The world is not enough

US wants to be able to access Britons' ID cards

Ok, I am back in town, and the world has not completely fallen apart. But this is a weird bit of news. It seems that an easy to read National ID card is just not enough for the elites in power. It has to be compatible with new cards in Britain. The argument used is that we don't want a compatibility battle. From the article...

Mr Chertoff said yesterday that it was vital to seek compatibility, holding up the example of the "video war" of 25 years ago, when VHS and Betamax were in fierce competition to win the status of industry standard for video recording systems.

"I certainly hope we have the same chip... It would be very bad if we all invested huge amounts of money in biometric systems and they didn't work with each other.Hopefully, we are not going to do VHS and Betamax with our chips. I was one of the ones who bought Betamax, and that's now in the garbage," he said.

Why is it that we need to avoid any kind of a compatibility issue? Why is it we care about compatibility with anywhere other than home? Really, the only funny part is in the lameness of the VHS-Betamax argument used here, because the real reason is evident. They want compatibility because the elites do not merely have domination plans for just this country. I can see no other compelling reason, not one sufficient to coordinate the loss of security and privacy between two countries (or all of Europe rather).

It is all too much to take sometimes.