Techno world

Identification technology utilising an individuals
fingerprints, linked back to credit cards or electronic bank accounts have been
used in the USA over the past months. Thriftway stores amongst others are using
the new ID process which may not be any quicker than using a credit card -– but
is certainly convenient. All it takes to become active is to go to your
participating bank, have your finger scanned five times (to get an accurate
image), and authorise for your digital data to be stored in the Indivos'
database. You then register your bank account, credit card, debit card or even
food-stamp account and select a seven-digit number to help pinpoint your
fingerprint's from among the thousands in the database. At this stage, there
are no federal laws regarding the selling of fingerprint databases and
information.

If you think the fingerprint technology is potentially scary,
proposed ID development in Australia has civil libertarians very upset -– a
proposed system which would have an individuals DNA collected and stored in a
database system. Herald Sun, 8 August 2002, "Every Australian would
submit a DNA sample to a national crime database under a radical proposal by a
Melbourne scientist...

Civil libertarians are outraged, arguing that proposal will
lead to corrupt police and crooks planting false DNA evidence to implicate the
innocent...

In today's Nature, Professor Williamson and ethicist
Rony Duncan from the institute, which is at the Royal Children's Hospital,
advocate DNA testing at birth as the fairest and most logical time...

As a safeguard, the DNA sample would be destroyed once it was
coded on the database, he said..."

The obvious concern with any of these 'confidential I.D.
systems' is precisely that - their confidentiality; the wrong people with
access to such powerful personal information about an individual, creates
potentially the biggest nightmare mankind could ever know -– read about it in
the book of Revelation.

Big brother scheme backfires

The Press, 7 August 2002, "Suspecting her husband of
having an affair, Clara Harris did what wealthy wives can afford to do: she
hired an investigator. But what the private eye saw could become Exhibit A
against Harris herself.

As the investigator's video camera rolled, an enraged
Harris allegedly killed her husband in a parking lot in Houston, Texas, by
running him over three times with her silver Mercedes-Benz. The victim's
16-year-old daughter was in the passenger seat.

'It was an accident,' said Harris, a 44-year-old dentist,
after her arrest on murder charges..."