You may think the Belgians are a bit presumptuous by granting themselves jurisdiction over the entire planet in the matter of alleged war-crimes, but they have nothing on our Home Secretary David Blunkett who is trying to turn everyone in the developed world into lab rats:
Even before the Government has decided how to proceed with its identity card scheme, the Home Secretary David Blunkett claims to have persuaded his G8 colleagues to take a look at “smart” passports.
No firm commitment was made by Mr Blunkett’s G8 counter-parts at Monday’s meeting, and most of them were probably just being polite in expressing support in principle. But Mr Blunkett is seemingly determined to press ahead with a plan to require all British passports to contain chips capable of storing unique biometric information about the bearer, including fingerprints and iris scans.
I realise how much this sounds like wishful thinking but it does sound to me as if Mr.Blunkett’s G8 counter-parts were humouring him. As indeed they should. Not only is the technology referred to unlikely to work in the way that Mr.Blunkett has suggested or at all, but it is also to be hoped that his counter-parts have recognised this scheme as merely the latest manifestation of New Labour’s neurosis.
As per usual, the British Home Office has its portentious-sounding reasons. They have shuffled through their pack of disposable justifications and come up with stopping ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘terrorists’ as the raisons du jour and I can only assume that they are blissfully immune to the hollow ring which has now grown resonant enough to shatter glass.
If such technology could indeed prevent some terrible terrorist atrocity then it would, at least, be worthy of consideration (if not necessarily implementation) but surely everybody knows that it will do no such thing. Mr.Blunkett may as well claim that his biometric passports will reduce sun-spot activity, prevent child abuse and turn base metal into gold without being any less plausible.
Overwhelmingly, illegal immigrants and potential terrorists originate from Third World countries where no databases exist and few people have genuine passports let alone biometric ones. So they will continue to swan in to collect their welfare cheques in South London and plan bomb attacks in Manchester without so much as let or hindrance while the law-abiding, tax-paying British holidaymakers and business travellers get turned into day-release prisoners; watched, tracked and monitored feverishly to no end whatsoever.
But this is all a part of the game we play in Britain. Our political masters work night-and-day to come up with frightfully impressive techno-whizzbangs while we all turn away and pretend not to notice the godawful, augean mess they have made out of every single thing they have laid their hands on.
New Labour politicians are like the idiot children of wealthy tycoons, skilled only in lavishing around vast sums of other people’s money in a squalid attempt to purchase popularity and self-esteem. Scratch the surface and what you find is stupid, loathsome and incompetent. They are deserving of nothing except our unalloyed contempt.
As with all identity-card schemes, the aim is to control law-abiding people and make us abide by ever-more complex, ever-more-expensive laws.
Indeed, the third world countries do not have any developed passport system – or maybe they have, I don’t really know – but they certainly don’t have the ability to set up a “smart” passport system, nor making them, just like David Carr pointed out.
Once again mark, you are spot on. I was goin to say the same thing.
Stalin would’ve been proud (about the “smart passports”)
Well thanks, Johan. I just hope we all have the guts to burn them once some of these ID cards [sorry, creepily smart passports] appear.
Well, crossing the border from Kenya to Tanzania on one occasion, the locals did have passports, but they were very unsophisticated looking documents, which would be trivially easy to forge. My suspicion is that the governments of those countries probably do issue more sophisticated documents for people who regularly travel to the rest of the world. (On this occasion, I also saw someone write “peasant” under occupation on his immigration form, something I have not seen anywhere else).
Doesn’t this rather undermine the whole case for passports at all?
If many of them are easy to forge, then why are they issued in the first place?
Answer, to enable officials in uniforms to boss around poor individuals humble and honest enough to describe themselves as peasants, and give those officials a reason to lock up, harrass, and extract money from those peasants any time they wish.
As I recall, the 9/11 terrorists had valid visas and passports. Lacking previous convictions (suicide terrorism not being prone to repeat offending) they would not have been picked out by any security measure short of a universal strip search – or by letting ordinary qualified passengers carry personal guns for self defense.
Julian: not even a strip search would have done it if, as some have speculated, they picked up their weapons on the other side of the security barrier, from willing accomplices in the airport.
Incidentally, four of the first 48 pilots to apply for in-flight firearms licenses have failed to pass the necessary physical and psychological tests. As Risks Digest properly points out – ummm…these guys aren’t up to carrying a gun, but they’re okay to fly planeloads of people?
Weasel: All aircraft do have two pilots. Even if they are in bad health, the chances of both of them having a heart attack or similar within an hour of each other (which is all the time it would take to divert to the nearest available airport in at least 95% of cases) is extremely small. The only flights in which diversion times are substantially greater than that are some trans-Pacific routes, and these are such long flights that most aircraft carry a second crew who can take over part of the way through the flight. (This means there are four pilots). This risk doesn’t worry me much. (Okay, the risk of physical problems doesn’t. The failure to pass psychological tests is perhaps more of a worry).
When I see a post that starts with “You may think the Belgians are a bit presumptuous”, my immediate urge is to ignore the rest of the article and post a comment consisting of “Absolutely, but they make such great beer”. Does anybody else get this urge?
Michael, who has some Hoegaarden in the fridge.
Michael,
Yes the Belgians do make great beer but everybody has to have at least one redeeming quality 🙂
The Biometrics Working Group, who produced this report last year, doesn’t seem to have been consulted about Mr. Blunkett’s grand schemes to have our iris prints stuck on our new passports and ID cards.
Perhaps someone should ask why.
Nemo, the report is no doubt interesting but the link is broken. Do you have more details?
Hmmm… was working last night.
Try the e-envoy’s office.
Also try Google using the phrase “Biometrics Working Group” – the web pages should still be cached.
Belgians, aka The Phlegms.