UK Biometric ID Capture Outsourced to Supermarkets
Britain’s Daily Telegraph (May 12th) reports on a new British government scheme, designed to shave a billion pounds off the cost of implementing their new population surveillance program, also known as the National ID card.
Originally, the proposal was for people to be fingerprinted at a passport office, but now the government has announced a plan to allow the “open market” capture citizens’ biometrics, effectively outsourcing the cost of enrolling people on to the ID database. “You could end up getting your fingerprints taken at a supermarket, rather than at a passport office as originally proposed,” explains Philip Johnston in the article.
The article makes interesting reading, using convincing evidence to reach thew final conclusion:
Given the gradual removal of the security walls around the proposed ID database, it is clear that this scheme has nothing to do with protecting our identities. It is about setting up a glorified population register to keep track of us.
There are some interesting comments posted by Telegraph readers, too.
“It’s just so unbelievably sad what this country is coming to. And it’s clear that the problem is the government meddling in everyone’s lives. We’re becoming an authoritarian country where nanny knows best, so you’d better ‘just shut up and do what you’re told’” says Silent Hunter.
While Tom Bowden makes a good point:
I don’t know why we have to go to Tesco’s for the technology to be implemented. The UK government has given so much personal data to the US Homeland Security, they could easily pay some exhorbitant fee to the US to rent some of the data back.
All in all, a scary situation… not just for Brits, but all the rest of us too. The Telegraph is right. This is about serious population control. It has nothing to do with protecting us from terrorism or anything else of that nature. Civil disobedience won’t work because, as the old master W.G. Hill is often quoted as saying, “You can’t fight City Hall.” PT and living off the record with offshore bank accounts, anonymous mobile phones, encrypted communications and the range of other Privacy Tools is the way forward.
