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IDENTITY CARDS A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE CARDS IDENTITY GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE High-tech ID systems, incorporating smart cards, biometrics and radio-frequencies and connected to mega- databases to track our every movement, are being introduced simultaneously worldwide. Is this a coincidence? lectronic identity (ID) cards have made alarming progress towards becoming universal around the world. Already, over 2.2 billion people, or 33 per cent of the world's population, have been issued with "smart" ID cards. Of those cards, over 900 million have biometric facial and fingerprint systems. On present plans, over 85 per cent of the world's population will have smart ID cards by 2012. Most of the remaining population won't have escaped: largely, they are already enrolled in earlier-generation ID systems, often in repressive states such as Myanmar Burma). Understandably, campaigns against the introduction of ID cards have ended to play up the problems with ID systems, presenting them as being unworkable and creating unmanageable problems with privacy invasion, raud, unauthorised database access, organised crime, unreliability of biometric recognition, etc. As a result, a substantial number of people believe mandatory ID cards "just won't happen”. It's long past time to stop burying our heads in the sand. There are no obstacles to the worldwide introduction of mandatory electronic ID cards. All those problems with ID systems may be real, but they are not enough o stop implementation, primarily because these are problems that will affect people as individuals, not their governments—our problem, not theirs. There has been hardly any meaningful debate about one of the biggest issues of our time. It's also time to look at what ID systems are really intended to do, not at he public justification for them. Since governments probably always knew hat ID cards wouldn't stop terrorism, organised crime, ID theft, fraud, etc., here has to be some other reason for their introduction—and it appears to be a reason that governments don't want to own up to in public. A Coordinated International ID Agenda? Perhaps we can learn more if we look at what is going on around the world. Interestingly, nobody seems to have published a comprehensive or reliable survey of worldwide ID schemes, so a survey had to be compiled for this article [see tables in author's original posting; Ed.]. What stands out from this survey, incomplete as it may be, is that advanced electronic ID card systems are coming to some of the poorest nations in the world, some in chaos, civil war and starvation, both small and large countries. They are coming to nations with vastly divergent cultures, to nations that are almost completely pre-industrialised and underdeveloped, and coming first to almost all Islamic nations. The few that will not have advanced electronic population registration will be in a tiny minority. This is all to happen by the end of 2012. For example, on 25 June 2009, India announced it is pressing ahead with the introduction of universal biometric ID cards, to be completed by 2011—to register nearly 1.2 billion people within just 18 months. by Nathan Allonby © Global Research 31 August 2009 Centre for Research on Globalization Montreal, Canada Website: www.globalresearch.ca by Nathan Allonby © Global Research 31 August 2009 Centre for Research on Globalization Montreal, Canada Website: www.globalresearch.ca NEXUS ° II OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2009 www.nexusmagazine.com