Anti-racism campaigners slam Finnish colour-coded ID cards  http://euobserver.com/9/32431

European anti-racism campaigners are shocked at plans by Finnish authorities to colour-code the country's ID cards, with blue cards for native-born citizens and brown cards for all foreign nationals, calling the new scheme "legalised ethnic profiling"."Would blue be referring to the stereotypical eye colour of Finns and brown to the skin colour of foreigners? While there are so many colours available, such a choice definitely raises questions," Michael Privot, the director of the Brussels-based European Network Against Racism, a pan-European alliance of NGOs, told this website.

"More seriously, we question the argument put forward by the Finnish government with regard to the fact that different colour ID cards would ease control work," he continued. "Would this be a subtle attempt to legalise ethnic profiling by transferring facial identification to ID card colour identification?""This will probably raise unexpected discrimination in other areas of life such as access to services: people will have to show their brown ID card when they might not want to make their foreigner status known," Privot said."Discrimination can also happen on the basis of your ID's colour and a simple glimpse at one's ID is often the starting point for unacceptable differential treatment."