ELECTRONIC ID-CARDS: THE MAKING OF THE TRANSPARENT EU-CITIZEN
EU-member states are preparing the piecemeal introduction of identity cards in the form of "smartcards" capable of storing medical and other private data of their carriers. The cards are presented as the ultimate answer to fraud, terrorism and illegal immigration, by enabling authorities to keep track of citizens in a borderless Europe.
A smartcard can hold the equivalent of seven closely typed A4 pages, but technical advances are expected to greatly increase their memory soon.
Britain plans to link all National Health Service computers as a first stage in the introduction of a national card system that could later also serve as an ID-card.
France will replace all paper-based ID-documents with smartcards by 1995.
Due to public resistance, Germany and the Netherlands have introduced universal computerised health cards instead.
If the ID-smartcards become compulsory in the EU, authorities will soon be able to conduct electronic dragnet searches by data matching. Simon Davies, of privacy International, a civil liberties group, says that this is "the technological equivalent of a general warrant on the entire population. Data matching is directly equivalent to arbitrary investigation without cause or suspicion".
Source: *The Independent* , article by Leonard Doyle, 3.2.94.