What Would You Do If the Government Asked You to Change Your Name?

That's exactly what's happening in parts of China.  In the country's evolving computer state-id card system, there is a glitch in the identification-reader software.  More than four thousand rarely-used characters are unidentifiable by the existing program, and Chinese citizens with surnames containing the rarely-used characters are being encouraged to change their unusual surnames to more common variants so that the software will be able to pick them up.  

Would you be willing to change your last name so that the government's databases were correct?  If the government required you to make such a change in order to travel, pay taxes, or use a credit card, would you?  This is China, but it hits closer to home than what you might think.  If the Real ID legislation currently pending in Congress passes, we all will have to make choices.  We will be faced with either submitting to a national identification system or not being able to open a bank account, not having legal internet access, not being able to purchase a plane ticket and, perhaps, not being legally able to hold a job.  

Think about it, and think about what our country was founded upon.