What will ID cards be for? Worryingly, despite the details published last month with the launch of the procurement process, there is still no simple answer.

Fraud, immigration and public services all come under the scheme’s panacean umbrella. As do terrorism, underage drinking and streamlined hiring procedures.

To a sceptic, such indecision looks suspicious ­ evidence that the government will use any means at its disposal to justify a scheme that is at best expensively pointless and at worst a premeditated policy of social control.

To some extent, the ID scheme is hoist with its own petard. Because there are so many potential uses, it can be made to look ill-considered, ill-intentioned, or both.

The danger is that the potential for the scheme to have genuine benefits will be lost in a flurry of shrill narrow-mindedness.

The Home Office may bang too hard on the security drum, overlooking the fact that the majority of benefits will be commercial ­authentication for online banking, for example.

From the other side, the ludicrous ease with which paint-by-numbers Big Brother scare stories can be put together threatens to turn any sensible debate into hysteria before it even starts.

In fact, for the privacy debate to focus so strongly on the government is missing the point.

Google already targets adverts using people’s search profiles. And it envisions a future where it has enough information to answer questions such as: what job would suit me; or, with whom should I go to the cinema?

My point is by no means unqualified support for ID cards. But the scheme must be seen in the context of far larger developments that transcend the simple, rather infantile, government-bashing tradition.

It is unrealistic to try to hold back the electronic tide. But with that tide comes a data trail unlike anything previously imaginable.

There are, without doubt, serious questions to be asked: about how we want to interact with the state; about how we balance conflicting desires for security and anonymity; about how we live in an online world while retaining some semblance of control.

There are no easy answers. But let us at least be sure we are asking the right questions rather than just tilting at the easiest target we can find.