Slippery Slope

As most of you who know me are aware, I am an unashamed, bleeding heart, tree hugging, liberal in most senses. In other areas it can sometimes seem to me that a mini-republican has invaded parts of my thought processes and I have to actively struggle against those tendencies. Lately, I have heard myself utter words that I never thought I would hear come out of my mouth. Things like:

"Those damned alcoholic bastids need to stop using their unemployment, which my tax money pays for damn it, to by booze. Cut them all off! Make them get a job and contribute to society for crying out loud!"

"Stupid people who live off unemployment need to get off their asses and get a fucking job already. I am tired of paying taxes out the ass to support a family of 435 people who are fully capable of working!"

It brings such a disturbing level of shame to myself to hear my own voice utter such broad statements of intollerance and well...conservativism.

And then I come across something like this:

New Police Chief Wants Everyone's Fingerprints
Published 09.07.2008, 07.14
Source: YLE

Finland's new National Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero wants police to have access to a controversial national fingerprint database being planned for passport identification purposes.

In an interview with the newspaper Aamulehti, Paatero said that the planned fingerprint database would be an excellent investigative tool for the police.

Current plans call for all passport applicants to be fingerprinted no later than as of next June. If implemented, this means in practice that the fingerprints of nearly all Finnish adults will be on record within the next ten years.

An Interior Ministry task force is in charge of formulating the details of the new database. Plans already do include its use in the investigation of serious criminal offences and in the identification deceased persons and disaster victims.

Finland's Data Protection Ombudsman Reijo Aarnio is opposed to the establishment of the fingerprint database. He says that potential mistakes and misuse could cause serious problems for citizens. Aarnio believes that criminals will still be able to mislead the police by leaving fake prints at the scenes of crimes.

A final decision on setting up the fingerprint database will be taken by Parliament.


There are those people who say that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about. What about personal privacy?!? What is next, a Finnish version of the Patriot Act??!