Britain is trying to pass legislation to put RFID tracking technology into all its ID cards. At the same time, Sensenbrenner writes a bill to create a "REAL ID" card to identify all Americans & also deport all who are in the country illegally. At the same time, Bush promotes a measure to create a "border-crossing card" for Canadians. But this is no ordinary ID card, it's a souped-up card w/"biometric identifiers". Bush is confident that "new technologies" can deal with the border-crossing issue effectively.

In response to the US measure, Canadian minister has said that Americans will also have to carry the document to enter Canada. By 2008, anyone who enters Canada w/o a passport cannot come back to the US. From the linked story, "The United States is also putting pressure on European countries to speed up introduction of new high-security passports containing a computer chip with a digital photograph." Pretty soon, anyone who wants to enter the US will need these hi-tech cards, and anyone who leaves it.

Bush has very deep ties to many of the info. technology companies that can create these hi-tech cards. One of them, ChoicePoint, was responsible for falsely flagging voters in Florida as felons during the 2000 election. As a reward for that mistake, the database company has boomed under the Bush Administration (Halliburton-style) & it now receives tons of gov. contracts to create TSA "no-fly lists", "preferred flier" lists, "Patriot Act compliance" databases & biometrics technology. It's basically the corporate NSA, in the same way that Blackwater is now a corporate Army. I'd bet $100 that they will also receive the contract to create these new cards.

Why does this matter? ChoicePoint is also part of the "Total Information Awareness" Program that was supposedly shut down. TIA created a huge database of information on all Americans & assigned them a "risk value" for terrorism. Instead of being shut down, it was simply shifted into the NSA, as Gen. Hayden admitted. And this was probably done so NSA could combine the TIA databases w/the info gathered from illegal eavesdropping, as well. Because Congress specifically prohibited TIA, the NSA simply outsourced it to ChoicePoint & other crony companies. OK.

So, if the Bush Ad. (w/Choicepoint) creates one of these "high-security" passport cards; they can combine together all the database info from the TIA, NSA, no-fly lists, & biometric ID & put it on the card's computer chip. Ta-da! Instant 1984. Scanning the ID card reveals everything, just everything about you; from your bank accounts, to your travel history, to your employer, to your dissident activities. And, of course, we would need to carry these ID cards in order to prove our American citizenship. Americans would be tagged & corralled like a bunch of cattle. And, coincidentally, the Dept. of Agriculture is promoting RFID technology to ID domestic animals, as well. This all creates oodles of money for the data-tracking industry, & gives them the impetus to create the technology required for these ID cards & passports. If this flies, they'd not only know who you are, but your entire life history, your genetic & biological features, and your "security risk" score. All that's left is to hit the start button; and start denying travel, banking, employment, & rights to those w/too high of a score. That would chill dissidence & protest better than any detention camp. We'd be imprisoned already, within an authoritarian country that has total knowledge of our movements & activities.

But at least the illegal aliens are gone.