Smile, my friends, you may be on FBI’s version of ‘Candid Camera’

Am I giving away my age when I remind you of the old TV series, “Candid Camera”? If you aren’t old enough to remember the original, you may have seen reruns, perhaps?

The show involved someone caught up in an absolutely ridiculous situation by a host and a hidden camera crew. The fun involved watching how “normal” everyday people would react to ludicrous situations. Then at the end, the host would spring the setup on them with a line that usually went, “Smile, you’re on ‘Candid Camera.’” Something like that.

Now I read where the FBI is going to spend $1 billion on a new, high-tech master system of databases which will collect just about everything about us — fingerprints, photos, physical characteristics of every possible kind — all in a single system. This gigantic database of all physical traits (“biometric information”) would be better and bigger than anything used before.

Why, just reading about it makes me realize that finally, FINALLY, we’ll be able to solve all crime, catch all the terrorists, and peace, joy, and love will reign throughout the world.

Or, perhaps, all of us are at risk of losing every last vestige of privacy. Perhaps, as the article mentions, peoples’ worst fears will be realized and our “bodies will become de facto national identification cards.”

Oh, please. Next, we’ll need to worry about airport x-ray machines that show our nekked bodies in all their splendor. Uh, well. Hmmm …

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