Through expert use of a telephoto lens at the UN meeting today, a crack Reuters photographer named Rick Wilking discovered an internal Bush administration memo that the President had just that moment written to the Secretary of State. This document reveals that President Bush discusses his bodily functions with top cabinet members — not only that, but he discussed with a top female cabinet member a bodily function carried out with the same body part that lead the Republicans to impeach President Clinton! Does the hypocrisy of the Republicans know no bounds?
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database â€” including health, education, family and police records â€” the health ministry said Tuesday.
As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise “red flags” in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.
The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.
“Child protection services will say, ‘Hey, there’s a warning flag from the police. There’s another one from school. There’s another one from the doctor,” Brouwer said. “Something must be going on and it’s time to call the parents in for a meeting.”
Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move, said Secretary of Health Clemence Ross.
“Safety, guidance, education and supervision are incredibly important for the development of children,” Ross said.
So in order to “protect troubled children,” the Dutch government is going to be spying on all children, troubled or not. And of course, the government is going to decide which children are “troubled.” The opinions of the child and his/her parents will not be relevant. And if enough bureaucratic “warning flags” go up, the government will “call the parents in for a meeting.” Which, no doubt, will be strictly for their own “protection.”
In the comments, Gary noted that, “This is just a step away where they will install a microchip deep in the body somewhere so it canâ€™t be removed.”
It is worth nothing in this regard that the FDA recently approved an implantable microchip with RFID transmitting capabailities. The idea — for now — is that you could get your medical records stored on a chip, and have the chip implanted in your body, so that doctors would have access to your medical records whenever they had access to you. The device is implanted under the skin, rather than “deep in the body,” but I don’t know if it can be removed by an amateur. I kind of doubt it.
This is, of course, just a small step from requiring these devices to be impanted in everybody, and using them for storing information other than just medical records. Indeed, if medical records include your name and related information such a device could be used to track the whereabouts of people even if it weren’t used to store anything but “medical records.”
Note from the article that opponents of this device are already being characterized as “fundamentalist religious groups who contend that the tags may be the â€œmark of the beastâ€ referred to in the Book of Revelation.” By demonizing (pun intended!) the opposition this way, they seek to discredit opposition based merely on reasonable concerns for privacy and for the right to control one’s own body free of government complusion. (Something tells me that the folks who purport to be so enthusiastic about “the right to control one’s own body” when it comes to abortion aren’t going to be too upset about this.)
Historic New England (SPNEA) seeks an advanced graduate student or research professional to conduct a comparative study of eighteenth-century Essex County probate inventories, focusing on the town of Newbury, Massachusetts, to determine how kitchens were typically furnished. The fellow will present the findings in a report, which will be used for an exhibition on the history of kitchens in America and for the interpretation of the kitchen at the Coffin House, one of Historic New England’s historic properties. The stipend for the fellowship is $5000. Work must be completed by January 15. 2006. Please send CV and cover letter by September 26, 2005, to Nancy Carlisle, Curator, Historic New England, 151 Essex Street, Haverhill, MA 01832 or transmit via email to ncarlisle@historicnewengland.org. For further information, please call (978) 521-4788 x 737.