The World Trade Centre was still smoking when US lawmakers hastily passed the PATRIOT Act, and in the UK, it wasn't much longer before Parliament enacted the comparable Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act). Many countries, including the UK, are shifting to biometric passports (if not ID cards) and putting in the infrastructure for a global surveillance system. The much-maligned Total Information Awareness programme that proposed to mine commercial and government databases never really went away.   more »

The Irish Information Commissioner's Office has come down on the notion of school fingerprinting and taken early action to prevent the technology being deployed arbitrarily. It has told the first handful of Irish schools known to be establishing biometric systems that they ought to have a good reason for doing so and has said it will use its powers to order schools to rip out systems it considers excessive.   more »