The Government Internet ID Proposal’s Pros and Cons
...“In that [government employee] capacity there really wasn’t a huge privacy concern,” Stepanovich said. “And then it started growing, this need to authenticate everybody.”

In 2009, the government released a Cyberspace Policy Review first proposing the objective of a national plan for online identification — what sounded like a national ID card for the Internet — and concerns grew.

“That’s what a lot of people feared — that the government was going to take REAL ID and put it on the Internet and be able to track everybody’s Internet activity,” Stepanovich said....

...The first problem with this idea is obvious: If you consolidate all of your passwords in one place, that actually makes your identity even easier to steal. And if you’re carrying that identity around on a pocket-sized device, you’re about as likely to lose it as you are your wallet — now with added disastrous consequences...