"We need fewer Guantanamos, and if that doesn't convince you we want to limit the surveillance powers of the USA, I am not sure what else will."

I don't see any connection at all. Guantanamo is not about surveillance, it is about
incarcerating people without due process. This is a straw-man argument, along the
lines of "ID cards lead to Guantanamo". (I just mentioned Guantanamo to point out that
the U.S. is not a bastion of civil rights.)

Actually, surveillance could have HELPED here, since one could say "if the surveillance
is so good, only those actually observed committing a terrorist act need to be dealt
with". (Of course, they should still be dealt with in a sensible manner.)

In England, ID cards are very controversial. England, or at least the government, supported
the USA in the "war on terror". Countries like Germany and France, with mandatory ID cards,
were very vocal critics, prompting the "old Europe" epithet.

A couple of decades ago, when machine-readable ID cards and passports were introduced in Europe,
some libertarian types said that's bad, since if some country becomes Fascist or whatever,
then we can just fake ID cards and get people out of the country. Yeah, man, real realistic,
like the armed thug says "I want to detain you or even shoot you, but since we don't have
machine-readable passports, I can't tell if yours is fake or not, so I'll just have to let
you pass".

Bottom line: a government which needs to have surveillance powers limited for fear that they might
be abused, will find other ways to violate civil rights. Again, the U.S. is a good example.

As Henry Kissinger said, the illegal stuff we do right away, the unconstitutional takes just a bit
longer.