I had a cunning plan up my sleeve. In the event of ID cards becoming an Orwellian reality, I would flee the country. My preferred location being France. While the French have an ID card system, it doesn’t have a database designed to track every aspect of citizens’ lives nor is it compulsory.
Oh, well, that was…
France is now facing the same as the UK
In a press conference held on 26 May 2005 in Paris, 6 organisations have launched a campaign against the French project of mandatory biometric ID card. The French Human Rights League (LDH), the union of magistrates, the union of French barristers, EDRI-member IRIS, DELIS (a coalition of more than 60 French NGOs and trade unions for the defence of privacy and personal data protection) and the French Association of Democrat lawyers have published a joint position statement and have started a petition demanding the withdrawal of the project of the French Ministry of the Interior to introduce a mandatory biometric ID card
It all sounds so depressingly familiar.
The conspiracy theorists have been predicting some sort of global surveillance society in recent months. Indeed, on the No2ID forum you’ll come across plenty of them. While some are pretty wacky – particularly those predicting the end times and quoting the book of Genesis – there is some reasonable analysis of the trend and that it is, indeed, global. The evidence is beginning to support that point of view.
So, not only do I have to hope that groups like No2ID are successful in the UK, I have to look to their French equivalents to make sure my retirement is free from the prying eyes of government minions.
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