Three stories this month detail the ever-increasing tracking of their children. The Times Online has reported that children as young as 11 in Britain are going to be fingerprinted, with the prints being stored in a secret database. Also in the Times Online, teenagers in America will have rear-mounted cameras in their cars that will send emails to their parents whenever they slam on their brakes. Finally, the Guardian Unlimited tells us that British children, from birth to age five, will be monitored by the government.

The leaked Home Office plans show that the mass fingerprinting will start in 2010, with a batch of 295,000 youngsters who apply for passports.

Under the new passport and ID scheme, everyone over 16 who applies for a passport will have their details — including fingerprints and eye or facial scans — added to the National Identity Register from next year.

So, you want to leave the country? Give the government your fingerprints or stay in the UK. Add this concept to the compulsory, non-compulsory ID cards and there is little left on the road to a surveillance society.

The Home Office expects 545,000 children aged 11 and over to have their prints taken in 2011, with the figure settling at an annual 495,000 from 2014. Their fingerprints will be held on a database also used by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to store the fingerprints of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.

Not surprising, people are objecting to this idea.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “This borders on the sinister and it shows the government is trying to end the presumption of innocence. With the fingerprinting of all our children, this government is clearly determined to enforce major changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way never seen before.”

And this is exactly what the government wants. They will do whatever they can to put innocent citizens into a database, thereby, taking away any assumption of innocence. As a bonus, these children will also be required to travel up to 80 miles so that they can hand over their fingerprints.
Teenagers in America are also able to be tracked in their cars.

A digital camera attached to his rear-view mirror sent a signal to a remote computer, which triggered an e-mail to Connolly’s father. Later the parents were able to examine a video recording of the 10 seconds before and after their son had braked.

Such devices have been in tracker-trailers (lorry to you Brits) for some time but are now available for teenagers due to the increase in teen accidents. At the moment, these devices are in the trial phase and being used only for those that are considered high risk. The devices are free and “nervous” parents can rest easy that they can log into a site and see what their child is up to.

Well, if you cannot trust your child without spying on him, then maybe he/she isn’t deserving of a driver’s license and the keys to the car.

“In some videos we’ve seen kids text-messaging, fiddling with the stereo and talking over their shoulders to their friends while they were driving,” said Steve Witmer of American Family Insurance. He said a pilot scheme for 60 families in Minneapolis had reduced risky driving by 70%.

I see adults doing this every single day. How long before this trial phase is made mandatory for everyone?

Finally, we all know that we should monitor our children ourselves and see how they are progressing. This way we can identify problems they are having and, possibly, correct them before it’s too late.

Every nursery, childminder and reception class in Britain will have to monitor children’s progress towards a set of 69 government-set “early learning goals”, recording them against more than 500 development milestones as they go.

Great, the babysitter gets to rat your child out to the baby police as well as the nursery and kindergarten teachers. By the time they reach age five, they will be assessed again. Then, the database of assessments on the child will be required to be turned over to the Department for Education and Skills.

If nurseries or other care providers want to opt out of the new requirements, for example because they follow an educational philosophy that introduces reading at a later age, they will have to apply for an exemption, and would have to forfeit any state funding.

Since this will all be in full swing by 2008, it will now only take one generation, instead of the assumed two, to instill in the citizens that tracking is normal and a right of the government.

There is very little opposition to any of these schemes, leading governments to believe they can get away with such policies and, most likely, go further. The media is indirectly complicit by barely covering these stories. There is never enough controls in place for the government. They will continue to enact these policies until people start fighting back. We are not here to serve the government. The government is here to serve us. We are their masters. Start acting like it.