No fingers, no freedom

Take good care of your fingertips. You won’t be going anywhere without them.

The European Parliament has just voted to include fingerprint data on passports:

The European Parliament signed up to a plan Wednesday to introduce computerized biometric passports including people’s fingerprints as well as their photographs, despite criticism from civil liberties groups and security experts who argue that the move is flawed on technical grounds.

Civil liberties arguments aside, what happens if you don’t have any fingerprints? Maybe you don’t have arms, or hands, or maybe you’ve just lost them through disease or employment. They have an answer, but you might no like it:

People with no hands would obviously be exempt from the new fingerprint-based biometric passport system. Instead, they would have to apply for temporary, 12-month passports in order to travel, the MEPs agreed.

So if you can’t give fingerprints, you won’t get a proper passport—only a temporary one-year document. Given that many countries require entrants to have passports valid for six months, that restricts your freedom of movement further.

Your rights are thus predicated upon your physical characteristics. In another era, we felt that to be unacceptable discrimination. I hate this paranoid society I live in.

2009-01-15 18:40 UTC. Comments: 4.

Comments

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  1. Adam Rae

    Wrote at 2009-01-15 20:17 UTC using Unknown browser on Mac OS X:

    Ignoring all the massive rights and technical issues for a second how on earth can they justify treating people who don’t have usable fingerprints differently to those that do? Surely this would be against physical disability anti-discrimination laws and the like all around the EU?

  2. Stuart

    Wrote at 2009-01-16 09:16 UTC using Firefox 3.0.5 on Linux:

    Attribute it to the fight against terrorism and you can skip silly things like anti-discrimination laws. :|

    Great.

  3. Mark

    Wrote at 2009-01-16 16:26 UTC using Firefox 3.0.5 on Linux:

    Well, I have been planning/dreaming about family migration to Australia for some time…I think this might just have made my mind up!

    Why would I want my son to grow up in a place where anti-terrorism rules override civil liberties?

    I guess the question is, can I expect the same legislation to be implemented in Australia after Europe?

  4. Thomas Overton

    Wrote at 2009-02-07 12:52 UTC using Firefox 3.0.5 on Linux:

    Very well said. The erosion of our civil liberties at all levels has become bizarrely commonplace and accepted.

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