Alphonse Bertillon (April 23, 1853—February 13, 1914) was a French law enforcement officer and biometrics researcher, who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system police used to identify criminals. Until this time, criminals could only be identified based on eyewitness accounts, which are known to be unreliable. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting.
What Bertillon created was a system for identifying criminals based on their physical appearance. Which is interesting.
Because, you see, what our government wish to do is to create a system of identification based on appearance. Although, of course, they would never base it on something so crude as—nor indeed would they call it—the Bertillon System. The Bertillon System was, after all, discredited because—amongst other things—it had a tendency to report all too many false positives and finger-printing quickly surpassed it.
But, nevertheless, the "biometric data", of which our present government is so fond, is merely a refined version of Bertillon's system of identification. The hash values which our government is placing its faith in is, at heart, merely a computerised version of the system that Bertillon started, i.e. a system of identfication based on physical characteristics.
But why would our government not associate with this system, which was mentioned so favourably in at least two Sherlock Holmes stories (The Hound Of The Baskervilles and The Naval Papers)?
It is not only because the Bertillon System was so discredited but because it was discredited by a particular organisation? Yes, Hitler's Germany loved the Bertillon System, and the Kripo (and other agencies, particularly the SS and the Gestapo) used it extensively.
You see, Hitler's Germany wanted to eliminate crime before it happened and the criminals, as they saw it, were always of a particular type: Jews, for instance, often have a very distinctive nose. And the Roma have facial characteristics easy to quantify under the Bertillon system, as do the Slavs.
Our government will not admit that they are using the Bertillon System because the Nazis used it to "identify" criminals before they had even committed a crime. The Nazis liked it because it allowed them to say that someone with a hooked Jewish nose would commit a crime, that someone with Slav cheek bones would commit a crime; therefore, naturally, the very best thing would be to imprison them before they actually committed that crime.
It is entirely appropriate really: what could be more natural than that our totalitarian, socialist NuLabour government would adopt a system of identification that the German National Socialists were so very, very keen on?
Me? I'm saving up to have my cheek bones reduced; might I suggest that you Jews have a nose job?
With this one similarity, it seems superfluous to compare this government's other comparisons to the Nazis—the banning of hunting foxes with hounds, the clamp down on smoking, prostitution, alcohol and fatty foods—but I shall and I have and make no mistake: these two are from the same stable, the National Socialists and the NuLabour government.
Both NuLabour and the Nazis believed that your ultimate obligation was to the state. If you do not believe me, simply look at and really consider Dawn Primarolo's comment on ordinary, peaceful, middle-class people who drink more than a glass of wine every night: "This has to change."
Remember, people, that your life is no longer your own: your life is in thrall to the state, and you—that magic 21.6% of you out there—voted for it. You cannot complain now: you voted for more government, you voted for more spending on these amazing public services, you voted for these charlatans and liars.
But you know the problem with having people spend money on you? You are in debt to them until your debt is paid off: and this is one debt that will never, ever be paid off. Your very pension is built on the debt of others.
So get prepared for slavery, people. And remember, when your chains become heavy and the whips begin to chafe, that you voted for this, despite the eight years of warning. You voted for this and you took the rest of us with you: we will never forget and we will never forgive.
All I can suggest—if you voted NuLabour—is that, come the revolution, you lock your door very tight and be prepared to lie like a NuLabour minister...