Monday, July 31, 2006
All your children belong to us.
The Times reports here, (in an article so small you'll miss it) on the proposed compulsory fingerprinting of children by the EU. This is to be a requirement of the EU passport from June 2009.
As often with such proposals, the EU requirement will be for children over 12, but the member state will be able to "gold plate" and fingerprint children as young as 5.
Firstly what the article fails to point out is that many of these children will grow up and become adults, so at no stage will they be able to object to the state having a fingerprint database of them. By the time they become aware of it, it will have happened.
Secondly we're not told what problem this proposal is the solution for, which is surprising as it could easily fall into the classic: "It's for the sake of the children" whinge so beloved of many.
This is a typical EU & member state type proposal, it contains a "gold plating" possibility (the member state gets more power through the EU proposal as the proposal allows the member state to specify a more draconian measure). It has an automatic "ratchet" it is introduced as a rule for children, but will become by default the reality for adults. It doesn't seem to offer any benefit to anyone other than the member state and EU, but I'll bet all the governments who suspect they might have a problem will simply pass it off as an EU measure and throw up their hands, while they push for it behind the scenes as hard as they can.
This "small" measure, meriting no more than a couple of inches of column space according to one of our leading national "news"papers; will ensure that every person has their fingerprints on a centralised EU database. If this was announced as government policy, imagine the outcry.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
As often with such proposals, the EU requirement will be for children over 12, but the member state will be able to "gold plate" and fingerprint children as young as 5.
Firstly what the article fails to point out is that many of these children will grow up and become adults, so at no stage will they be able to object to the state having a fingerprint database of them. By the time they become aware of it, it will have happened.
Secondly we're not told what problem this proposal is the solution for, which is surprising as it could easily fall into the classic: "It's for the sake of the children" whinge so beloved of many.
This is a typical EU & member state type proposal, it contains a "gold plating" possibility (the member state gets more power through the EU proposal as the proposal allows the member state to specify a more draconian measure). It has an automatic "ratchet" it is introduced as a rule for children, but will become by default the reality for adults. It doesn't seem to offer any benefit to anyone other than the member state and EU, but I'll bet all the governments who suspect they might have a problem will simply pass it off as an EU measure and throw up their hands, while they push for it behind the scenes as hard as they can.
This "small" measure, meriting no more than a couple of inches of column space according to one of our leading national "news"papers; will ensure that every person has their fingerprints on a centralised EU database. If this was announced as government policy, imagine the outcry.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
