Reichstags, Tonkins.

This fall I began a library studies program at the University of Toronto. One day I hope to be a Big Time Librarian, until then I am simply a nerd. There is a reason I mention this. It is because I wanted to mention a discussion that was held during a class of mine last week. The discussion was regarding the US government's sharing of information (or lack thereof) in the wake of disasters like 9/11. We got into how a lack of valuable information feeds into limiting privacy and other rights of citizens. I was reminded of the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin which was so pivotal in establishing the Nazi empire. All it took was a few promises of protecting a frightened citizenry from imagined Communist terrorists to allow Hitler to be given the power to write his own laws free of oversight. It was a case of disseminating misinformation to control the people of Germany. The loss of individual rights and government safeguards wasn't merely an unfortunate by-product of the misinformation; it was the endgame.

I feel similarly about what has happened in the years following 9/11. Whether or not you believe a handful of terrorists carried out the attacks on their own, the US government has subsequently worked very hard to propagate misinformation about the attacks to suit their own ends. Everything from the war in Iraq to the limits on citizens' rights has been accepted because of government misinformation. Faked testimony from Kuwaitis prior to the first Gulf War and the Gulf of Tonkin incident similarly used disinformation to further the US agenda, but neither of those involved the degree of technology or open assault on private citizens' rights that we see now.

The use of biometrics is just one measure that the US government (and now increasingly numbers of gov'ts around the world) has insisted is necessary to protect the public from the undefined threat of nameless terrorists. So if biometric applications are being aggressively rolled out as a result of misinformation, what the endgame they serve?