Biometrics Roadshows

According to the BBC, the Government’s biometrics roadshows have been wowing shoppers. I guess these shoppers are easily wowed. Well it does seem that way when you have comments such as this:

A typical response about the desirability of such measures comes from Barry Burton, from nearby Netherton. “I’m all for making everything more secure,” he says. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.”

Here we go again – the same mantra, the same tired, debunked, fraudulent lie repeated by someone who is willing to demonstrate to the world their lack of reasoning skills. The subliminal message being that anyone who objects to increased surveillance must have something to hide; something secretive, furtive and criminal – otherwise we would be happy to have our lives an open book to be summarily surveyed by any casual snooper. Clearly Barry Burton is foolish enough not to give the matter any deep thought. That, or he is merely a stooge for the roadshow.

Yet – and I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it while idiots such as this keep repeating the nothing to hide mantra – we all choose to conceal aspects of our lives from others. This is simply our desire for privacy. I choose to keep my shopping habits to myself because I do not wish to be bombarded with junk from retailers for example, and I fail to see why I should grant the Home Office access to information about my previous addresses. It serves no useful purpose and is none of their business – consequently, I shall not tell them. Perhaps most of all – as we are being bombarded by the big lie – it is important to repeat once more, that this national database will create an intrusive audit trail. The government’s open touting of business confirms what objectors prophesied and government denied; that purchasing habits will find their way into it and be available for a price to businesses. So, my careful refusal to engage the market surveyor will be undermined when they can buy their way into the database – except, of course, I will not be registering.

In the meantime, perhaps Barry Burton and those of his ilk might like to see what has happened in the Netherlands where compulsory ID documents have been in force since January this year.

Freedom in Holland officially died Jan. 1st 2005 when a new law came into effect, making it compulsory in the Netherlands for everybody above the age of 14 to – at all times and outside of one’s home – carry an official ID. Leaving home without it means at least a fifty Euro fine, eventually a court case. The first trial – in which a batch of two-hundred-and-fifty people is taken to court for not carrying an ID card – starts next week Sept. 28th in the central dutch city of Utrecht. Demonstrations against this Dutch, and also global shame, have been announced.

At the end of last August close to fourty-seven-thousand people had been fined, of which four thousand were children aged 14 and 15. Last January around 100 people a day were stopped, checked by the police and fined when they were not able to immediately produce a valid ID card.

And, tellingly, the author of the piece; Henk Ruyssenaars reminds us of this:

And remember: we were promised a European Union without borders, where we all would be able to travel freely, not even needing a passport. None of it was true: it was all a pack of lies.

Ah, but all those folk who have been arrested and charged must have had something to hide. Barry Burton won’t mind being stopped while going about his business and being asked demanded to show his papers; his life is an open book, he has nothing to hide, so he will have nothing to fear…

As a footnote to all of this, when NO2ID tried to discover details of these roadshows, they were thwarted by kafkaesque departments that claimed not to know anything.

Apparently the Home Office is not publicising the venues for the Roadshow until the morning of each event due to ‘security reasons’

Clearly the Home Office did not want them to know about it – something to hide, perhaps?