Mandatory fingerprinting of European children

The European Union is working on a new rule that would require all children in the EU to be fingerprinted and entered into an international database. Currently, the proposed regulations would require all children age 12 and up to be fingerprinted, but some committee members are lobbying for an even younger age limit, possibly as young as six. The European Commission notes that “Scientific tests have confirmed that the paillary ridges on the fingers are not sufficiently developed to allow biometric capture and analysis until the age of six.”

Ben Hayes, spokesman for the civil liberties group Statewatch said “We are going from fingerprinting criminals to universal fingerprinting without any real debate. In the long term everyone’s fingerprints will be stored on a central database. You have to ask what will be the costs to a person’s privacy.” Statewatch also accused the EU Governments of making decisions based only on “technological possibilities – not on the moral and political questions of whether it is right or desirable.”

On the one hand, so long as you do nothing wrong, what difference does it make who has your information on file? On the other hand, however, the potential for misuse is huge. What do you think? Would you be concerned if your kids had to be fingerprinted and put into an international database? Or do you, like I do, see this as a positive move forwards in authentication?

Schools, libraries must block MySpace, Facebook

The House of Representatives just passed resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), 410 to 15. If it becomes law (it has to make it through the senate and then the president), schools and libraries will be forced to block social networking sites like MySpace and chat rooms; if they don’t, they will lose their federal internet subsidies. Schools and libraries will be required “to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.”

Unfortunately, the reasoning behind this bill simply doesn’t make much sense — Texas Republican Ted Poe argued, “social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids.” Personally, I thought they came in the bedroom window, but what do I know. Sure, kids have run into sexual predators on the internet. Sure, parents need to talk to their kids and be aware of what they’re doing. This law, however, takes that control away from the parents and turns it into a badly thought out nanny-state policy.

Lots of teachers and libraries use such sites to help educate kids. Vicki A. Davis is one of them. She writes a journal about education and has written extensively about DOPA and its effects. As one of her students wrote, “These lawmakers need to ban ignorance not promote it.” The potential of the internet as an educational tool is enormous, and it’s only starting to be tapped into. This bill would kill a huge portion of that potential. Time to call your senators, kiddies!