We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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ID card pilot scheme Today’s Guardian reports:
The home secretary, David Blunkett, is to stage a pilot scheme this autumn to test the introduction of a national identity card despite the lack of strong cabinet backing for the idea.
The Home Office confirmed last night that a six-month trial, testing the use of new generation fingerprint and eye-scanning technology, would be completed by April to “assess customer perceptions and reactions” and estimate costs. It is believed that the trial will be carried out in an as yet unnamed small market town with a population of about 10,000.
Note, as did Guardian home affairs editor Alan Travis, the creepy use of the word “customer”.
UPDATE: Paul Staines comments at Samizdata.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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By denying that this is a trial for compulsory National Identity Cards Big Blunkett proves once again that he can’t be trusted with the truth. How then can we trust him with our privacy and freedom?
It’s essential for the future of British civil liberties that this trial be a high-profile flop.
As soon as the target area for the trial is made known we need a massive campaign to persuade those affected to refuse to co-operate and undermine the experiment using any possible legal methods.
The use of the word “customer” is indeed creepy, and worse. It is a word used to coverup the real realtionship of citizen to state: supplicant.
I wrote about similar subversive use of language here.