Americans mull national ID cards

"A limited national ID card, which would have the name, the address, the Social Security number, the photograph and a print fingerprint or retinal print, matchable to a computer chip, would simply make identity theft impossible. It would eliminate the need for any kind of racial or ethnic profiling," said Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor.

But one well-known libertarian think tank, Washington's Cato Institute, does not support the concept.

"The national ID card system is really sort of the ultimate dragnet device," said Tim Lynch, the institute's director of criminal justice studies. "It would require over 250 million Americans to surrender some of their privacy, some of their freedom for a system that I do not think will stop the terrorists from committing acts of violence here against the United States."

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