, but last time I checked the reversible potential of that reaction was 1.23 V.
Actually using Carnot efficiency outside of heat scope is Evil. The definition of "efficiency" can be very tricky. Modern electrolisers can get up to 90% efficiency, at least according to the producers. However, that's probably the peak value, and measured in reaction enthalpy divided by absorbed power. This makes the results look better because the enthalpy is sensibly larger than the Gibbs' free energy, which is what you actually need to split water.
So, actually, water electrolysis has a 282.1/237.1=119% "Carnot efficiency", if you measure the limit as above (which, I repeat, is a Bad Confusing Thing).
I would not say "extremely". They can be placed in a car, and that's enough. Weight concerns are best directed at hydrogen storage system, which still are being steadily improved and are already technically viable, for that sake.
Unsubstantiated and misleading claim. This sounds like the efficiency you get at maximum power output (which can even be less than that). While internal-combustion engines actually increase their efficiency with power output up to a maximum, fuel cells steadily lose efficiency the more power you take out from them, having their maximum at minimum power.
Fact is, you are normally much closer to minimum than maximum. You almost never use all the kW of the engine, because those are designed for high-speed acceleration on highways. Urban driving hardly requires 20% of this. There, FCs are much more efficient.
PEM is in no way a "cheap" material in the sense it's bad (and neither in the sense it's not expensive...). It's basically the only technology usable on a car. You are not thinking about putting an SOFC on a car are you?
Emitting CO2 at a central facility allows to manage it. See the Statoil Sleipner project for CO2 storage: you cannot do that if you generate CO2 on the end-user's car.
Nuclear, obviously, can already be used for hydrogen production (I'm no advocate of nuclear though) by producing electricity. The technology you mention is some other stuff that is completely theoretical at the current stage (and I hope it stays that way).
Just your friendly neighborhood chemical engineer.
It's true that "profitable" depends completely on the value you put on gasoline and hydrogen, and is therefore arbitrary in principle. But, gasoline is a complex mixture of chemicals that undergo a long series of modifications. Starting from building blocks as carbon has already been done, but it's generally more expensive and relying on other fossile sources.
In any case, it is quite unlikely to find a practical way to channel electrical energy into chemical bonds of alkanes. Alkane electrochemistry is pretty much nonexistent. It might be possible, but unlikely to be either practical or economically viable.
<Thermodynamics nazism>
Energy is divided in two parts, exergy and anergy. Their sum (i.e. energy) is constant, as the first law of thermodynamics goes.
Exergy is the part that you can convert in any form you like. Heat at ambient temperature is 100% anergy, since it's at equilibrium with its surroundings (yet it does contain energy, because those molecules are indeed moving around). Electricity is about 100% exergy, since it can be transformed in pretty much anything. Sunrays are in equilibrium with the sun's surface, about 5000 kelvin; therefore, they are about 1-300/5000=94% exergy. Heat used in cars, coal plants and gas turbines is exergy to various degrees depending on the combustion temperature.
As there is no such thing as a free lunch in thermodynamics, exergy is destroyed and corresponding anergy generated in any (real) process. Destroyed exergy is equal (ideally) or larger (in practice) than the energy you actually use.
So, all energy is non-reusable, because if you use it, you corrupt it to anergy, and you can't use it again; mathematically and physically it's still there, but not in a useful form: you can't use the same sunray twice. That's why quite some time ago someone came up with the word renewable, meaning that you are quite safe if you count on the sun delivering sunrays forever (at least on human scale).
Here we go again...
Aside from the fact that freedom has nothing to do with economic development (Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet had all quite good economic results), you have maybe not noticed that the Vietnamese economy is growing faster than the US economy, and not by a small margin (7.7% against 4.4%).
The fact they are still underdeveloped might have some connection with the fact their country was pretty much razed to the ground some years ago.
Let me get this straight - they want actually you to pay, and that much, for a compulsory item? Now that's insane. As far as my experience goes, I go to the town hall, order the thing, get it a few days later when they printed it. State sponsors through taxes. Again, what can be the price of a piece of printed paper...
Nonsense. Italy has compulsory ID, and has recently hosted some of the largest rallies ever, againts war and the government (3 million demonstrators in Rome).
The point with ID is not tracking, is the capability of saying "I am I, and this is proof of it!". If your government plans huge databases with sensitive data in them, that is another matter that has nothing to do with ID cards.
First, notice my use of the present tense. Current ID's (in Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, whatever) do not do anything else than connecting physical body and legal person. If your government wants big-brother powers, I'm against it of course.
Since you are not mentioning your nationality here, I assume you are American. I was in Texas last year, and I got to know that (at least in some states) people are registered for vote with the indication whether they are democratic or republican. I was quite surprised and had it explained over again. Now, that is sensitive information leaking in the public, and much more to be worried about.
How exacly knowing my present or previous addresses endangers my bank account or the privacy of my personal political opinions is something that is currently beyond me.
In related news: people trust George W. Bush with defeating terrorism.
Oh my, even the telephone might be used as a fascist tool. Even airplanes and ketchup. Auschwitz or six-pointed yellow stars were intrinsecally fascist things, as there is no legitimate use for those.
Contrarily to whatever they told you, our ID cards do not come equipped with radio-triggered explosives, nor any sensitive information such as political or religious affiliation, medical history and the such. Only information to tie name/surname/birth date and place to the physical person.
I understand, but your story is mostly of a dorky government than an intrinsecally evil tool. If the politicians have introduced it unproperly, and the police are taking only a punitive stance, that's another problem (and definitely a more serious one).
It is beyond me why the protesters simply don't show up with ID, handing it over to the policemen with their middle fingers. Again, if it's because they are afraid of consequences, there are more serious problems than ID.
Who ever suggested writing sensitive information on an ID card, such as religious or political affiliation, or medical history? On my ID I have just name, surname, photo, a few points about physical description like height and color of eyes. The marital status has recently been made optional (before it was bachelor/married/divorced/widow etc, now it's either married/free or a series of asterisks). Of course I would be against that.
About the identity theft: of course credit card is another thing, but setting up a bank account on your behalf is much more serious. Having just to find out info as "mother's maiden name" makes it ludicrously simple.
I'm quite impressed at how the anglosaxon world reacts to ID cards. They are present in most countries, and are a far cry from a fascist tool.
As far as my experience goes, in Italy you can get fined for loitering if you are found without "papers" and you are over 18. Yet nobody ever asked me papers without a good reason (airport, electoral office, and such things). Never seen an evil use of that, and can hardly conceive one.
In Norway, in order to do many things you have to be registered at the Forlkeregister. For instance, to open a bank account, have a job and the such. Banks and employers must in turn report on your savings and earnings to the tax office, so that your tax papers come into your mailbox already filled in, and you have to worry only about minor adjustments. If anyone accesses these data on a non-routine basis, you are automatically sent a letter notifying you of who asked (usually they need your permission).
Finally, it baffles me how people are so nervous about a stupid piece of paper or plastic. On the No2ID site I read taurinities like it would cause racial discrimination, fingerprint people like criminals (I have been taken fingerprints only once in my life, at the military draft visit), and will be useless against crime. Never mind there are heaps of experience in continental Europe of criminals caught because they provided a not-good-enough fake ID (one I remember was mafia boss Madonia). The claim that identity theft would not be affected is simply ludicrous: the very term "identity theft" is exclusive to the anglosaxon world, as identity theft is impossible with an ID-card system; in continental Europe, we don't even talk of it.
And last but not least, how can be that people are worried about ID cards when living in countries where the government has been given insane powers to detain people without trial and rights, like in Guantanamo?
That's something I totally agree with - one should be proud of his own achievements, not those of people he never met that happened to crawl out of a vagina somewhere in the same area.
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Jugula! Jugula!
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...and someone get me popcorn.
I suggest you watch the movie by Dino Risi La marcia su Roma, or "the march on Rome", about two blissfully ignorant chaps who, amidst the social turmoil of post-WW1 Italy, join the Fascist party.
They join it because their program was really cool. Serious! They promised the abolishment of monarchy, freedom of speech, abolishment of nobility titles, and the Greatest Promise of them All in Rural Italy, the redistribution of land to farmers. Pretty cool program.
After being busted at the elections with a zero point something percent, the Fascists decide that, if they don't win with democracy, they'll win marching on Rome.
During the March, all the promises gradually wither, and as Mussolini takes power the two, disillusioned and having already striked out all the promises of Fascism, leave. The king is reported saying at the same time: "Ok, let's try these fascists for a few months, shall we?".
Memorable quote from the movie:
(The fascist are attacking a section of the Communist Party. A painting of Karl Marx is being burnt)
Chap: Excuse me, but did not we had freedom of speech in the program?
Fascist squad leader: Of course! but it's this way: they are free to say what they want, but we are also free to beat them for that. If they don't want to say what they want because they are afraid we are going to beat them, their problem.