From the Bar Harbor [Maine] Times (no weblink found):
ANNUAL HEALTH FAIR COMING UP
The MDI Hospital Organization will be hosting its 2nd annual Health Fair at Mount Desert Island High School gymnasium. There will be something for everyone at this fair.
Such as:
The Penobscot County Sheriff's Department will provide iris scans for children with a device that takes a picture of the iris, the colored part of the eye which is unique to each indicidual, and records the information in a national database.
Golly, an iris scan for a national database — that's fabulous, officer, thank you! Won't you please also take Johnny's fingerprints, swab his mouth, and confiscate our family's not-so-well-thumbed copy of the Bill of Rights?
Kudos, we already feel a lot, you know, healthier.
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Two years ago I had the state police in WV call to see if I wanted to donate towards protecting our children programs in schools. When I asked what the program entailed I was told they were trying to get children’s fingerprints. I told the lady that I was against taking personal information from an underage child to be held in a states data base. Surprisingly enough she tried to convince me that it was needed, after all what was I going to do if my child was kidnapped?! I pointed out that the margin for finding a kidnapped child with fingerprints was so low it was virtually null, so other than having a government database on people who had yet to commit a crime and invading on there privacy what was the point? Strangely she hung up. I've yet to recive a call back from them ether.
Posted by: Hannah | Friday, April 04, 2008 at 02:06 PM