by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
July 21, 2004
Welcome to the digital world of the e-passport. Funded by $10.3 million over three years, Canada has come up with a self-touted "internationally respected travel identification".
and if it was the devil who made comedian Flip Wilson’s Geraldine do it, it was the United Nations who made Canada issue a biometric security standard for global passports.
"To maintain its reputation as a First World Nation", Canada "must" issue a biometrically enabled passport," is one statement, among others unearthed by Canadian Press (CP) in a recent Freedom of Information Search.
Like many things United Nations, the road leading to the first internationally respected travel identification was more circuitous than it was long. The e-passport initiative filtered down through the Montreal-headquartered International Civil aviation Organization (ICaO), a UN agency mandated with the development of principles and techniques of international air navigation. ICaO also fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth.
around almost as long as the UN, ICaO was established in 1947 by the Convention on International Civil aviation (1944), which had been signed by 52 states three years earlier in Chicago.
The ICaO Council adopts standards and recommends practices concerning air navigation, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedure for international civil aviation. In addition, it defines the protocols for air accident investigation, followed by transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the Chicago convention.
For any that wonder whether ICaO has any black helicopters parked on its Montreal terminal, according to a March 31, 1997 Washington Times story, "The helicopters were assigned by Canada to the UN’s peacekeeping office and were (seen) enroute from Montreal to Port-au-Prince, Haiti in an overland flight plan."
In May 2003, ICaO settled on facial recognition as the minimum biometric security standard for passports.
By dint of the e-passport’s inclusion of a digitized photo, the document moves into the controversial realm of biometrics, the use of measurable personal features, such as an image, iris scan or fingerprints as dependable identification markers.
according to its inventors, the new microchip will only include your name, date of birth, place the passport was issued and its expiry date. But how long before all information is only a mouse click away, driving home George Orwell’s message that Big Brother is really watching you?
Sometime in the first half of 2005, Canadian diplomats will begin to carry the e-passport on a trial basis.
"If the initial implementation goes well, we’ll begin issuing the e-passport to the general public afterwards," said Dan Kingsbury, a spokesman for the federal Passport Office.
The Canadian government is pushing ahead with the plan in the face of objections from privacy and information specialists who argue it is unduly intrusive and unlikely to do much for national security.
With the e-passport, the United Nations and the First World Nation called Canada are taking a page out of the political philosophy of Nicolo Machiavelli.
In the era of the Terrorist, the project is being billed as a federal initiative to track and control the flow of people across borders more closely following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Much more pro-UN than pro-US, Canada’s claim that it must maintain its reputation as a "First World Nation" followed within days its tossing the Bible out of its citizenship ceremonies in the name of multiculturalism.
"Unlike other countries, our oath does not make people pledge allegiance to any god," explained Canada Immigration official Maria Iadinardi.
Have anti-american Canadians, worried about being annexed by their neighbour to the south ever considered possible annexation by the United Nations?
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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