Ok, so I did a post a few months back on biometrics.. I was just watching the UK Prime Minsters Debate and Gordon Brown was talking about how biometric passports have been integrated in an attempt to help curb illegal immigration.

Um… Ok, as Clegg brought up, you cannot control immigration from countries from within the EU. I’m not going to get into this whole immigration argument, but sadly, he’s right. Within the EU, anything goes. They can’t really track anyone. It’s a bit ridiculous. People are given free reign to come and go as they please.

Speaking of which, I flew into London Luton Airport last month. It was a Friday at around 8 am. I got off the plane and walked into the terminal – to be met by about 50,000 people. It seemed that about 20 flights had landed at the same time! “Oh god,” I thought to myself, “it’s going to take HOURS go get through customs!” But then I remembered the fancy biometric passport machines with the retina scanner (which I wrote about in my previous post). So, with a new found spring in my step, I head towards the customs desks, following the giant biometric passport symbol and the hoards and hoards of people. As I come towards the partition that leads past the zigzagging line of bodies waiting to go through passport control, and along to the biometric passport reader, I realise – with horror – that it’s closed. “Bloody machines must be broken”, I thought to myself. And I began the slow treck towards passport control.

After only about 10 minutes (surprisingly), I make it to the desk, and a nice customs officer checks my passport. “Are your machines broken”, I ask him, motioning towards the row of biometric machines behind him. “Oh, no”, he replied, “they’re only on for certain hours during the day”. He hands my passport back to me. “What, the quietest ones”, I ask him, before turning around to stare at the ever growing crowd behind me and then proceeding to walk towards the baggage carousels.

It wasn’t until after I got home that I reaslied how ridiculous it was. How much money was spent on these machines? And they only have them running a few hours each day?! Why? It can’t be because of a lack of man-power.. It just made me even more irritated. Not only are they keeping all of this data to turn the world into a Orwellian 1984 type scenario, they’re spending a HELL of a lot of money trying to do it!

On a side note, my passport has a plastic page in it which contains the chip. It’s a few mm thick and the chip and wires clearly visible through the clear plastic. My boyfriend just got a Hungarian passport, which also bears the biometric chip logo. But, I can’t tell where the hell it is! There is no plastic page, there is no thicker page, there is nothing at all to indicate where the chip on this passport is. He was fingerprinted and retina scanned when he got his passport, so obviously the information is on there somewhere.. but did they manage to make these chips paper thin?! Can anyone shed some light on this?!

1. iPods: Can you believe that iPods were launched in 2001 – yet it feels like they’ve been around FOREVER! iPods have completely changed how we deal with music and now – other media like movies and pictures. The new iPod is absolutely incredible. You can surf the web, do your emailing, listen to music, watch movies, with this pocket-sized device. I wonder what hot gadget they will come up with next!
2. Facebook: When facebook first hit the internet, it was only limited to Harvard students. Now everyone and their cat has a facebook page. You watch as people start relationships, end relationships, enter into complicated relationships. You don’t even have remember birthdays anymore. And the apps.. I’m just going to say: FarmVille, Cafe World and Mafia Wars. Facebook has even been blocked from some offices because of it’s popularity.
3. Celeb culture: Everyone and their kid is a celebrity now. Jon & Kate, Octo-mom, people that didn’t win American Idol, Pheoby Price… TMZ changed the way “celebrities” are seen – snapping pics when they’re buying their dog food, jogging, leaving a restaurant or club. And people with famous parents are hot for no good reason: the Geldoff girls, Paris Hilton, the Kardashians. And everyone has their own reality show: The Hills, The City, Jersey Shore, Cake Boss… I mean, MTV doesn’t even have music videos any more. It’s all reality shows. And with Twitter, you can see what these “celebrities” are doing all the time!
4. YouTube: YouTube has become a norm of everyday life. People can be YouTube famous just for posting vlogs (video-blogs). Susan Boyle became an over-night celebrity because of YouTube. It’s crazy!
5. Google: Don’t know something, Google it. Can’t think of the name of Dorothy’s dog from The Wizard of Oz? Google it! Is hard to imagine where we would be without Google. In a world where we need everything right away, Google is really a lifesaver sometimes! His name is Toto by the way!
6. Turning everything into a verb and giving everything nicknames: “I’m facebook-ing”, “Blogging”, “Google it”, “Wikipedia it”, “DVR-ing”. It seems there are new words everyday. Tweeting (when you’re posting things on Twitter), PWNED, Sexting, Tweens, Twi-Hards (Twilight Fans). And nicknames for famous couples are everywhere: Spencer Pratt & Heidi Montag from The Hills became Spidi, Brad Pitt & Angelina became Brangelina.. I could keep going but I won’t. And Dancing With The Stars became DWTS, and America’s Next Top Model became ANTM..
7. Starbucks: I don’t drink coffee, but I love a hot chocolate from Starbucks or any other coffee joint. And those people with the crazy Starbucks coffee orders: Grande, chai latte, no fat, no foam, no water, soy, triple shot, extra hot, whipped cream, sprinkles.. I don’t know, I just made that up, but it’s probably a legit coffee! (minus the no water part). But people get crazy with their coffees.. It secretly bothers me when people have these ridiculous orders. If I worked at Starbucks, I would probably only last about 2 minutes. Some “non-fat, extra foam, soy” person would end up with double cream thrown at them!
8. Airports: Do you remember when you didn’t have to take your shoes off in the airport? Or when they gave you real metal cutlery and glass cups on the plane? Or when you could bring knitting needles, sewing needles, a bottle of water onto the plane with you? I think there was a rule where mothers who brought formula or milk for their babies, they would have to taste it before being allowed to take it on board with them. Terrorism changed everything.
9. Shoes: Uggs & Crocs. Uggs became the hottest accessory for cold toes everywhere! Even people in hot climates were wearing the wool lined winter boots with shorts. And Crocs. You either love them or hate them. There were even internet groups dedicated to destroying the shoes.
10. GPS: There’s no excuse for you to get lost anymore. No one uses maps, because everyone has GPS. There was a story of a couple driving 400 miles to the wrong destination because they typed the destination name wrong into their GPS. Oops!

Maybe by 2020, we’ll be flying, teleporting, it’ll be like the Matrix – just upload things into your braincells that you want to learn. No, I’m just kidding. I don’t think I would like that. With the modern fast paced modern day lifestyle, the little things seem to be thrown aside. Things are popular for only a short time, hot things become not hot so fast. Everything needs to be the newest and the best. Just little things like making your own pizza instead of buying a pre-made one, and making your own flower arrangements or centre-piceces instead of buying them can be really rewarding and fun! Even drinks can be brought pre-mixed like martinis and cocktails. I think modern technology is amazing, but we should not forget the simple things like apple picking, pretty flowers, baking a cake or making snowmen!

What do you think the hottest things of the last decade have been?

It makes you wonder about things like this swine flu vaccine. Are they secretly injecting people with mysterious things?! Are they saving the needles for DNA?! I know I’m being crazy, but what if they were? I mean, there are people that are having these RFID microchips implated in their kids “in case they get lost”. My cat has one of those.. And if you’ve seen Zeitgeist then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Gradually, these microchips will store more and more information. And then if you piss off the men in charge, they turn off your chip and you become nobody – no ID, no history, no anything. In Hong Kong, they have the chipped cards for the underground (like the Oyster card in London and the Opus card in Montreal), and they want to integrate it with an ID card. So this one card will be your travel card, your ID card, your driver’s license. If that gets lost, stolen or even worst cloned, you’re buggered. They’ve already shown that the passport chips can be cloned – there’s a video online of a guy changing a passport to have Elvis’ information on it. And then what happens? No one ever belives you are who you say you are, so you’d be really stuck. You can’t use a credit card without a piece of ID or call your bank or even the gas board, etc without giving them 16 pieces of information.

I could keep going, but I’m sure most of you have either fallen asleep or stopped reading. For those of you who haven’t. Thank you! I’ll throw some links at the bottom if you’re interested in checking out the whole RFID/Biometric thing.

But let me know what you think. Am I being a complete crazy person or is there sense in my ranting? I’m interested to know!

Lord, where do I start?! This whole biometric thing is getting a little out of control. I’m going to recount a few of my experiences in crossing borders from the last year or so.

Those of you who have travelled to the USA who aren’t Canadian or American will know what I’m talking about. Around a year and a half ago, I crossed from Canada to the USA – I had to officially leave Canada and “re-enter” to get a work visa. I know it sounds dodgy, but don’t worry, it’s completely legal. My girlfriend kindly offered to drive me from Montreal to Plattsburg NY and back again. We got to the US border and the Border Patrol guard told her to park her car and made both of us to go to the customs office. We went into this office where a whole bunch of burly customs officials were walking around with their guns. They asked us both if we’d have been arrested. If you looked at my friend and I, you would understand the ridiculousness of this question. I had to complete a form, get an eye scan and pay them to get a stamp in my passport. My friend told me later that she was scared – “why were they retina scanning you?”, she asked. They didn’t believe that we were just going to Plattsburg for lunch. But we made it, brought some clothes – which we declared to Canadian customs; and I got my papers.

Then, about a month ago, I travelled from Spain to the UK. What amazed me was that the time it took me to lift my bum off the seat on the plane and giving my mum a hug was no more than 10-15 mins. Here’s why. So I got to passport control in Luton Airport, and they had a new system going. Instead of waiting in line for a cheerful customs agent to make sure your passport picture looks like you, they have these gates that you go through. There are two gates. At the first one, you scan the chip in your passport. The gate opens, you walk through, it closes behind you. Next, there are footprints on the floor that you stand on, and you look into this device that scans your face. Apparently this machine scans the retina, the distance between the eyes, nose, mouth etc., this biometric information will be used in future to determine that you do in fact belong to your passport. Then it opens up and you go on your merry way. And apparently it’s supposed to make passport control go a lot quicker.. In my case, it did. I guess quite a lot of people still have the old style passports that aren’t fitted with chips.

After a few hours of thinking about what had happened with this whole scanning business, I thought, ‘wait a minute, did they scan my face when I got my passport?!’ I’m pretty sure they didn’t, and my mum said that the initial scan is probably them just collecting data. Which is a bit scary really. According to Direct.gov.uk, the information that is contained is that of the passport holder’s face – according to the picture on your passport. I’m sure you can’t see the detail in my iris from a photograph… I don’t know, it’s all a bit dodgy. What if you’re wearing contact lenses?! Does that mess up the scan? Oh, and I was transferring in Amsterdam, and the man looked at my picture and told me to remove my glasses and tuck my hair behind my ears. I kindly offered him additional pieces of ID which he declined…

But then, from swiping or scanning your passport, they know all your information anyway. Whenever I arrive in Canada, the nice customs man tells me that I went to school and worked in Canada.. Yes, Sir, I know that… One year I came back and started pulling out my diploma, bank statements and various other pieces of paper and the man thought I was crazy. But sometimes you do need to show them a whole assortment of paperwork and they still look at you like you’re going to walk out of the airport and start plotting to blow up the world or something. I called Immigration Quebec once and actually got hung up on because the lady didn’t believe I was who I said I was. I was absolutely hysterical. Thankfully when I called back, the person I spoke to fortunately had more than 2 braincells to rub together, and actually was able to help me. Just thinking about that makes me REALLY angry…

And this whole thing with countries sharing information is supposed to be an attempt to stop illegal immigrants, identity fraud and criminals and such – which I can completely understand; but what does that mean for the rest of us? What’s next? Already Canada, USA, UK and Australia are pooling their biometric data. I mean, if they are JUST using it for this purpose, then I suppose it’s ok.. But then I’m sure it will get taken a step further.

It makes you wonder about things like this swine flu vaccine. Are they secretly injecting people with mysterious things?! Are they saving the needles for some kind of DNA profiling pool?! I know I’m being crazy, but what if they were? I mean, there are people that are having these RFID microchips implanted in their kids “in case they get lost” or to “stop terrorist activity”. My cat has one of those.. And if you’ve seen Zeitgeist then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Gradually, these microchips will store more and more information. And then if you piss off the men in charge, they turn off your chip and you become nobody – no ID, no history, no anything. In Hong Kong, they have the chipped cards for the underground (like the Oyster card in London and the Opus card in Montreal), and they want to integrate it with an ID card. So this one card will be your travel card, your ID card, your driver’s license. If that gets lost, stolen or even worst cloned, you’re buggered. They’ve already shown that the passport chips can be cloned – there’s a video online of a guy changing a passport to have Elvis’ information on it. And then what happens? No one ever believes you are who you say you are as it is, so you’d be really stuck. You can’t use a credit card without a piece of ID or call your bank or even the gas board, etc without giving them 16 pieces of information.

I could keep going, but I’m sure most of you have either fallen asleep or stopped reading. For those of you who haven’t. Thank you! I’ll throw some links at the bottom if you’re interested in checking out the whole RFID/Biometric thing.

But let me know what you think. Am I being a complete crazy person or is there sense in my ranting? I’m interested to know!

CBC News – Canada & US to Share Refugee Fingerprints
Canada.com – Canada & US to Share Refugee Biometric Info
Direct.gov.uk – Biometric Passports Explained
Timesonline.co.uk – Baby’s Passport Becomes Bin Ladens
Timesonline.co.uk – ‘Fakeproof’ E-Passport Cloned in Minutes
Zeitgeist – Official Website – site contains links to movie on Google
Youtube.com – Hackers Create Elvis’ Passport
Wikipedia.com – RFID Microchip