Cuba Will Issue Venezuelan ID Cards

Fri, Mar 4, 2005 at 9:53:53 am PST

Blogger Miguel has a really scary piece of news from Venezuela, where the Chavez regime has just awarded the contract for the issuance of Venezuela’s national ID cards to a Cuban company. (Hat tip: Mora.)

You want outrage? Take for example the announcement that the Government will give the contract for the National ID card system to the Cuban Government. First of all, “Cuban technology” sounds to me as much of an oxymoron as “competent Venezuelan Government”.

Second, it is extremely scary, I would say amazingly scary, to be informed that the ID system will be manufactured and designed by what is, after North Korea, the most efficient police state on this planet, at this time. But the news appears in print and it is as if nothing had happened. As if it were not enough that now Cuban agents can act freely in Venezuela, take depositions and do investigations after the two countries signed a treaty of mutual penal assistance. It is as if the Cuban police state will be moved to Caracas to help control people like me or those around me. The human rights implications of the whole thing are so freaky that I am not sure I know even where to begin writing about it.

Imagine having your fingerprints, photograph, address, height, weight, phone number and who knows what else on file with Castro’s secret police.