Just imagine the potential for a govt/EU to revoke your oficial / legal identity at any time :)

A government doesn't need to take away your papers to deny you its services.

Good analysis, thanks.

regulation like that is only proposed to hide up other clauses and proposals that are equally bad or even worse - get the public distracted and thinking they made a difference

But IMO this bit was superfluous POV. An alternative theory is that nobody is secretly scheming to do anything, least of all the chaotic EU apparatus, and that most politicians are not experts and they are simply responding to various competing stimuli, as humans do. Notably elections and media hype and lobbyists. Personally I don't get why so many people attribute to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence, but whatever, I'm in the minority and that's fine.

Interesting detail about the eID certificates. You're right that Americans will find this crazy in the way that we Europeans might not. Perhaps Americans are right.