The Future
Following a study launched by French Minister of the Interior Daniel Vaillant in 2001, plans have been proposed to introduce a new identity card, the INES (carte d'identité nationale électronique sécurisée) or 'secure electronic national identity card', to be implemented from around 2007. Similar to a credit card, it is likely that this will contain biometric fingerprint and photograph data on a chip (also recorded on a central database). The scheme has many similarities to the British national identity card and National Identity Register created by the Identity Card Act of 30 March 2006.
The official agency in charge of data use monitoring, the 'national commission for computing and liberties' (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés or CNIL) has no official position since the project hasn't been officially submitted yet. CNIL was itself created (in 1978) to guard against the infringement of liberty that might result from the use of information technology, as a result of the public outcry over other plans in the 1970s to issue a 'national identity number' to each citizen, linked to the records of all Government agencies (which would have been similar to the existing numbers in many other European countries: Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Estonia, etc.).
Read more about this topic: National Identity Card (France)
Famous quotes containing the words the future and/or future:
“Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future.”
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Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
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