No, this isn't a red herring. I'm serious. There are some folks who will happily carry around their personal info on a card or device, and then there are others of us who will refuse to be happy little techno-branded cattle.

I personally won't settle for my personal info being collected anywhere for the sake of marketing and commerce, whether I hold it (in some format convenient for others) or someone else holds it. And I don't believe even American consumers (as lax as they are) would allow the law to change to allow businesses they patronize to incorporate their personal info into a central repository w/o their knowledge and consent.

I'll simply avoid businesses and services that rely upon a centralized repository. No one has managed to convince me that Hailstorm offers enough advantages to a company to outweigh the distrust that many consumers will feel, especially given the current climate of anti-corporate sentiment.