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Finnish Politician Suggests Embedding Chips In Citizens To Protect the Welfare State

New submitter janit writes that social benefits to Finnish citizens living outside of Finland have in recent days been the cause of controversy, and links to an article which suggests just how much of a controversy: A politician from the True Finns Party, Pasi Mäenranta, is also worried about the abuse of the benefits. He published a post on Facebook, where he suggests that all Finnish citizens leaving the country be embedded with an identification chip. Sounds like a parallel system might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too.

9 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. 2084? by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess we need a second installment of 1984 as the pace of ideas from authoritarian control freaks have exceeded Orwell's wildest nightmares.

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    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  2. Re:Where have I heard this before... by kilfarsnar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Revelations 13:16-17:

    And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name...

    Just sayin', regardless of reality or fantasy, when your policy suggestion is basically the exact thing the devil does during the "end times," you might have a tough sell there.

    I'm not Christian, but I'm glad for that bit of prophesy. This type of thing is all about control. Imagine if you run afoul of the authorities and they are able to cut you off from society just by switching off your chip. It's the same reason I do not look forward to any "cashless" economy, though there are plenty of idiots who think it's a great idea. Once you have to go through an intermediary to conduct any transaction, they've got you by the balls.

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    "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  3. Radical idea... by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about we punish people who abuse the welfare system with blacklisting from it? In the US, our Office of the Inspector General for Social Security found that the Social Security Administration was committing black letter of the law violations on about 25% of the Social Security Disability payments it was awarding. That means the floor for how much corruption is 25% of all transfer payments. Send the employees involved to prison and blacklist the fraudulent recipients from receiving it, even if later they end up needing it after all. Cruel? You bet. That's a feature in dealing with welfare cheats. If they're going to cheat the current recipients who need it and the tax payers, then by God society isn't going to have a wad of cash ready for when they do need it.

  4. Re:He has a point by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think that at least with smartphones he misses the point, when they were introduced the point wasn't to track the individual carrying the phone, it was to provide the individual with the ability to communicate and to use applications for productivity. Arguably some of the first smartphones from Qualcomm didn't even have data service, the productivity applications were entirely centered on the phone, and they were essentially Palm Pilots with a telephone function added to them.

    Jump to the modern phone, and you find that if people use features that allow them to "check in" from a given location, they only use that feature when they choose to use that feature. They do not state their location everywhere they go, they use it selectively, to essentially boast, or because they earn a living through online connectedness and marketing and it is to their advantage to share far too much information with the rest of us.

    As to the data communication between the handset and the carrier, that's an unfortunate necessity of the technology. The frequencies and density of users means that phones have to be tracked in order to remain in communication with them as they roam about a given area and change towers. The average cell user doesn't really understand how that technology works either, but would probably not be happy if their movements were being logged everywhere they went, an that theoretically should be privileged information between the carrier and the subscriber, as in the United States, one Federal Circuit has recently ruled.

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    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  5. Re:Where have I heard this before... by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hell, I don't like the idea of a cashless economy because it's dependent on too many active systems that all have to work for it to work. A simple power outage could prevent people from purchasing emergency supplies from their local grocery store, which could otherwise take cash, and could even go so far as to tabulate sales tax by hand or with the store's retail supply of battery-operated handheld calculators.

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    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  6. Re:Where have I heard this before... by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's a lot of wisdom in the Bible, and other early church writings. Throw out the magic and it's the collection of stories about human nature and conflict written down over thousands of years by the people who had to figure out how human society can and should work. We take that knowledge for granted today, but these people had to figure it out for themselves. And people haven't changed that much.

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    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  7. Re: He has a point by turbidostato · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Finland is beginning to sound like a shithole"

    This guy belongs to a party called "True Finns". He's obviously a nazi douchebag. You have a point, though, since this party got 17.7% of the votes in the 2015 parlamentary elections, becoming the second largest one.

  8. Re:WHICH candidates? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which party enacts policies that place more government control over people's lives?

    There was one senator who voted against the Patriot Act, and it was not a Republican.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  9. Re:WHICH candidates? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So tell me which party voted 100% to compel Americans to buy a contract from private companies under penalty of fines? Which party voted 100% against this? Which party lied their ass off about the results it would have? If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. It will not add a thin dime to the deficit. The average family will save $2,500 per year. There are no death panels. Etc. Is this ringing any bells? Which party is illegally regulating CO2 as a pollutant? Anyone who believes there is a spit of difference between the two major parties is delusional. This is why conservatives are in open rebellion against the establishment republicans.