Israel Moves Toward a National Biometric Database 476
An anonymous reader writes "Israeli's government has approved the creation of a biometric database which would contain fingerprints and facial photos of all Israeli citizens. If the bill becomes law — and it is at an early stage — the biometric information of each citizen would be embedded in their passport and national ID card. Israeli citizens would be required by law to submit to biometric testing upon request by government employees, soldiers, and policemen, so that their biometric info can be compared to the info embedded in their ID card / passport. The declared purpose of the bill is to combat forgery of passports and ID cards, and also to aid identification 'in cases of a mass disaster.' The bill was approved over objections from civil rights groups and the Israeli Bar. The article notes that no other democratic country has a comprehensive biometric database of all citizens."
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MARK OF THE BEAST (Score:2, Flamebait)
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I must not LOL.
LOL is the troll-feeder.
LOL is the little response that leads to flamey debate.
I will face the LOL.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone, I will turn the inner eye to its path.
Only I will remain.
Litany Against LOL (Score:2)
That is very very funny.
UK National ID Card (Score:5, Informative)
The article notes that no other democratic country has a comprehensive biometric database of all citizens.
But the UK is working on it [no2id.net].
Only 5,499,000 Jews in Israel, 14 mil in the world (Score:2)
When stories about small countries are posted, it is useful to know the population. The entire country of Israel has a population like a big city. There are only 7,282,000 [jewishvirtuallibrary.org] people in Israel. There are only 5,499,000 Jews in Israel. There are only about 14,000,000 [jewishvirtuallibrary.org] Jews in the entire world.
Slashdot often runs stories about New Zealand. There are only 4,270,605 [stats.govt.nz] people in all of New Zealand, both north and south islands.
There are only 21,382 [abs.gov.au]
Re:Only 5,499,000 Jews in Israel, 14 mil in the wo (Score:4, Insightful)
but with the U.S. funding and supporting Israel those 7.2 million get carte blanche to do things for which the 305 million in the U.S.A. get blamed
Almost completely irrelevant! (Score:2)
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What separation, exactly, exists between the state of Israel and the religion of Orthodox Judaism? You can't even get married there unless you qualify for an Orthodox marriage [1].
[1] Reform Jews, it should be noted, basically get bupkis out of Israel. Orthodox loonies get government subsidies so they can beat their wives and stay home reading the Torah all day instead of working.
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What separation, exactly, exists between the state of Israel and the religion of Orthodox Judaism?
Actually, ONLY the marriage/family matters go to the religious courts. And you can get married as a Muslim or Christian through the corresponding religious court.
Point is, an assault in Israel gets tried by a criminal court. A lawsuit gets tried by a civil court. And these courts run on Common Law rather than Torah Law.
Not that I'm inclined to defend this ridiculous biometric bullshit. Just saying.
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Assault goes to a civil court if the police chose to make arrests, etc which hasn't happened in several instances of Haredi violence towards women.
The point is that crazy fundamentalist Jews are privileged over Reform or Conservative Jews, I'd imagine non-practicing Jews get an even crappier deal. Since Israel is explicitly formed without a separation of religion and government the descent into true theocracy is only a matter of time, and since Israel has nothing resembling a bill of rights the trip into p
Re:Almost completely irrelevant! (Score:5, Informative)
Brace yourself, I'm going to be giving you a bit of the history of Jewish movements.
Reform and Conservative Jews barely even exist in Israel. In fact, if you talked to an average Israeli about the "Masorti" (Conservative) or "Reformi/Progressive" (Reform) movements, they probably would have to look them up on Google. This isn't because Israelis are crazy-religious; most Israeli Jews call themselves "Chiloni" (translates as "secular").
Instead, it happened because the Reform movement in specific and the Conservative movement along with it have, historically, opposed Zionism up until the 1980s or 1990s, at which point they accepted that Israel will continue existing, and only began openly and strongly advocating Zionism to their own members in the 2000s. I was raised Reform, I know this stuff for a fact.
"Why?" you ask. Well, the Reform movement formed because Jews wanted to walk, talk, eat, and act like the German and American Gentiles among whom they lived without having to actually convert to Christianity; they were extremist secular Jews who sought to call their secularism a form of religion. The Modern Orthodox movement then formed to oppose the Reform Jews, and the Conservative movement formed to find a middle ground between the Orthodox and Reform approaches. Since the Reform had given up on the whole idea of Jews as an ethnicity or nation, and the Conservative (like the Orthodox) wanted the Messiah to come before we got a Jewish state, both movements opposed the State of Israel's formation. Hell, so did the American Orthodox.
In fact, the whole privileged position of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel came about as a political deal made by David Ben-Gurion's government to secure support for the emerging state from the old, respected Orthodox communities. Back then there were only a few hundred ultra-Orthodox yeshivah boys anyway, so not drafting them wasn't perceived as a big deal.
So we've ended up with an Israel that has three degrees of religiosity officially acknowledged:
1) Secular. The majority, who go to synagogue for the High Holidays at most and don't keep kosher laws or Shabat or anything.
2) National Religious. The Israeli Modern-Orthodox Jews who consider Orthodox Judaism and modern life reconcilable. Their actual range of practice goes from what Americans would call a very religious Conservative Judaism to internationally-acknowledged Modern Orthodoxy. They keep kosher, keep Shabat (ie: no work on Saturday, for a really broad value of "work"), and keep the laws of "family purity" (don't even fucking ask). Those three categories, in fact, form the very definition of Orthodox Judaism as commonly acknowledged by rabbis the world over.
3) Ultra-Orthodox. Crazy fundamentalists and black-hats. Since they "make the Torah their occupation" they get exemption from Army service as a part of that deal Ben-Gurion made. They live off the welfare that (AFAIK) all poor, unemployed families receive in Israel, because they don't respect secular professions and, indeed, don't respect any profession except for Rabbi. Their schools receive funding from both the religion ministry and the education ministry, which pisses off everyone else.
Now you might just see the trap the ultra-Orthodox have set for themselves ideologically. They can't live without secular or National Religious Jews (they really, really hate Arabs) to support them, and a growing number of their far-too-many children leave the fold for Army service and a normal life. The ultra-Orthodox can't take over the government because they don't even like acknowledging the government's legitimacy; they still wait for the Messiah.
So the actual chance of Israel toppling into theocracy in practice is quite low, since that would result in everyone starving to death and Big Business (Israel most certainly has Big Business) would never allow itself to be shut down by a bunch of insolent black-hats.
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(NOT a religion)
Seriously? 'cause looking at all the posts, the two are used pretty damn interchangeably.
Not that I disagree with you. You're right #'s really don't have anything to with the article at hand. It's a bad move whether it's a country of 7 million, 70 million, or 700 million.
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You must be Australian.
The ultimate identity theft (Score:2)
* Forge ID card .. without DNA .. which I'm sure will be the justification for taking that next.
* Find some way to have "your" details "corrected" in the national database
* Who would possibly believe the real identity owner?
*
*
DNA Forgery (Score:2)
It's just one worrying trend (Score:5, Insightful)
Many Reform jews are pro-Zionist (think the State of Israel is a good thing) but strongly disapprove of the way it treats Palestinians, the Lebanese and their other neighbours, and object to the hypocrisy of Israel having 200 nuclear warheads and then complaining about regional destabilisation (e.g. the letter from Gerald Kaufman MP in the Guardian this weekend). The result is often quite vicious attacks by Orthodox Jews.
Now look at this in the context of this biometric database. It is a wonderful opportunity for the Orthodox in Israel to identify Jews who they may regard as troublemakers. (They already routinely do things like refuse to recognise marriages of non-Orthodox Jews, or refuse to recognise conversions ratified by Reform rabbis). This database will give the police and the army more power to identify and harass, not only the Palestinians, but people who disagree with the settlers and the ultra-Zionists.
Many of the founders of Israel were secular; a lot of them were socialists. I think they would be horrified by this proposal and would even quote the Torah against it.
Re:It's just one worrying trend (Score:4, Interesting)
Since this database is used for collecting data on Israeli citizens it is useless against Palestinians, since they are not citizens of Israel, nor of any other country.
This is useful only against criminals, Israeli Arabs (who seldom serve in the army, and therfore didn't get their photo and finger-prints taken already), and as you mentioned, most useful against political resistance. Keeping the Israeli populace ignorant of the atrocities Israel performs takes huge amounts of propaganda, censureship and such tactics. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if this is designed to track political ("extreme-left", "bleeding hearts", "arab-lovers") dissidents as well as other threats.
Full disclosure - I am Israeli.
Oh fuck. I just shot myself in the foot, didn't I?
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Israeli Arabs (who seldom serve in the army...
Israeli arabs can serve in the army? I didn't know that. Are you sure? Note, I don't mean druze.
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Oh fuck. I just shot myself in the foot, didn't I?
Not really, just pick the tinfoil hat back up off the ground and put it on again. Naw, I agree with you. The religious courts, AFAIK, will have no power over this database, so its only real use will be political harassment and tracking of released/paroled criminals.
Actually, this sounds to me like a UK-style security theater -- a failing government thrashing about, grasping at straws trying to sound useful while the populace waits for elections to chuck the bastards out. B'ezrat ha'Shem it won't pass or
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It is a wonderful opportunity for the Orthodox in Israel to identify Jews who they may regard as troublemakers.
'cause it's the orthodox pushing this through the gov't? Read the article, and guess what, nothing suggests it, and neither does the current makeup of the Knesset [wikipedia.org]. Right wing hawqs are just as enamored of this nonsense as anyone, and as much political power as they may wield, the majority of the country is secular (and pretty much the entire armed forces) so the gov't can't pass something this intrusive unless somebody besides the Orthodox are pushing for it.
They already routinely do things like refuse to recognise marriages of non-Orthodox Jews, or refuse to recognise conversions ratified by Reform rabbis
And doing weird things with non-Jews like making
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(alt. account)
Please tell me all about the "next phase."
Ah, the irony (Score:2)
A system Hitler would have had wet dreams about, and it's a right wing Jewish government that is bringing it into being. How long until some uniformed Israeli soldier struts up to a family and arrogantly demands, "Your papers. Immediately!"
I would bet the majority of Jews around the world and in Israel are horrified by this measure, and disgusted by the people who want to implement it. What price security?
Reality Check: They have had this data for years (Score:3, Informative)
Since most the country does compulsory army duty, they already have everyone's fingerprints, photos, dental records and blood tests etc. (things that army needs to identify you when you come home in multiple pieces)
Since the US and UK have mandated biometric passport data, they would be collecting biometric data anyway.
The only thing that this does is cover the remaining percentages and have dogged the army.
A national ID card has been around for many many years. Luckily for Israelis they do not have a governments that seem to abuse this data nor a high court that bends over and looks the away when people try and abuse this power.
The reality is that the data exists. The only new factor here is that it will be embedded on your ID card rather then click away on a terminal.
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Funny, that's the same excuse they gave us in the UK! Seems like every government is trying to blame other governments for requiring biometric passports. Where does the requirement actually come from? The International Civil Aviation Organization [icao.int]. Why is an opaque, unelected and unaccountable committee [hasbrouck.org] dictating the domestic policy of major powers? Interesting question.
I am an Israeli (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't believe me, just read the news stories, and the bios [wikipedia.org] of the kidnapped [wikipedia.org] soldiers. The front lines are CEOs, lawyers, scientists, mathematicians, accountants and what not. The middle+ class are the people that go to war. The most leftist and liberal leaders were always the best generals - Rabin (Oslo) , Barak (pulled out of Lebanon), and in his last years, Ariel Sharon who pulled out of Gaza. And most importantly, there is not a single religious general, and Israel never had a religious leader.
I design complex real-time control systems (Mostly based on PIC/NEC/Toshiba ), and like any Israeli, for 28 days a year, I become a soldier. Despite what you may or may not understand about our society, chances are that there is plenty of holes in your understanding how this microscopic 5 million people country works.
But point is, nobody here trusts the government, the current government is extremely weak, and on the verge of being replaced. This thing will not pass. Most people here read 1984 =).
Re:I am an Israeli (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very delicate subject, and as one Israeli to another, as we both know, if it wasn't in an anonymous internet forum I wouldn't dare raise such a question, how can you explain giving a twelfth of your life away to an organisation obsessed with harassing, repressing, dividing, locking in, shutting out, abusing and killing people for the sole reason that they lived in your country before your parents/grand-parents arrived and drove them off their land?
And don't give me this "the IDF is the most moral army in the world" line, we both know how wrong that is. I could give enough examples to make both of us blush, but I won't (it's my country too damn it!). Looking at the way the IDF operates, I see the sole purpose of its actions in the conquered territories as to make the inhabitants' lives as painful and difficult as possible. How can you collaborate to that?
Full disclosure: yes I did my full three years back when I didn't know what was actually going on. I couldn't keep doing it once I found out. How do you find it possible? Is the boogie-man of terrorism that intimidating?
Re:I am an Israeli (Score:4, Insightful)
The prime reason is that in the late 1940s the Arabs refused the UN partition plan which would have created two states, one arab and one israeli, with international status for jerusalem (hey, that sounds familiar, I heard it recently), and declared war. That war has not yet ended.
The palestinians have accepted a two-state solution (Oslo Accords) and so have the arab nations (Arab Peace Initiative). What happened in the 40's is not that relevant, because we cannot change the past. We can choose to take steps towards peace today and in the future. Unfortunately, too many people are coming up with excuses why they cannot make peace, instead of taking the painful steps towards a solution.
The IDF operates to protect the citizens of Israel...
According to international law, the IDF is also responsible for protecting palestinian civilians and guaranteeing their human rights. Unfortunately, they do not and allow settlers to freely attack palestinians. They also harass palestinians and disallow travel. The harassment and lack of jobs are excellent breeding grounds for the resistance. The policy of settlement expansions/ethnic cleansing executed in part by the IDF has resulted in large settlements that have greatly jeopardized the viability of a two-country solution.
I recall recently when Hamas sent 6000 rockets randomly into Israel
According to Israel, it's acceptable to murder citizens that are in the vicinity of Hezbollah or Hamas members, when the rockets the IDF uses have limited accuracy. We know that Hamas' rockets are very crude and can only be aimed for a certain town. I think that pretty much every town in Israel will have (reserve) soldiers living there, so the attacks are on military targets (who 'hide' among civilians, to use the israeli jargon). I'm perfectly willing to condemn the rocket attacks, but don't pretend that Israel is not doing the same thing.
The proportionate response would have been to send 6000 rockets randomly into Gaza.
Look up the number of palestinian civilians that are killed every year vs the number of israeli civilians and then get back to me on 'proportionality.'
Violent attacks by Arabs is not the bogeyman, they are all too real.
One of the reasons why there is no peace agreement yet is that Israel has always 'rewarded' the attackers by stopping the peace process after an attack. The result is that a minority can hold 4 million people hostage. That weakens those who want peace, because they cannot show results. The election of Hamas is a good example of what happens next.
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Is there some particular reason why Israel shouldn't capture children? The Palestinians use children as suicide bombers and soldiers. Would you prefer it if they were just shot on sight instead, or where exactly are you going with this?
Yeah, because they're really interested in peace after electing an organization that will wage Jihad against Israel until it is destroyed.
Isreli Laws require Some experience (Score:5, Informative)
But i don't think you appreciate the situation with Israeli documents: they are the most popular forged documents in the world right now: our passports are the easiest to mangle with, and because many countries trust Israeli passports, it's the most bought passport in the black market. Even the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs issued several rules to disencourage Israeli tourists from selling their passports... Our IDs are also quite popular, since we still have problems of women trafficking...
And about terrorism... well, i doubt anybody actually thinks this system will have anything to do with that. There are a very few actual cases, compared with the total, where Israeli citizens Arabs were involved in terrorist activity...
And the last comment i have on this issue, is that in the end, friends, it all comes down to money. Some CEO, with a security system, is related to some government official, and is going to rip off the treasury, when he accidentally of course, win the auction for creating the system. At least that was true for many other security related systems in Israel, the ones that did not go through the defense industry.
Hope I shed some light.
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I think that's a nice briefing :)
Democracy? (Score:2)
It is a bit contentious to call Israel a democracy. A few years back a poll from the Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) [idi.org.il] concluded: In sum, from the relative ranking across all the indicators, Israel may be classified as a formal democracy that has not yet succeeded in incorporating the characteristics of substantive democracy. Not exactly a suspect source.
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Re:And if you listen closely... (Score:5, Insightful)
...you can just hear the maniacal cackling of the engineers of the Third Reich.
Israel is reacting to the threats of regular terrorist bombings.
The Nazis were trying to breed the ubermensch and wipe out the undermensch.
If you want to draw a tie between Nazis and the Israeli State, you're going to have to work harder.
As for the engineers* of the Third Reich, they were ahead of their time. One of the reasons the USA grew so strongly after the war is that we took all the highlights of German industry by way of war reparations.
*engineers as in guys with slide rulers, not the politicians
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Yeah.. The Nazis were already in Germany. The Israelies stole the land of their undermensch and forced them out.
So? (Score:2)
The people living on that land had very little to do with the Empires which claimed to own the land.
They were just living their lives and saw that some outside forces had made claims. It wasn't until the creation of Israel that those empires had real effects of the average resident. That's when they began to fight back.
Imperialism and nation-building always fails.
Does it? (Score:2)
USA USA USA... Canata... Canata Canada... oh wait... Mexic.... oh wait... Brazi... Braz... nvm... lets see... UK UK UK... nvm... wait... where exactly has it failed? I'm not sure the original denizens of any of those lands have descendants left alive to make any claims that empire has failed. Empire has alway succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.
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And if you take the historical Israel : let's not forget that that was quite a bit bigger than the current little spec of land. In fact the original Israel included a few cities that you might have heard of : Damascus, Mecca, Medina, Kirkuk, Amman, ...
OK, everyone knows the original Kingdom of Israel was bigger than today's State of Israel, but do you have any source on it stretching from Damascus to Mecca and the Mediterranean Sea to Amman?
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I have heard that the "Near East" is used as a test bed for a variety of contraptions. Thus, be sure that you will have the pleasure to experience all the benefits of each dollar spent.
CC.
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I wonder how many of my tax dollars are being used
Many. The Israeli security industry benefits enormously from Western spending ; they are respected and renowned as the people with the most experience of dealing with terrorism.
Someone with thicker tinfoil on their hat might suspect that this was a prototype project, pushed through by rich Israeli security industry lobbyists keen to prove their ability for the contracts for Western nations. Someone with double-layered tinfoil might even believe that they already have a contract and this is just the testing
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You're forgetting Pakistan. Pakistan gets massive US aid, and , during the regime of Yahya Khan the Islamic dictator, even carried out genocide of Bengali Hindus and moderate Muslims in Bangladesh with the full blessings of Richard Nixon (as the infamous "Blood Telegram" attests)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities [wikipedia.org]
If you extend the rubric to include all Islamic countries, not just the Arabs, then, with Pakistan, the total US foreign aid given to Israel's enemies (Pakistan led the air forc
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I wasn't entirely referring to the tax dollars donated as aid. I was mostly referring to the tax dollars spent by Western governments with Israeli security companies, which no doubt get poured into R&D.
Things like
All the
Re:Freedom! (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds more insidious than some of the neighboring countries we decry as anti-freedom.
I wonder how many of my tax dollars are being used by their government to subjugate their people? I don't like this at all, not for any nation.
According to "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" [wikipedia.org]
Israel is "the largest total recipient since World War II" of U.S. aid. "Total direct U.S. aid to Israel for this period amounts to well over $140 billion since World War II. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is about one-fifth of America's foreign aid budget." The authors claim that "This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain."
"Israel is the only recipient of U.S. aid that does not have to account for how the aid is spent." According to the authors, this makes it "virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the United States opposes."
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Argh! Comma! (Score:2, Funny)
> The implications for privacy and surveillance, are not insignificant.
Tarnation! I relocated a parenthetical and left a comma in!
Ah, well. Maybe I can captain a starship now.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
And before all of you Ben Franklin quoters start yammering, the key word Ben Franklin used was "essential."
Actually, the way that reads, it doesn't sound like he's implying that liberty is essential, not that there are a select number of essential liberties, and all the rest are forfeit. Here's the quote:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
And if there's really any doubt in your mind of what Franklin's intent was, here's a quote from Poor Richard's Almanac:
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
Look, if you really have no problem giving up your liberty, go for it. I'm not stopping you. If you have no problem with the Israelis giving up their liberty, I'd love to hear your argument.
But picking apart the semantics of a historical quote, and then using that to imply that the man agrees with you -- that just makes you look stupid. Honestly, do you think any of the Founding Fathers would've consented to biometrics, when they literally got up in arms over a tea tax?
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And I should use Preview more often:
it does sound like he's implying that liberty is essential, not that there are a select number of essential liberties...
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According to Wikipedia: [citation needed]
But, taking that at face value:
In response to this the British government passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly and without "payment of any customs or duties whatsoever" in Britain, instead paying the much lower American duty.
In other words, smuggling aside, you couldn't be a legitimate tea merchant in America at the time, unless you were the East India Company. Favoritism, pure and simple.
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Actually, it does infringe on Human Rights as defined by the United Nations.
My family has had a LOT to do with the UN and policies and frankly, this is a misrepresentation of the UN charters.
It's funny how people in one breath damn the UN for inaction, then in the next breath try to defile their charters by bending the definitions inside.
This is a VIOLATION OF BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS. It's an afront to these very "freedoms" that the US has claims they are fighting for.
If you want to not be a tosspot and understa
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Actually, it does infringe on Human Rights as defined by the United Nations.
Ok, so I read the charter you linked to, and I don't see how a national biometric database would infringe on any of the rights it mentions. The closest I found was the first phrase of article 12, but I think it is quite a stretch to say that a biometric database contradicts it somehow. Do you have any stronger or more specific evidence to support your claim?
Fucking cowards. (Score:2)
Pants-filling pussies disagree about what is an essential liberty. That's fine. They might not like what happens if they actually get their wish and crush the 'non-essential' liberties cherished by many of their countrymen.
This liberal is a proud gun owner.
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While it may be a minority opinion here at Slashdot, there is no denying that it isn't a majority opinion in many countries around the world (for example, the security obsessed UK).
I think you may have miscounted your negatives. On the presumption that you meant to say that in the security-obsessed UK the majority opinion is that a national biometric database doesn't infringe on essential liberties, permit me to observe that the government sold the ID database to a significant (but not exclusive - terrorism was mentioned) extent on matters such as job security: i.e. it will cut down on working by illegal immigrants. Why they believe that employers who don't currently check National In
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Informative)
I'll post this as AC, to avoid karma-whoring.
The parent is referring to a book by George Orwell called Animal Farm. It's out of copyright in the UK, so can be read online [readprint.com] (I did the other night, stayed up all night in fact. Yeah yeah, get out more, but if I did that I wouldn't be a Slashdot reader!).
I also highly recommend that, when the reader has finished the book, they do a little mental excercise in matching the animals to the actual people involved in the rise of Stalinist Russia.
Bear in mind that Orwell was writing before the events of the cold war, as far as I can tell the book ends here [tcnj.edu]. Which brings us neatly back to what the parent is referring to:
A little off-topic, but what's a threaded conversation system for?
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Godwin's law on the first post!
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That was a quick Godwin.
Guess there's nothing to see in this thread, folks. Move along.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
And the Israeli tags are shaped like a little star because the government decided that it was a shape that conveyed their aspirations for a better, more peaceful society. And they're bright yellow to make them harder to misplace.
Of all the nations in the world you might hope would be wary of pervasive monitoring, you'd think one that bills itself as a "jewish state" would be it.
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Wow... I just won a bet over a prediction I made 3 years ago. Thanks Slashdot.
They finally made it public eh?
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Out of morbid curiosity, why is my post modded as troll and why is the GP modded troll and flamebait? The historical resonances are pretty overt.
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Of all the nations in the world you might hope would be wary of pervasive monitoring, you'd think one that bills itself as a "jewish state" would be it.
Unfortunately the Israeli philosophy seems to be that it's not a problem as long as the right people are doing it. Which is true, it just ignores the fact that the right people never stick around forever.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have to be an antisemite to disagree with the politics of Israel?
I mean really.. Do you really believe that saying that Israel behaves badly toward its neighbours and even its own citizens means you are prejudiced or hostile toward Jews?
Give it up.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
The Israeli government and many of its citizens are always implying so. The Israeli governments continual pretense (or perhaps its a genuine delusion) that they represent the Jewish people is one of the most insidious pieces of political trickery in the modern era. Being Jewish does not imply a particular political viewpoint of national affiliation. But some people don't half push the idea that it does...
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time "anti-semite" was a label for someone who hated Jews.
It has become a label for someone a Jewish person hates.
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Do you really believe that saying that Israel behaves badly toward its neighbours and even its own citizens means you are prejudiced or hostile toward Jews?
I think it's the Israelis = NAZIs that's assumed to be anti-Semitic.
Hell, I'm more on your page (don't like lots of Israeli policies, hate this new measure, think it's wrong in a lot of ways, setting a dangerous precedent, etc.) but I think the NAZI comparison is pushing it.
I'm a weird brand of orthodox liberal Jew, so my pet peeve is Israel=Jewish state=representative of all Jews, but while that's the status quo (which it probably will be 'til the country implodes), yeah Isreali=NAZI=Jew and comparing peop
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
comparing people to the people who killed 'em is kind of tasteless.
But what does taste have to do with it? Shouldn't all that matters be the aptness of the comparison?
After all, Nietzsche, that nazi-enabler, said: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster. For if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Which is a generic admonition of essentially the same thing and few if any people fault him for it.
When I first learned of what was going on in palestine I really could not reconcile it with what I had been taught in history class (still can't actually) it seemed to me that the two countries most likely to have empathy for palestinians were the ones with the least - the USA (because of all the propaganda about freedom, self-determination, etc) and Israel because of their recent experience at the hands of an overwhelmingly powerful force. Not that I expected Israel to be happy about all the countries nearby ganging up on it, but I do expect them to handle the 'occupation' that followed in a much better way.
To further mix metaphors its like palestine is the weimar republic after WWI - they lost the war and israel is determined to exact unrealistic penalties from them, thus making them an ideal breeding ground for continuation of the conflict. When they ought to be taking a cue from the way the Allied powers handled the situation with the Axis countries after WWII.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't all that matters be the aptness of the comparison?
Sure, theoretically, but in the real world it just doesn't work. It's far too emotionally charged for people to keep a cool enough head to objectively evaluate the aptness of the comparison, and often is only used for the shock value.
For the record, I don't think the comparison is apt. The Israeli's actions are more akin to other colonial powers, not the NAZI's systematic killing and torture on the basis of race/ethnicity. Israeli's treat Palestinian's badly because of the political situation (religion and race are secondary/fueling the whole situation) where as the NAZIs chose the races and then created the political situation, and that's the least of it. Segregation in Israel is nowhere near as bad as it was in NAZI Germany, nor are rights quite that suppressed, (and that's ignoring cattle cars, concentration camps and gas chambers, those other staples of the NAZI regime).
Not that I expected Israel to be happy about all the countries nearby ganging up on it, but I do expect them to handle the 'occupation' that followed in a much better way.
I think to a certain extent they're screwed regardless of what the try, and I think they've tried almost everything at this point. It's 60 odd years of mistakes, many of which can't be corrected. Israel was created pretty much as a dp camp for holocaust survivors, at which point yeah nobody was really thinking about who lived there (collective guilt and all.) It only became as major problem once everyone was too heavily invested in the land for their to be a solution that would satisfy everyone, and every attempt has failed. (Though lately it looks like they're going towards a three state solution that people can somewhat live with.)
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Insightful)
"But what does taste have to do with it? Shouldn't all that matters be the aptness of the comparison?"
Yes, exactly.
I'm sick and tired of political discourse being filled with bizarre weasel words like 'tasteless' and 'tired' and 'offensive' and 'disloyal' to describe claims the speaker doesn't like which are, objectively, either *true* or *false*.
I'm sick of politics being about 'opinions'.
Politics *isn't* about opinions. It's about reality. People have strong opinions *about* it, yes, just as they do about science, but those opinions do not *determine* the truth or falsity of political claims: results do. It's not a matter of fashion. Truth doesn't get 'tired' or 'stale' from multiple repetition and lies do not get proven consensus acceptance no matter how many years have passed.
That's why history is an active research subject - we're too polite to admit it, but it's because HISTORY MAKERS LIE, and history is largely the science of sorting through the lies after the fact and determining from documentary evidence just how we were deceived and then guessing at why. If we could take public figures' words at face value at the time they say them, we wouldn't *need* either history or political science.
Political claims, like every other claim, need to be verified against objective, trustworthy evidence, one political system is NOT identical to another, and torture and oppression remain torture and oppression regardless of whether it's the 'good guys' or the 'bad guys' doing it.
And while Israel's policies toward Palestine are not identical to Nazi Germany's toward the Jews, there sure are depressing similarities.
And it just goes to show that suffering atrocity and swearing 'never again shall this happen TO US' is not quite the same as swearing 'never again shall we allow this happen, full stop'.
The other interesting thing is that America's 'torture lite' techniques are, from what I've read, not only nearly identical to the Cold War KGB's (sleep deprivation, sound, heat/cold, stress positions) -- but they actually migrated to the US military lexicon FROM the Soviets via the Cold War.
What you hate, you really DO stand a strong chance of becoming. Literally and not figuratively. Rivals copy each other and adopt the methodologies which seem to work.
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And while Israel's policies toward Palestine are not identical to Nazi Germany's toward the Jews, there sure are depressing similarities.
No. Not really.
You could find much better analogies in the USSR (or even modern-day Russia), Belarus, various Arab and Central Asian (Uzbekistan, Turkeminstan) countries, China, South Korea and so on.
And yet, Israel is compared to the Nazis more than any of those.
You want objectivity? The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a tiny and relatively bloodless regional conflict. More people died in the current Iraq war than in the whole Israeli/Palestinian conflict since 1948. Hell, I think more people died in th
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I think the reason is because the people there went directly from being oppressed to doing the opressing. They should know better.
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But what does taste have to do with it? Shouldn't all that matters be the aptness of the comparison?
Very simple. The comparison isn't apt. It's ludicrous.
You have to be a hardcore holocaust denier to claim that the Nazis' genocidal campaign comes close to the tiny regional conflict between Israel and Palestine. You have to be incredibly ignorant (or incredibly biased) to claim that human rights in Israel are as bad as they were in Nazi Germany.
And yet, this stupid meme lives on.
Why? Maybe because it creates a nice narrative symmetry. Maybe because it makes some people feel better about their own, ofte
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Do you have to be an antisemite to disagree with the politics of Israel?
Unfortunately, that's what it comes down to: as the excuse is it's some "hate crime" to disagree with Zionism, as Zionism "is the state of Israel" (or whatever excuse to keep this 1000 year war alive).
So if you post something about how Zionists even treat fellow Jews - http://web.israelinsider.com/views/3998.htm [israelinsider.com] -- that's a crime against their identity and State, and = anti-semite to them.
Frankly, I don't care about the label, because it's crazier to justify wanton killing for killing sake.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Insightful)
Both sides behave badly. Neither excuses the other, and there is no room for forgiveness for or from each other.
The situation is hopeless until at least one side stops the retaliation.
maybe there is some racism involved indeed.. (Score:2)
since there is this background idea that Israel is "one our our guys", who should be able to understand if you talk about oppression and apartheid. Contrary to err - those others who aren't there yet.
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Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Insightful)
Murdering a bunch of civilians is your solution?
Ever looked up the definition of terrorism?
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:5, Insightful)
"every other nation in the region has a free pass to do anything they want without anyone even looking in their direction"
Free pass? Israel is quietly the most prolific violator of UN resolutions, violating more than all other Middle Eastern nations combined. There are many other UN resolutions which the US vetoed on Israel's behalf.
Free pass indeed.
Oh, and Iraq didn't get to do what it pleased. It tried trading oil in Euros and that got it a set of trumped up WMD accusations and an invasion. Iran doesn't seem to be free of criticism either.
Cut it out with the Jewish victim complex, the rest of the world is tired of it. Criticism of Israel != antisemitism. I am a Muslim. I am a vehement critic of Israel's politics. I am also friends with many Jewish people, who I find to be very warm, friendly and pleasant people. In fact, many of my Jewish friends' biggest problem with Israel is that they carry out their politics in the name of Judaism.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Funny)
The UN is dedicated to enacting resolutions against Israel?
Huh?
Victim complex, anyone?
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Interesting)
They are the ones who will suffer.
I'll be kind of gutted if you think I'm being anti-semitic, because I kinda pride myself on being 'right on' about shit in general. No- this is nothing to do with Israel being a Jewish state, and everything to do with it being a colony. Every colony that ever existed bullied the aborigines to a greater or lesser extent.
Not to get too pop-psychological, but there's also an element of 'the abused becoming the abuser' about Israel.
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Dude, it's not the Israeli Jews who will suffer here. It's the indigenous population. The Palestinians.
They are the ones who will suffer.
Says who?
From what I've heard, the biometric ID will supplement Israel's already-existing national ID. Its stated purpose is to combat forgery and identity theft (...), as well as convenience (you don't have to carry your ID/driver's license around all of the time). So, at the very least, The Jews are are going to suffer from this.
As for the Palestinians... well they don't have Israeli IDs since they are not Israeli citizens (the PA issues its own IDs). However, most of them have to go to Israel to work,
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I'm not an expert, but as a rule of thumb the answer to any question that begins "why don't they just..." is money.
Israel is not a particularly wealthy nation, it has no oil, and very little in the way of natural resources of any sort. All of the security theatre they indulge in takes an incredible amount of money, and of course, there's the cost of rebuilding all the damage done by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has done (and continues to do) to Israel. Quite frankly, I'm surprised they have enough mone
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That would never have worked because the residents of Florida are one of the best armed populations on Earth.
But they're all Jews already ;)
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Both ours and Israelis. :-)
Exactly ;-) although from a national point of view that could be seen as a geographical penectomy.
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The problem with these sorts of things is they tend to be secret databases that John Q Public cant just go and check if things are being used appropriately. When the watchers are the ones who get to select their own watchers then potentially extremely inappropriate uses can and most likely will occur.
Obviously not a history major. (Score:2)
--
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - And variations on this theme, commonly attributed to George Santayana
Almost (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact all Israeli identity cards till recently had to mention the ethnic/religious group. I shouldn't say "since the beginning" but at least it has been like that for a long time.
It is not possible to be "just an israeli".
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It is possible to criticize the nation of Israel without being a Nazi troll. Admittedly there is a large degree of overlap, but let's not get carried away here.
Israel is a nation well on the way to becoming yet another theocratic police state just like Saudi Arabia. Recognizing that this is true does not require one to be an anti-Semite. As an atheist I hold Judaism in exactly the same degree of contempt that I hold all other religions, and I have nothing whatsoever against any Jews on the basis of their
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Actually, I think Zionism is relevant to the subject at hand. The concepts of "a Jewish State" and "a state with a majority population of Jews" are quite different, and Zionism explicitly endorses the former. That's theocracy right out of the gate, and I don't think its at all surprising that an explicitly non-secular state is going down the path of totalitarianism. It goes part and parcel with being a non-secular state.
When you take into account the fact that the founders of Israel didn't bother with a
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Nuke the Jews. Exterminate them all then there will be world peace. NOW can I have a free lifetime subscription to DailyKOS please?????
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Out of the worldwide Jewish population fully 60% have chosen *NOT* to live in Israel, and I think that shows a commendable degree of intelligence on their part.
Actually, I was born outside Israel and have been planning to move there for a while. I never made any choice *not* to live in Israel, it just happened that way. It really isn't a hellhole or theocratic, trust me. The religious courts (which I don't like either, but hey...) have an extremely restricted jurisdiction and never rule on things that couldn't be passed along to religious courts in other countries via contract law. And they were doing so well at balancing freedom against security until this to
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If you don't live there and weren't born there I'm puzzled as to how you can describe it as your homeland.
More to the point, Israel was actually doing a terrible job on freedom and security until this. Note, just to choose one example, that the Israeli police admit (and often seem fairly proud) that torture of suspects is a routine procedure. There's a *LOT* more to criticize about Israel than this one bill.
If you genuinely think Israel has a good record on human rights, I'd recommend you do a bit more re
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Well, thanks to Bush I can no longer point to my own nation as a shining beacon of human rights. Worse I think it's extremely likely that as our soldiers trained in torture return from Iraq they will (as returning soldiers so often do) get jobs in the prison industry and we'll see an upswing of torture on American soil [1]. Still, I think the fact that its openly admitted policy in Israel is somehow worse. I also doubt rather seriously that torture in Israel isn't migrating to Jews, once you unloose that
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The US has supported terrorists in many countries, the IRA raised funds in the US for 30 years without being stopped, primarily through NORAID, and IRA terrorists used to be part of the New York St. Patricks Day parade until after 9/11, the US has even given political asylum to convicted IRA terrorists, in most of the world USA == terrorist, I think for the most part Americans have no idea how many billions of people all around the world thought that 9/11 was just a bit of payback for decades of US terroris
A minority of extremists? (Score:2)
I think it certainly is not just a matter of a minority of extremists. Rather the occupation and apartheid is deeply imprinted on the country(as is the need to obfuscate the reality). It is everywhere and it would be hard for any government to change direction.
One of the best sources to help understand that this is not just a matter of aggressive repression or tit-for-tat escalation is Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He explicitly speaks about Apartheid. But Aparthe