Just to support the identification issue:
How many people do think that this is serious? Still, this can happen.
I can not avoid to quote LeVel and grietsc about such things: when I enter my bank, I must look into a camera that take a picture of my face, and sometimes I have to take off my glasses because the system won't recognize a face if I'm wearing them. And I think my glasses are much more needed that whatever kind of clothes there might be. What if a burqed woman want to enter the same bank? Is she allowed to enter just because religion forbid her to show her face in public? How much time until bank robbers will show up in burqas and are granted free access everywhere?
And what the camera does, the bank clerks should do themselves if they had not the automatic system. Try to enter a bank with your helmet on... And you can always take off your helmet, while you can't with burqa. It is "religious" and what is important is exactly the prohibition to show one's face. Very different from the scarf (@ sonza68 - emo-kids CAN brush their hair away, if requested, sso your comparison, unfortunately, is flawed. (and I am not sure it is not a shame that we can't ban emo-kids)).
The ability to identify someone is not dictated by some sort of fascism, but from the need of a society, and it's not a simple question of freedom submitted to law, because yes, this spoils some of our "freedoms", but the possibility of identifying you is part of the freedom of every other person you meet everyday, especially if they are interacting with you. So no freedom lost to one side means one freedom lost to the other. There is no exit.
Besides, Islam do not force burqa on women AT ALL, even if the burqa supporters say so. This is evident by looking at the fact that a great variety of veils exist, like chador, niqab, hijab, and other. Many islamic cultures allow a form of veil that leaves the face completely visible, so the presence of a more covering veil is a pure cultural heritage, not religious in a strict sense. I must also remember, just as a note, that cultural, or even religious dictates are not forcefully "good" just because they exist or are practiced (that would be the exact and similarly mindless opposite of those saying that what is different is therefore wrong), and tolerance means to have an open mind towards everything that is different, unknown and maybe better, it does not mean a passive acceptance of everything that meets the only requirement of being fancied by the first person you can meet in a street.
