Germany had the ‘pleasure’ to be the first EU country to issue biometric passports - which will be the norm for the future. Around here there are hardly any protests against this, since personal ID cards (Personalausweis) are mandatory anyway - and these have been machine readable for a long time.

I think it’s pretty silly to talk about Big Brother and total tracking - since this has been possible for a long time. First it were credit cards that allowed a pretty good tracking of your habits and financial life and now finally cell phones are even better at tracking your every movement.

Most of all - we brave consumers - give our data to companies and providers like Google more or less freely. You can’t have a ‘trackless’ life anymore.

So any Police State or Fascist regime works without much technology - it depends on the people in power. Sure technology makes it easier, but technology doesn’t automatically lead to a tyrant regime. The Romans did pretty well without computers.

More? BBC articles and reference