Keith Shirley

I just came back from another weeks consultancy work in Germany. On the way back I decided to sign up for the new passport control system in Frankfurt airport. The process only took a few minutes and on the plus side it means I’m able to bypass the long passport check queues. On the down side….well that’s the point isn’t it.

While I was getting my iris scanned and filling out the paperwork I couldn’t help feeling that there was really a positive and negative side to the process. The system was introduced after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks and one part of me says that it really is necessary to increase the security in these ways – and even more that the police services should be allowed to share data across borders. Another part of me wonders who will guard the guards. How do we know that we won’t slip backwards and end up living in a police state. Even without thinking too Orwellian – what happens if the data somehow gets hacked into or lost. There is an article in Tech-central this week that basically claims that 59% of businesses expect a major loss of data within a 5 year cycle. It’s a very scary idea – especially as the report already the report used the word inevitable.

I do sometimes wonder if I’ll look back on these days and think we were naive.