CCHF: Biometric ID technology a threat to health freedom

A new report released by a group dedicated to securing health freedom is voicing its concerns about efforts involving national identification.

"Exposing Idemia: The Push for National Biometric IDs in America" comes from Citizens' Council for Health Freedom. President and co-founder Twila Brase says the purpose of the report [PDF] is to make people aware that a company is working with most of the states in the U.S., as well as several agencies of the federal government, to build biometric identification and facial recognition systems and to implement REAL ID (the nation's new "de facto" national ID system) using biometrics. That company, Idemia, calls the concept "augmented identity."

Brase explains: "This company, which is a very large corporation doing this all across the world, is making driver's licenses and ID cards for 42 states and is working with a bundle of bureaucracies in Washington, DC – like the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security and others – towards identification protocols and structures."

So what's the beef for her organization, which focuses on health freedom?

"Our concern is that this will lead to a national patient ID; that we will end up at a point in our country where unless you are able to show this national ID card, you will not be able to access medical care," she explains. "... We believe that a nationalized ID will lead to a patient ID, and it will lead to 'no card, no care' – and that is not where a country like America should be going."

Brase is hopeful that people will talk to their representatives and senators about what is happening and push for legislation saying biometric characteristics cannot be gathered without the individual's consent.

"They're like your fingerprint, a scan of your iris, a scan of your face, things that are your body parts," Brase explains. "They are things that can't be changed, [like] your DNA ... and really it just leads to a national identification system where if you say no it will be difficult for you to do all sorts of things. That's where we're headed with a national ID, and that's where we are headed with a national biometric identification."

OneNewsNow contacted Idemia for comment and received no response.