“The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future. All citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database – including health, education, family and police records.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050913/ap_on_re_eu/netherlands_child_files

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These kinds of articles always raise red flags with me when governments propose something that has the potential to be very unpopular as “benefiting” children.

This was posted to slashdot and the first few comments included:

– paedophiles wet dream
– WWII was fought to prevent this kind of overarching governmental reach and it’s occurring anyway
– several credit card gateways cracked recently leaking millions of records how would this be any better if it’s actually going to be useful across all govt agencies…

At this point if I were a citizen I’d firstly be very concerned, and then be very angry about this kind of thing, and if it goes through in the Netherlands it’s just as likely to be pushed in other countries.