Congress has passed the Real ID Act, which creates a de facto national identity card in the United States. The battle there will not end when President George W. Bushsigns the bill, however. Some of the state governments, who will be charged with implementation, are not thrilled by the new law and are preparing to challenge it.

British bloggers should pay attention to all the debate in the blogosphere about the American ID card scheme because many of the same arguments will be raised in the coming weeks as Britain’s own controvertial national identity card scheme is re-introduced to Parliament.

One of the best posts on this topic comes from How Not To Blog, which explains why Real ID is not jusy an identification card ,but a national surveillance infrastructure.