They stay up all night outside the police station to get IDs before the digital ones come out in September as scheduled. Many believe the digital IDs will have a microchip to track their holders on 24/7 basis.
According to local media, residents of Kozani in western Macedonia, form long queues outside the police station seeking to have a new ID card issued before the digital ones.
Some of them… spent the night at the entrance of the police station, arriving at 1:00 and 2:00 o’ clock in the morning, in order to be first in the queue when the ID department opens.
Local news website kozani.gr speaks of a “ridiculous situation” as those seeking a new ID in old format believe that the microchip will identify the ID owner and his moves at any time.
Among those are also people who have a real need to issue an ID, either because they wish to travel to foreign countries or because they have lost their old ones.
Queues for new ID is not unique to Kozani.
The same phenomenon has been seen also in Patras, western Peloponnese, where dozens of people have been queuing waiting for the issue of a new identity card, so local media pelop.gr
The rush for old IDs did not come from the water local drink but it is the Greek Church vehemently resisting the digital IDs. Thousands of supporters had staged massive protests in the early 1990’s speaking against the abolition of “Religion” from the IDs or demanded that no ID bears the number “666” which they consider as the “number of Satan.”
Church news websites cite religious Elders including St. Paisios, monks in Mt Athos and other hardcore clergy who had allegedly spoken against new IDs.
Several Greek Orthodox associations issued a joint statement beginning of august 2023 in which they stated among others:
“The Orthodox Christian Associations from all over Greece who sign this text, express their strong protest to the Greek Government, for the announced release of electronic (digital) identities from next September, after about 40 years of constant popular disapproval and rejection of similar governmental efforts.
As faithful members of the Church, we remain committed to the synodal decisions of the Church of Greece (1993, 2626/1997, 2641/1998) and to the legacy of the contemporary venerable and holy Elders, who advised us not to receive any such identity, with the which, as we explain below, we surely surrender our God-given freedom to the digital state.
We remind you that the Holy Synod in its announcement on November 17, 2010 explained that “the Church is obliged to protect the freedom of the person and to defend the integrity of the faith. Therefore: a) the “Citizen’s Card” must not contain in any way, visible or invisible, the number “666” b) it must also in no way violate personal liberties”.
The inadmissibility of the violation of personal liberties from the imposition of electronic identity is inevitable, as its direct consequences are numbering, the digital file, and above all the omnipotence of the state vis-à-vis the citizen, who, as other commercial digital applications have shown us, easily succumbs to surrendering his life and liberty, for a little digital convenience.
It is technologically proven that the tracking of each person’s actions, and the possibility of activating their monitoring, either with the identity itself through any identification points, or with the parallel use of mobile phone applications such as “COVID-pass” or “Gov.gr Wallet”, lays the foundation for 24-hour citizen monitoring.”
PS I guess it is their right to want to avoid such devil’s tools like ‘data mining’ but at the same time I suppose that they all use bank cards and social media, even e-banking without any problem or fear of God and the Christian Orthodox Church.