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HP Announces National Id System Built on .NET
Anonymous Coward writes "Yahoo is running a story about HP's national ID plan, 'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,' said Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety, HP. 'HP and Microsoft are working together to provide government agencies the ability to access the integrated data streams needed to securely identify people both in the physical and virtual worlds.'"
Sooner or later we'll have some kind of encrypted GUID indentifying us instead of the 9 letter SS number, a GUID that can be applied on the whole planet. Unfortunately privatizing SS is like privatizing the military or the police, or even education and healhcare. I'd rather have some benevolent global gov't issue these numbers than a private corporation, but unfortunately the only forum that ever had a chance to be a "league of nations" or a global gov't is the UN, whose credibility was recently undermined by Bush. I guess the powers that be are fed up that in the UN countries with no military, no resources, or who otherwise would be completely ignored, get a full vote each, simply because they are split into two countries, and outvote the US simply to say look, here we are, give us cash because we have no other way to make some. One whacky solution would be to split the US into 50 states to the US gets 50 votes. The other solution is what Bush is pushing, saying I'm the UN, I'm boss, kiss my ass. Neither one is a good solution, and frankly, the whole point of any global gov't is to stop the risk of a totalitarian global gov't, which means having to listen to those with no power, no voice, instead of just invading them and clubbing them down, even if they are idiots.