I have to say that I had a viscerally-negative reaction similar to Tom's .It happens on days when Tom's in a Libertarian mood, because Libertarian and Liberal ideals are congruent in areas like universal and absolute rights, rights not subject to the whim of a government.

Where I think Tom's coming from is the ideal of an egalitarian society in which your rights are obtained simply by existing, and nobody or no government can take them away. These are the "inalienable rights of man"(kind). From universal rights comes equal treatment under the law and so on.

The fly in the ointment is that, AFAIK, every modern society sorts the people within its borders into different categories with different rights. There are citizens, and then there are "others" in a wide variety, and in most societies each group is treated differently under the law. In a society in which everyone is not treated equally, there arises the need for a way to distinguish members of each category. First it was "papers", then it was tattooed bar codes, these days it's implanted RFID chips...the technology changes, the rationale remains the same.

I agree with Tom's ideal, but I understand what you're saying about the actual situation, in which an ID card does necessarily confer rights, and its lack deprive one of rights. Here in America I have to appreciate that I have an ID card that identifies me as a citizen and therefore not automatically a suspected terrorist (it's my Democratic Party voter registration that makes me a suspect in some deranged Winger minds, but that's another issue). Republicans want to crack down on illegal immigration, and that makes it all the more important to be able to prove my citizenship in order to work.

I think that "paperless" people have inalienable rights just as much as the documented. And I don't think that possession of a piece of paper, or lack of it, should count more than membership in the human race when it comes to equal treatment under the law.