Nine days ago on Tuesday 6 March 2012 the French National Assembly enacted a Bill to protect people from identity theft. The
proposition de loi relative à la protection de l’identité is now French law.
You might think that this Act is just like the UK's now repealed Identity Cards Act 2006. Wrong.
There are similarities. Everyone over a certain age will be enrolled in a French population register (a
fichier) and will be issued with an identity card. The card will have microchips in it (
puces). The chips will somehow use your biometric data (
données) to support identity verification. I.e. they will allow you to prove that you are who you say you are. The French are even using the same misinformation – the cards will be "optional" (
facultatives), according to an article in
Le Monde.
But there's a big difference. The UK ID card scheme was going to use flat print fingerprint technology (
empreintes posées) which is cheap, easy to use/no expert required, clean and
utterly unreliable. The French know that. They're not stupid. It's French companies that provide this
waste of money/
snake oil biometric technology. They're hardly likely to make the same mistake.