To Orwell Today,

Check this out: Four states have implemented "no smiling on your driver's license photo" policies. They say it's for your safety -- to prevent anyone else assuming your identity and getting a fake ID with your picture on it -- but I, as well as any free-thinking person, should know better.

Four states adopt 'no-smiles' policy for driver's licenses. USA Today, May 25, 2009

I myself believe that avoiding this "facecrime", as Orwell called it, will NOT make it HARDER for people to make fake IDs -- it will just make it EASIER for computers and cameras to recognize and track our faces. After all, we smile for pictures, but register "neutral expressions" most of the time. Agree?

In the name of true freedom,
Amy Walker

Greetings Amy,

I agree - it's all about Orwellian "facecrime".

All the best,
Jackie Jura

3.Surveillance (... Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself - anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime it was called. Your worst enemy was your own nervous system. Any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom....)