Slashdot Mirror
Interpol Wants a Global Identity Card System
Orome1 writes "The head of INTERPOL has emphasized the need for a globally verifiable electronic identity card (e-ID) system for migrant workers at an international forum on citizen ID projects, e-passports, and border control management. INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said: "At a time when global migration is reaching record levels, there is a need for governments to put in place systems at the national level that would permit the identity of migrants and their documents to be verified internationally via INTERPOL." Issuing migrant workers e-ID cards in a globally verifiable format will also reduce corruption and enable cardholders to be eligible for electronic remittance schemes that will foster greater economic development and prosperity in INTERPOL member countries."
This sounds like a bad case of mission creep to me. INTERPOL doesn't need global ID capabilities for its job. So why should we put them in charge?
Sure, theft and murder are bad, but a mass global ID means that anonymous existence will become impossible. Just think what access to such a system will mean to governments that run by dictators. Even the oh so sweet and trustworthy "democracies" will abuse this. Sometimes, it is important for the good of mankind to disappear into a crowd.
Revelations was a political tract railing against Emperor Nero. It was a capital crime to dis the emperor, so they wrote in code - seven hills, three heads, yadda yadda. The "Beast" was Nero. The "Whore of Babylon" was Rome. It was a political/religious pamphlet.
Any sufficiently nebulous set of metaphors can "predict" anything, if you want it to. What would impress me? St. John of Patmos saying, "In 2011, Interpol sets up an international ID card system." If you can see the future, there is no reason to obfuscate.
"Please log into the internet with your global ID. No sites will load without it. "
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Vaccinations are public health, not health care. Public health is clearly underfunded in the US: we should be spending more on vaccinations, health education, statistics and monitoring, and public health research.
Public health may also include some treatments for infectious diseases. All of those should be free and provided by the government. Effectively they are. But even this overlap between public health and health care is negligible.
Almost all US health care spending is on diseases which pose no threat to others: heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer. Most of that spending is wasted: either the disease is preventable, or it is treatable with lifestyle changes, or treatment is nearly ineffective.
That kind of reasoning is pointless; markets aren't socially fair, but they are still better than the alternatives. Government should do a little bit of work to smooth the excesses that markets sometimes produce, but anything more doesn't really work.
The real question is: what is going to get people off their butts so that they make the changes in their lives that keep our health care spending in check.
We're going to have to cut trillions from the budget just to break even and then to tack on another few trillion to pay for socialized medicine, we will need to cut from somewhere else.
we are already spending twice the most expensive single payer system to service fewer people why do you think we would need to add to out tax burden? take what we are spending today on health insurance, eliminate all but 10% admin overhead and we could have a gold plated health coverage for everybody. starting up means rearranging what we spend on health, not adding to it.