Prominent figures from the biometrics research and technologies sectors met to celebrate the formation of the United Kingdom Biometrics Institute (UKBI).
The centre was initiated by the University of Kent’s Department of Electronics, and supported by Kent Enterprise.
It aims to enhance the productive exchange of knowledge and expertise in the UK across the research community, the biometrics industrial sector and potential end-users; and to provide leading-edge solutions to emerging and future market needs.
With all this talk about the use of biometrics, I hear no one asking, "Whose are we?"
Yes, it is a question of possession. Just whose are we?
The State's? If everyone is forced to be scanned, printed, or chipped with biometric information from our own bodies, I begin to wonder "Who owns whom here?"
Or do we belong to
The Individual? (Ourselves) Are we free citizens with God-given rights recognized by the government or are we reduced to the state's "red light/green light" background checks every time we turn around? Programs like the REAL ID do not maintian themselves between "very narrow" uses.
The freedom of the individual is a concept that is fading fast. I am willing to be a citizen, but slow to be part of a great biometric collective.
Right now the use of biometrics is left up to each of our 50 states. I have made it clear to my representatives (who don't seem to be listening), that I oppose biometrics as much as I oppose the use of a national identification card. But I don't see us having one without the other for very long.
So I wonder...
Has "group think" won the day?
Is freedom no longer a central, organizing principle?
Or has it become a thing of the past?
I think so.
We don't have to do anything stupid.
Because we "can" does not mean we "should."
Did not America become something special when we quit acting like Europe?
Read more here.
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