Here comes Euro-BigBrother

[Hopeless Romantic]

No sooner than the Prime Minister signals a u-turn on the introduction of ID cards in Britain; news has seeped out of the continent that the EU may be next to try and impose a system of biometric cataloguing and identification on its citizens.

According to this report, chip manufacturers are being lined up to participate in a new European research project called BioP@ss, with the intention of developing a 'high-security chip card platform'.

It goes on to say:

..BioP@ss is the biggest chip card research project in the EU. Its goal is to do the technical spadework for the introduction of an electronic ID card in chip card format valid throughout the entire EU.

http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2009/10/biopss-the-next-stage-of-id-cards.html


The European Commission has spent £2.4 million on Project Veronica, a study on how the boxes would work. The boxes, known as an Event Data Recorders (EDR), could monitor vehicles' speed and the actions of the driver - when and how often the brakes, indicators and horn were applied.

Supporters say they could be used to reconstruct what happened in the event of a commission which would make it easier for insurance companies to decide who was at fault and, where necessary, enable police to take action against the driver.

It would also check whether built-in safety devices functioned properly.
However, the proposals are likely to trigger concern among civil liberties groups over the growth of the surveillance state.

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, warned that in future, such a system could be combined with other technology to keep a constant eye on motorists' every movement.

"If you correlate car tracking data with mobile phone data, which can also track people, there is the potential for an almost infallible surveillance system," he said

snip

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6479603/EU-proposes-black-boxes-for-cars.html