Viewpoint by Sara Pintilie/entertainment editor

A recent CNN article reported about the FBI’s new plan to catch criminals and terrorists.

They want to create a database of palm prints, iris eye patterns, facial shapes, tattoos and scars.

Also, the Real I.D. act passed in January.

This act entails everyone under the age of 65 getting a new I.D., one seen more as a “national identification card.”

The card will have the usual information but with more security measures, and all the data will be stored on a bar code.

Maybe it’s just me. I have read 1984 so many times my copy is duct-taped together, but these practices seems a little too Big Brother.

I understand the reasons behind these security upgrades, and I can see the positive for their use to catch the criminals and potential terrorists, the I.D. even would eliminate the hassle of getting a new license whenever you move to another state.

But my issue isn’t with the acts themselves. It is with the snowball effect inevitably following.

The FBI says it is collecting information only on criminals and people applying for sensitive jobs, but the odds are it won’t stop there.

“This had started out being a program to track or identify criminals,” Barry Steinhardt, American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project director, said to CNN. 

“Now we’re talking about large swaths of the population—workers, volunteers in youth programs. Eventually, it’s going to be everybody,” he said.

The security measures remind me of the kids’ book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

It might just start with a simple database. But then there are retinal scans in front of government buildings, then eventually schools and other youth organizations.

Before you know it, everything is being monitored for security purposes.

And we would be reduced to a barcode on a piece of plastic.

The FBI database plan might have a good side, but with the possibility of this domino effect, it might not be the best thing to enforce.