France May Require Biometric ID Cards

Will Affleck-Asch writes "According to an article on Infoworld today, France may require her citizens pay for new identity cards that hold their biometric information in electronic format. The French government outlined its plan last month to replace the identity cards and passports offered to French citizens with new ones that carry a microchip containing digitized photographs and fingerprints. The plan is to introduce the passports in 2006, and the identity cards a year later. Citizens haven't been forced to carry ID cards since 1955."

Comments

No, it isn't

[Capitalist1]

No, it's the same world, we're just within arm's reach of the savages who populate the rest of it now.

What? France?

[The Bungi]

Not France? Surely you don't mean France, as in Europe? Unpossible!

I mean, not France! Not ze warmongering imperialistic decadent amerikans with ze dumb govermnet and evil degradation of liberties we thumb our collective noses at you! France!!??

That cannot be. I'm shocked.

Absolutely useless for France

[SysKoll]

Oh yeah, let's solve all security problems with a new widget. There are terrorists in France, a problem that will be solved with a new expensive, mandatory card.

Riiiight.

Unfortunately, France routinely gives new IDs to illegal immigrants who have purposefully destroyed their IDs and passports in order to avoid deportation (if the French police doesn't know which country you're from and you don't tell them, then they can't deport you!)

Moreover, once, in Paris, I saw a protest in which hundreds of illegal aliens were marching and chanting to demand regularization of their status! Meanwhile, the cops were watching.

So since the spineless French government gave up on even pretending to enforce its immigration laws, I fail to see how this new pose would increase domestic security. It's all a pretense.

A country cannot solve its lack of courage and its indecisiveness by mandating a new widget. Especially when history shows that this new widget will be distributed to every warm pibedian who forcefully asks for it.