David's Daily Diversions

Smarter and Smarter

After a brief fascination with the whole idea back in my teen years, when bad eschatology had me convinced of the horrors of computers so big they could hold information on every person on the planet in one room (the sort of thing you could do today with a palm-top), I've not been overly concerned about the Government and high-tech information management. Because of this, I am surprised at the number of items in the news recently that are audacious enough to merit blogging. I am now mentioning this at a rate of every other day.

Well, they've done it yet again. The Government cannot even trial ID cards for the general population without parliamentary approval. The Government doesn't just want ID cards. They want "smart" cards, implanted with a chip carrying biometric data.

While the Home Office doesn't have the credit card-sized ID cards, they do have passports. They are going to be running a trial of creating "smart" passports. They will start with the residents of a small as-of-yet-unnamed market town, to see how they react to the use of fingerprinting and eye-scanning. If they go like sheep to the slaughter, without any of that silly bleating about civil liberties, then the scheme will be introduced across the entire population.

According to The Times today, The Home Office insisted that the scheme would be carried out on behalf of the UK Passport Service in preparation for the introduction of “smart” passports.

The UK Passport Service’s business plan for the next five years, published this year, showed that officials were hoping to begin to implement the “smart” passports by April 2005.

That's 20 months away. The ID cards will not be far behind.