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Pay Dirt in Scanned Driver's Licenses
The New York Times has a good article explaining why handing over your national ID card to be scanned may not be such a good idea.
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Its all part of the master scheme by the gov't to send us all extra junk mail!
--JonnyBlog
The thing I was wondering most about as I read the article was, "Can the reporter's middle initial really be 8?" I mean, what type of middle name starts with the number 8?
Perhaps she keeps her drivers license too close to her building cardkey, and it munged a few bits in her name or something.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
What happens if you don't have a driving license?
Is it some kind of 'drivers only' club?
Such is true...most men are happy to go with the flow and not to stir the waters in any way to draw attention unto themselves.
I believe this is how this goes..."It is better to die standing, then live,serving on your knees.."
~-sc
anybody remember how to view the page without registering?
it seems there should be an option to say no to having the magnetic strip on a license. i always opt out of having my SSN listed on the card, and to be frank, if it's this easy to grab the data, i'd rather inconvenience the police officer by making him type it all in to his mobile.
your jesus is another mans xebu. chew on that hypocrites.
are my own. Any bar that is scanning my ID and keeping a record or pulling other data is not getting my business. Then again, when I buy beer at the grocery store and put it on my debit card, it is doing the same thing.
We (the collective us) have been rushing at a breakneck speed down the tunnel of complete mediation. Everything about us will be known. Except perhaps to ourselves.
Wow, that was pretty deep for this early in the morning...
Can't imagine Larry Ellison being too happy with this. Can't be much of a market for his all-singing, all-dancing ID card, can there?
Is there a way to read the article without signing up for NY Times?
I am happy just having id on a state level. When I need some form of more real id I have my passport. Why does the national government get to id us all and then in the future be able to use this information in a bad way? I say no to national id cards, look what happened in aparthide South Africa. They are a badw idea no matter what.
Enter with username/password nospam.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I would be more concerned if there is enough info on the stripe to impersonate someone and drain their finances. As for tracking ones movements, I feel that that will become inevitable through a multitude of security devices. That becomes like surfing the net- white noise save all for the most determined voyeurs.
This morning, I go into the bank and tell the hottie behind the counter that I want a fucking checking account. I can tell she's about as smart as an empty water bottle, so I talk really fucking slowly and avoid and words of over 6 characters.
She says "Do you have a driver's license?" And I'm like "Uh no, but I have a passport." So this bitch calls her supervisor and says "He doesn't have a drivers license. Just a passport. Will that work. Yes, yes, ok, ok, I'll tell him."
"Sir, you have to have a driver's license. This doesn't have enough information on it," referring to my fucking passport. I about loose it. In my head, I'm like "I GOT THIS PIECE OF SHIT LICENSE WITH MY FUCKING PASSPORT YOU STUPID TWINK! Is that push up bra robbing your already minimal IQ? I was fucking livid. Asshole banks. People are so fucking stupid. They wanted my license because it had all the juicy, We can Sell your Soul to Satan and your Life to Jesus marketing data on it.
Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
BOSTON -- ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their driver's licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through.
But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are registered.
"You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone's whole life as we know it pops up in front of you," said Paul Barclay, the bar's owner. "It's almost voyeuristic."
Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID's. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing. "It's not just an ID check," he said. "It's a tool."
Now, for any given night or hour, he can break down his clientele by sex, age, ZIP code or other characteristics. If he wanted to, he could find out how many blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how many of his customers have the middle initial M. More practically, he can build mailing lists based on all that data -- and keep track of who comes back.
Bar codes and other tracking mechanisms have become one of the most powerful forces in automating and analyzing product inventory and sales over the last three decades. Now, in a trend that alarms privacy advocates, the approach is being applied to people through the simple driver's license, carried by more than 90 percent of American adults.
Already, about 40 states issue driver's licenses with bar codes or magnetic stripes that carry standardized data, and most of the others plan to issue them within the next few years.
Scanners that can read the licenses are slowly proliferating across the country. So far the machines have been most popular with bars and convenience stores, which use them to thwart underage purchasers of alcohol and cigarettes.
In response to the terrorist attacks last year, scanners are now also being installed as security devices in airports, hospitals and government buildings. Many other businesses -- drugstores and other stores, car- rental agencies and casinos among them -- are expressing interest in the technology.
The devices have already proved useful for law enforcement. Police departments have called bars to see if certain names and Social Security numbers show up on their customer lists.
The electronic trails created by scanning driver's licenses are raising concerns among privacy advocates. Standards and scanning, they say, are a dangerous combination that essentially creates a de facto national identity card or internal passport that can be registered in many databases.
"Function creep is a primary rule of databases and identifiers," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, citing how the Social Security number, originally meant for old-age benefits, has become a universal identifier for financial and other transactions. "History teaches us that even if protections are incorporated in the first place, they don't stay in place for long."
But companies that market the scanning technology argue that it poses no threat to privacy.
"It's the same information as the front of the license," said Frank Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive of Intelli- Check, a manufacturer of license-scanning equipment based in Woodbury, N.Y. "If I were to go into a bar and they had a photocopier, they could photocopy the license or they could write it down. They are not giving us any information that violates privacy."
Machine-readable driver's licenses have been introduced over the last decade under standards set by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, an umbrella group of state officials.
Under current standards, the magnetic stripe and bar codes essentially contain the same information that is on the front of the driver's licenses. In addition to name, address and birth date, the machine-readable data includes physical attributes like sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color and whether corrective lenses are required. Some states that put the driver's Social Security number on the license also store it on the data strip.
The scanning systems present a challenge to efforts by state and federal governments to limit the amount of information that can be released by departments of motor vehicles. In 1994, Congress passed the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, largely in response to the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer, an actress who was killed in 1989 by an obsessed fan who had found her unlisted address by using California motor vehicle records.
Before the law was adopted, states were selling driver's license information to direct marketing companies, charities and political campaigns. Businesses selling, for example, fitness products and plus-size clothing were able to focus on customers within a given range of height or weight.
While the privacy act staunched the flow of information from state motor vehicle departments, there are only spotty controls over how businesses can create such databases on their own. In Texas, the driver's licenses can be electronically scanned for age verification, but the information cannot be downloaded from the machine. In New York, businesses are only allowed to store name, birth date, driver's license ID number and expiration date for the purpose of age verification. Many states require people to give consent to be on marketing lists, but businesses generally interpret consent to mean not actively removing their names from a list.
When Mr. Barclay, the bar owner, saw a demonstration of Intelli-Check (news/quote)'s driver's license scanner at a trade show in 1999, he was surprised. "It had never dawned me that that strip had information on it," he said.
He bought an Intelli-Check system, which costs about $2,500 and can scan both bar codes and magnetic strips. Now, three years and 1.3 million scanned customers later, he has grown to understand how the data reflects the bar's business.
On Tuesdays, for example, the number of customers born between 1955 and 1960 spikes when the 40-something crowd comes for the jazz.
Thursday night is popular among people who have the upscale Boston ZIP codes 02109, 02111 and 02113. They come to hear Cat Tunes, a band well known among those who go to Martha's Vineyard.
When the singer Chad LaMarch performs on Sundays, women make up 60 percent of the crowd. "The men always follow the women," Mr. Barclay said.
While attributes like age and sex can be observed from simply looking at the crowd, the hard statistics are more valuable in negotiating with liquor companies over promotions, he said.
Other bars are using the information gleaned to give repeat customers special treatment, similar to the way airlines reward their frequent fliers. Some are planning to tap into the addresses.
"Let's say I'm doing an all-male-performer show," said Kenny Vincent, who owns a bar in New Orleans called Kenny's Key West. "I could just mail to just girls I want to target between 21 and 34. I have all that information. The whole reason to have a database is to advertise and market to your customers."
In some cases the data can be correlated to what customers buy. Polka Dot Dairy/ Tom Thumb, a convenience store chain based near Minneapolis that operates about 100 stores, including the Bonkers chain, in Minnesota and Wisconsin, installed machines made by the Logix Company to comply with age minimums on the sale of tobacco. But Terry Giebel, a controller at Tom Thumb, said the ability to build customer databases was also a selling point.
"Any marketing tool that we have that makes us different than our competition is an advantage," Mr. Giebel said. "We could do direct marketing to people who are smokers."
But such cross-linking of data raises concerns. "As more and more people in the private sector want to make use of that identity document, it becomes coercive since it's linked to the transactions," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The scanner can also be programmed to reject troublesome customers. Simply knowing that a quarrelsome man is named Greg and lives in a specific town can be enough information to lock someone out. The Rack has determined people's identities simply by remembering the face and approximate time of arrival, since the bar also has a digital video camera that films people as they walk in. "You don't need a lot of information to find out who someone is," Mr. Barclay said.
Newer, two-dimensional bar codes that can store more data have been adopted by almost 30 states, including New York. Some states are already using this extra storage capacity to pack in biometric information. Georgia stores two digital fingerprints as well as the person's signature. Tennessee stores a facial recognition template. Kentucky recently became the first state to embed a black-and-white electronic version of the photograph in the bar code.
Such biometric information is designed to add extra security to the document, even though few scanners are designed to read such specialized information.
But as Americans debate expanding the national standards for driver's licenses to improve security, the scanner technology has already gained impetus.
Logan Airport in Boston is using the machines to check the identity of passengers. New York University Hospital scans and stores visitors' driver's license information. Delaware has installed the machines to screen visitors at the state legislature and its largest state office building.
The scanners' manufacturers are generally aware of the potential for personal information to be abused. The Logix Company, based in Longmont, Colo., allows clients like bars to view aggregate but not specific data, to prevent a scenario in which "a bouncer at a bar stalks a blond, 20-year-old, 5-foot-7 girl," said Lana Rozendorf, a sales manager with Logix. "As a company we want to take responsibility for who has responsibility for this information."
But with Intelli-Check's scanners and those of many other manufacturers, the information is stored locally, with the client gaining easy access.
Mr. Vincent, who uses an Intelli-Check scanner at his bar in New Orleans, shrugged off the notion of someone's abusing the information. He said he had no interest in keeping information on people who objected to being in his database. "Will I use it in the wrong way?" he said. "No."
Then he paused. "But then again, what is to stop the next guy?"
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
Here is Yahoo!'s coverage: Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's License
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
I don't know about the Massachusettes licenses, but my California license has all that information printed on the front already.
Kinda says it all, don't it?
Forget the personals, now stalkers and sex-deprived rejects alike can flip through pretty damned detailed records to find that special someone.
Some of the information collected such as eye color, height and such doesn't bother me to compile, since that information is publicly available.
However, I hold a chauffeur's license. It requires that I furnish my Social Security number, which should not be publicly available.
I feel I should not have to change my license (or profession, if I still was doing such) just to protect my privacy.
... I think.
One of the points the proponents of these scanning machines said in the article that these machines don't violate privacy because they're just reading out the same information that is on the front of the drivers license. Of course, technically this is true, and it is just the same as if someone was photocopying every license that is shown at the door, but it's also alot different.
Think about this... if you were walking in the park with someone, and you were talking about your girlfriend and some new car that she just bought, and someone walks by and happens to overhear you talking about this, it's not an invasion of privacy. You're in the park, it's a public place. Now think of the same situation, but someone is following you around with a microphone recording everything you say. Technically it's still not an invasion of privacy because you're in a public place, and because you're saying it in public, it's public information, but it's still a Completely Different thing.
-Matt
Free Your Mind
I remember a few years back there was this huge scandal in Canada where people had devised a Palm Pilot add on which could act as a magnetic strip reader.
You could swipe any card and it would extract the information from the magnetic strip and store it in a database.
Rescently we've been working with Card readers here at my company and let me tell you, there is some interesting information on those cards.
Basically, there's two 'tracks' of data. ASCII data of course. I think the limit is 64 Characters per track. It was fun to to go swiping cards to see what information was stored on them. Student IDs, Drivers Liscences, Credit Cards, Health Cards, Hotel Room Keys and even some other strips worked (FastPass anyone ?).
The down side is these readers can cost upwards of $300 to $500 and the Driver Software leaves -little- to be desired (VB anyone ?), but then again, it's OEM hardware so we were lucky to even get software support.
Okay, I see stories like this on the news all the times, supposedly showing how our personal private lives are being invaded. Bunk!
If you don't want to reveal personal info, don't go into that club! I am sure that there are plenty of gin mills in Gotham that won't mind if you're anonymous. Now, the club should let you know that it has access to, and may be storing your personal information, but its like, jeesh guys, if they are scanning your drivers license on the way in, you might have an idea that the device doing this is going to capture data.
If you want to remain anonymous you can. Many bars still take cash, and are happy just glancing at your ID. Better yet, if you are an old fart like me, you don't ever get carded any more, so its easy for to remain anonymous. In fact, my life is so hopelessly boring that so far, no one has expressed any interest in tracking my actions. Just the other day in fact, the lady at the Safeway looked at my member card and said "no thanks." How depressing.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
If you have a driver's license with a magnetic strip- just rub it over with a strong magnet until its blanked.
The license is still valid- the mag-strip is only there for "convenience", its whats on the front that counts.
The difference is that no bouncer/clerk/etc is going to have time te key in all that data, and you return to the gentle ranks of the anonymous dues to the carless oblivion of human short term memory.
You see the pattern? What's an ID card going to do? All your purchasing data and aggregate information already belong to some shady corporation.
If you don't trust your government, then fine. Why do you trust the corporations then?
And people are going to hate it for the same reason that the RIAA and MPAA hate computers--because collecting data slowly by hand is one thing, but the speed with which you can collect a huge amount of data with a computer is another. Ripping an MP3 is not much different from taping a song for all practical purposes, but the fact that it's digitized and compressed means it's easy to share and copy. Having an attendant furiously writing down names is one thing, getitng it all in a <1 second DL swipe is another.
Same thing with automated face recognition-- putting cops everywhere with mug books is one thing, cameras hooked up to recognition software is quite another.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I went to a music club in lower Manhattan and gave my ID to the bouncer to get in and he swiped it in a card reader. A month later I started getting emails about all the venue's upcoming shows. I couldn't figure out how they got my address until now. Those punks.
Most likely old news to many here but state Department of Moter Vehicles used to, as a general practice, sell personal information collected from people's driver's licences to marketing organizations. That was pretty lame, as the DMV has a monopoly on driver's licences, of course.
I say used to, as the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled it to be wrong in early 2000.
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
username: cypherpunks516
password: cypherpunks
</kama ho>
Grocery stores are doing this now too. They have these "savings cards" that they give to you, if you fill out a form that asks for all kinds of information. They mark up the prices on everything, for example, a 2 liter of coke or pepsi is $3.00, but with the "shoppers card" you can buy it for $1.00, which is the original price. Meanwhile, when you swipe your card at the checkout, they track your purchasing habits. So if the feds want to know who is buying large amounts of cheez whiz they know where to go...
That's why I used an alias for mine, I can get the "normal" prices and the gov doesn't have to know about my M&M addiction.
So run a magnet over it if you're that concerned. A razor blade will likely obfuscate the info as well.
FreeSpeech.org
I imagine actually recoding the strip, or changing the bar code could lead to charges on the grounds you have modified a state id, but what prevents you from running a rare-earth magnet across the magnetic strip, or adding stray marks to the bar code?
Problem is, that will work today, but what about when no retail store will accept checks without a machine readable id? Or not having a readable id can get you arrested if you're pulled over?
Try this:
1. Click the link http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/technology/circu its/21DRIV.html from the main page.
2. This brings you to the redirect URL: http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.n ytimes.com/2002/03/21/technology/circuits/21DRIV.h tml
3. Replace the first "www" with the word "college" (or the word "archive").
So it now looks like:
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://w ww.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/technology/circuits/21DR IV.html
Then go to that page. Voila, no registration required.
Adversive
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
-sk
Maybe if youre the only one with a blanked license they could single you out, but its not uncommon for a licence a few years old to be unreadable. I worked as a grocery clerk for several years, and I can tell you that about 5%-10% of all credit cards are unreadable, and they are replaced much more frequently that driver's licenses. (probably because they are used that much more often)
Also there is the fact that they are in business to make money- they wont woo many customers by turning away obvious adults with valid licenses.
And cmon- The hologram, micro print, state seal, and all that other stuff have to count for something...
This article points out several issues with using driver's licenses for ID:
1. They include information that's specific for driving that may be used other identifying features.
2. Each state has it's own standard. For example, some store social security numbers, other fingerprints, most store address, etc.
The core failing of this issue is that driver licenses (and social secuirity numbers) were never designed nor intended to provide general identification.
What is required is a standard that appies to the entire country for what can be used on ID's. One solution is to establish a National ID, administered by the federal government, which would replace the state drivers licenses and social security numbers strictly for providing identification in a secure manner. Another solution would be for the federal goverment to establish guidelines to be followed by the states in establishing IDs.
The current situation is unacceptable from both a privacy and an identification point of view.
I think they have a bit too much information on these cards (no shit, Sherlock!)
In the article it says something along the lines of "Police departments have called bars to see if certain names and Social Security numbers show up on their customer lists."
Umm... They got this all ass-backwards
The *bars* should not have this certain information, maybe only a private area of the card that gives out age (for convenience stores, liquor stores, etc) but the authorities should be able to get a more detailed list once proper authorization has been given.
The Feds give the bar a 'search-warrant' to the bar, so they can access the encrypted (to the bar employees) information to help the case or whatever.
That way, the bar COULDN'T "find out how many blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how many of his customers have the middle initial M."
seriously, what does kangaroo feces have to do with anything? I'm also glad that this was posted as I don't have a nytimes account, sorry I'm just a privacy nut
She is of Chinese background. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture, and her parents wanted to give her a lucky middle name. If I recall correctly, this would not be so exotic in Chinese, where ideograms and sounds have multiple meanings (in fact, I think lucky numbers often get their "lucky" quality from the fact that the characters and/or sounds for such numbers resemble other words which have positive meanings).
It has apparently caused her some grief when dealing with computerized systems which flag "8." as a typo in the middle initial field, but she has stuck with it.
For another weird numerical name, do a Google search for guy that works for Microsoft whose first name is "M3." It's really bizarre...I don't know the story behind that one.
One of the main reasons I use my passport at bars and clubs! Sure they sometimes have no clue where to look for the birthdate, but it beats being in a database. Of course, how long before passports start featuring these magstripes and barcodes?
--Garland Operator 7g, BRSC
"All these people want to track me. Gotta be anonymous! I've seen those spy movies."
Jesus people, get a grip, no one cares about any of you people here.
From the article: "It's the same information as the front of the license," said Frank Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive of Intelli- Check, a manufacturer of license-scanning equipment based in Woodbury, N.Y. "If I were to go into a bar and they had a photocopier, they could photocopy the license or they could write it down. They are not giving us any information that violates privacy."
This guy's an ass. I bet his home phone number's unlisted. Why? Because he probably doesn't like being able to be bothered by just anybody who has access to information. Guess what, neither do I.
Any bar that writes down my license info or has a photocopier sitting at the entrance can count on me getting my Guinness elsewhere.
We eat the pig and then together we BURN!!!
I think this raises an interesting question. What information about me is legitimately private, and what isn't?
The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to say that everything is private unless I choose to release it. But that approach doesn't work in practice. There are too many instances in which information about me needs to be publicly available. To pick a silly example, it's important that it be public knowledge that somebody lives in my home, because if the building catches on fire I want people to let me know and help me get out.
So some information really should be explicitly public knowledge, and it's important that everybody accept that, especially privacy advocates. We can then have a reasoned discourse about where to draw that line.
Think about your phone number. The phone company publishes your name and phone number in their directory unless you pay an additional fee for an unlisted number. This has been the status quo for my entire life-- 30 years-- and certainly much longer. So it's got a pretty good precedent going. So is my phone number private information by default? Not really. Should it be? Hmm... maybe. If I express no preference at all, should the phone company publish my name, address, and phone number or not?
The other end of the spectrum is information that's clearly private, and protected by law. My medical records and the contents of my communications with my lawyer are explicitly private. If a court wanted to know what my doctor said to me last week, they couldn't ask. It's private.
Everything else is in the middle. Is my street address private? No, by the phone book argument. What about the number of people who live in my house? Maybe. How about their ages, genders, and sexual preferences? Hmm.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: our society seems to accept as a given that we should each have the right to keep stuff private. The slippery slope argument, though often specious at best, implies that the right to keep stuff private must only be abridged when there's no alternative. But everywhere you look there's ambiguity about this principle. Go back to the phone book example; the phone company assumes you want to publish your name, address, and phone number unless you explicitly tell them-- and pay them!-- not to. Likewise, the bar mentioned in the article assumes that it's okay for them to collect demographic information from you.
Where is the line between stuff that is assumed to be private unless explicitly waived, and stuff that's assumed to be public unless explicitly withheld? Like I said before, in principle the line is all the way over to one side: everything is private unless waived. But in the real world, that line will have to be moved a little bit so that some things are public information by default.
I don't have any answers. Just questions.
...is a magnet.
While I'm not defending the practice, I'm reminded what I felt when two of the three big chain grocery stores went to a frequent user card.
I went defiantly to the third. NOBODY needs to know when I buy my Milk and Eggs!
When somebody pointed out that Costco, the Chain I love and frequent, and am frankly a cult member of, does the SAME THING, and has done so for YEARS before the Grocery Stores did it really brought me up short.
This is unfortunately a sign of the times. And without turning unibomber and living in a shack in Wyoming, there's not really much you can do about it. It's similar to the emissions and seat belt laws in the 70's. TONS of people didn't like it, but now it's commonplace.
I doubt it's going to turn into the 1984 that the alarmists paint it as, but It's also going to make more than a few people more than a little upset when it's abused. (IT WILL BE ABUSED. And when it does, the public outcry will make it financially unadvisable to abuse it further.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Don't you people realize that at least 3 different companies already HAVE your info, and are selling it?
1. Car Dealer
2. Insurance Company
3. Bank
Unless you're all 16 (which sometimes I think), you have a decent car, which you got a loan for, and didn't lie when you filled out 5 copies of the same damn form.
I'm a Slashdot reader! My privacy is so important, I WANT corporations to make money off my information, instead of the DMV, so when the DMV needs more more money, they can raise taxes..
Yeah, that's intelligent. Let's remove a form of revenue from a place that MUST exist..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
VA DMV Website
As for bars building a database, is anyone really surprised? I'm not - profiling your customers without their knowledge (or with minimal indication) is fast becoming the Great American Pastime.
Privacy Be Damned, When There's Profit Potential!
For full access to our site, please complete this simple registration form.
Does anyone else find that hilarious?
Move to Michigan.
By Michigan law only the driver license number, date of birth, and license expiration date can be stored. No other personal identifiers such as name, address or driving record can be included in the bar code or magnetic stripe per strict legislation.
Michigan Driver License FAQ
Any lawyers out there?
I'm curious if I can obtain a copyright on my personal information... or perhaps if the hospital where I was born, having produced the initial birth certificate, holds a copyright.
The mag stripe is digital media.
That would mean that the scanners fall under the SSSCA, and if that law passes, no one could make a copy of my personal information from my driver's license, right?
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I wonder if the SSN gets encoded on the magnetic stripe if you request it not be on the face of the license?
Then, buried way down at the end is this little gem...
Any sane person would point out that the bouncer "could" record the information by photocopying, yes, but he couldn't do so without being detected.
Also, because one use of the technology (license) would allow overt data collection doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD have the god-given right to collect data surreptitiously with the same technology.
Who did what now?
If you go out to the bar, then the terrorists have already won.
Said Frank Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive of Intelli- Check, a manufacturer of license-scanning equipment based in Woodbury, N.Y.: "If I were to go into a bar and they had a photocopier, they could photocopy the license or they could write it down. They are not giving us any information that violates privacy."
Uh, numbnuts, if I were to go into a bar and they had a photocopier, they wouldn't photocopy my license. If they had opposable thumbs they still wouldn't write down my information. Why? Because as soon as they tried I would leave. I can decide who copies it.
The Intelli-Check equipment certainly violates privacy because the information is scanned regardless of the person's consent, and most often without their knowledge.
Databases aren't just for storing data, they're for finding and storing relationships between sets of data.
It works either way.
I'm from Boston. I hate the Rack. It's already on my list of "Places to Avoid." Now, it's on my list of "Places to Get Others to Avoid" if not an "Recruit Others For An Active Boycott Of" list.
Man, this technology is amazing! I mean, it only cost this guy $2500 and took 3 years for him to figure out that there are a lot of 40-somethings coming in for jazz night.. how else could he have figured that out?
On a side note - why the hell are people who are 40 getting carded at a bar? For instance, I know that most places in Boston are really anal about carding people in their 20s, but this is absurd.. they're only carding older people to harvest their personal info.
Now think of the same situation, but someone is following you around with a microphone recording everything you say.
Or let's stick with out doorman checking your ID. Suppose when he did, he took out a book and started writing down everything on it. How many people would demand their ID back and complain to managment that it was none of the doorman's damn business?
Nope, no sig
Still, this article's theme provokes some thoughts:
What will change in 2004 when it has to be renewed?
If I could read either stripe, would I find that the privacy statement was inaccurate?
After all, we've had a Republican governor here for way too many years.....
db
Cig:
ôô
Here, try this: http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
It's a simple HTML/javascripty thing to automatically generate a random NYTimes login every time you want to view a story. Just cut and paste the nytimes.com url you want to view, and hit the button.
If you could, please try to save the page locally and use it from your server or desktop, to keep the traffic to my server reasonable. Distribute at will.
...my birth certificate, just to be ornery, when I was young enough to be carded.
Two recently published polls show that support for a national ID card has decreased. Results from a poll on the February 27 Washington Post Federal Page showed that public opinion was divided on the issue, with 47% of Americans thinking that national ID will improve interaction with government and business and 44% viewing it as "an invasion of people's civil liberties and privacy." A new survey released on March 12 by Gartner Inc. found that 26 percent of Americans are in favor of a national ID card, while 41 percent oppose the idea.
See Wired News: Support for ID Cards Waning
-
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Just wait until they start talking about an international (global?) standard passport, that fits on a card.
Now that would be something where the benefits might actually outweigh the negative aspects.
Otherwise, if its just national id, which we pretty much have already with the NCIC, then I really don't see the benefits, except for the police.
Presently the only clear benefit for regular people is not having to worry about a potential hassle going into a bar... which probably doesn't matter to a vast majority of the population.
Also, maybe they should work on reforming the DMV's before they start working on a national standard ID.
That's why it's called a bar code, isn't it?
In the article, a fan of the technology mentions that the machine is only scanning what's on the front of the license. This may be true, but depending on where you live, that can be a lot more info than you want people tracking.
In the state of Massachusetts, unless you request otherwise, your license number is your social security number. Granted, license records are public, so if you want, you can get the info anyway, but it seems that allowing someone to scan your license and get not only your physical info, but also your SSN is not very smart.
That brings us to the question of who is going to be responsible for the data - if a restaraunt isn't careful with their database and an unscrupulous employee snags it, they now have hundreds of records with names, addresses, height, weight, and SSNs. There's all kinds of mischief they could wreak with that kind of info. In these days of rampant credit card fraud and identity theft, you'd think people would think things through a little better.
Lastly, what about lawsuits? Could I sue a bar that, without my explicit permission, scanned my card and recorded all the data? If a business was busily copying down all the info on the front of my license, I would certainly object. If I didn't know they were doing it, I would have no chance to...
-skip
Make some stray marks with a pen or marker around the bar code. That will prevent the machine from being able to read it. They'll try to scan it a few times, it won't work, so they'll just look at the birthdate - and you won't be databased.
... well, that's when it will be time for a new game plan.
ID cards, after all, live in wallets, purses, etc., and are bound to get scratched up in every day use. There will be no way to tell that you sped up that process.
When it comes to the point that a RF chip is in the card, and a non-funtioning card must be replaced
I don't remember ever getting one. Even if I did, it would dissapear, never to be seen from again. And yes, Mr. Ashcroft, I know you have someone reading this right now... Kiss my Big 'ol Butt!
If businesses that are swiping your ID and gathering all this kind of info from your license, wouldn't it constitute an invasion of privacy if they were to use that information without your consent and/or knowledge?
http://www.webcheck.ag.state.oh.us/ Look Ohio was nice enough to put a package together to get information about us. "WebCheck uses the Internet to electronically transfer fingerprints and other data from the inquiring agency to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI&I). "
... a red light blinks and the patron is waved through.
Why is it a red light ?? Shouldn't it be a green light to let them pass and a red one to alert of a problem??
Rookies.
When was the last time a bouncer jotted down your name? For me, never. If they started copying the whole thing, or photocopy it, I would at the least ask them what the hell they were doing. Since when is the bar entitled to my home address and fingerprints?
The article doesn't mention anything about Regular ID's? What if I don't drive a car? A lot of people walk, use mass transit, and ride a bicycle. And not just teenagers, I know a lot of people that don't drive. Some by choice, some by law, but either way they don't have a drivers license, only one of those state provided ID's. Does that store the same information as the drivers license?
And secondly, What if I don't want to have my drivers license scanned? Are they going to default to assuming that it's fake and I'm a fraud? I sure hope there are laws that prevent business from limiting it's customers to only those who comply to having their ID's scanned into a database. I get enough junk in my regular mail, I don't need anymore, and I sure don't want to be banned from every bar, nightclub and convenence store in my area because I choose not to give my personal information to anyone that asks for it.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
As long as you don't want to ever buy or do anything or go anywhere at all ever again, you'll never have to hand over your <strike> de facto mandatory national ID</strike> completely voluntary driver's license, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Throw off the chains of Mad Deadly Worldwide Gangster Communist Frankenstein Radio Earphone Slavery and depolarize your driver's licence stripe! Buy an ell-skin wallet. Abrade the back with sandpaper. Better yet, re-encode the stripe with the word VOID for each piece of information you don't want to be public.
Since they only swipe the license and never look at the front of it, it makes it real easy to make a fake one and get into a bar. Just use magstripe read/writer and overwrite your real license with fake magnetic info.
When I use my credit card to make a purchase, I am intentionally giving away my credit card number, name and address, but when i hand a bouncer my driver's license, I am intentionally giving away only my age. Authenticating my identity is totally different than saving all my personal information in a private database. Collecting personal information is fine, but what bothers me about this is that they're doing it under the guise of something completely different.
I didn't see anything obvious in the barcode that did not already appear on the front. I asked that my SSN not appear on the front, and I also did not see it in the barcoded data.
There were around 20 bytes of extra binary data which I didn't put much effort into further decoding. I compared the data on my license with the data from the license of friends and family, some bytes matched, some did not.
No special equipment is needed, any good scanner will work, you do need to make sure that the ID card is aligned at right angles to the scanner, and turn off any anti-speckle features in your software.
Most of the barcode data extraction software for Windows will accept a TIFF file, I haven't found any good free software that directly supports a TWAIN or other scanner plug-in.
The free demo software I found will also generate 2-D barcodes as TIFF files...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
freethat/mofonow
Or you can view the article here
Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
OSTON -- ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their driver's licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through.
But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are registered.
"You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone's whole life as we know it pops up in front of you," said Paul Barclay, the bar's owner. "It's almost voyeuristic."
Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID's. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing. "It's not just an ID check," he said. "It's a tool."
Now, for any given night or hour, he can break down his clientele by sex, age, ZIP code or other characteristics. If he wanted to, he could find out how many blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how many of his customers have the middle initial M. More practically, he can build mailing lists based on all that data -- and keep track of who comes back.
Bar codes and other tracking mechanisms have become one of the most powerful forces in automating and analyzing product inventory and sales over the last three decades. Now, in a trend that alarms privacy advocates, the approach is being applied to people through the simple driver's license, carried by more than 90 percent of American adults.
Already, about 40 states issue driver's licenses with bar codes or magnetic stripes that carry standardized data, and most of the others plan to issue them within the next few years.
Scanners that can read the licenses are slowly proliferating across the country. So far the machines have been most popular with bars and convenience stores, which use them to thwart underage purchasers of alcohol and cigarettes.
In response to the terrorist attacks last year, scanners are now also being installed as security devices in airports, hospitals and government buildings. Many other businesses -- drugstores and other stores, car- rental agencies and casinos among them -- are expressing interest in the technology.
The devices have already proved useful for law enforcement. Police departments have called bars to see if certain names and Social Security numbers show up on their customer lists.
The electronic trails created by scanning driver's licenses are raising concerns among privacy advocates. Standards and scanning, they say, are a dangerous combination that essentially creates a de facto national identity card or internal passport that can be registered in many databases.
"Function creep is a primary rule of databases and identifiers," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, citing how the Social Security number, originally meant for old-age benefits, has become a universal identifier for financial and other transactions. "History teaches us that even if protections are incorporated in the first place, they don't stay in place for long."
But companies that market the scanning technology argue that it poses no threat to privacy.
"It's the same information as the front of the license," said Frank Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive of Intelli- Check, a manufacturer of license-scanning equipment based in Woodbury, N.Y. "If I were to go into a bar and they had a photocopier, they could photocopy the license or they could write it down. They are not giving us any information that violates privacy."
Machine-readable driver's licenses have been introduced over the last decade under standards set by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, an umbrella group of state officials.
Under current standards, the magnetic stripe and bar codes essentially contain the same information that is on the front of the driver's licenses. In addition to name, address and birth date, the machine-readable data includes physical attributes like sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color and whether corrective lenses are required. Some states that put the driver's Social Security number on the license also store it on the data strip.
The scanning systems present a challenge to efforts by state and federal governments to limit the amount of information that can be released by departments of motor vehicles. In 1994, Congress passed the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, largely in response to the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer, an actress who was killed in 1989 by an obsessed fan who had found her unlisted address by using California motor vehicle records.
Before the law was adopted, states were selling driver's license information to direct marketing companies, charities and political campaigns. Businesses selling, for example, fitness products and plus-size clothing were able to focus on customers within a given range of height or weight.
While the privacy act staunched the flow of information from state motor vehicle departments, there are only spotty controls over how businesses can create such databases on their own. In Texas, the driver's licenses can be electronically scanned for age verification, but the information cannot be downloaded from the machine. In New York, businesses are only allowed to store name, birth date, driver's license ID number and expiration date for the purpose of age verification. Many states require people to give consent to be on marketing lists, but businesses generally interpret consent to mean not actively removing their names from a list.
When Mr. Barclay, the bar owner, saw a demonstration of Intelli-Check (news/quote)'s driver's license scanner at a trade show in 1999, he was surprised. "It had never dawned me that that strip had information on it," he said.
He bought an Intelli-Check system, which costs about $2,500 and can scan both bar codes and magnetic strips. Now, three years and 1.3 million scanned customers later, he has grown to understand how the data reflects the bar's business.
On Tuesdays, for example, the number of customers born between 1955 and 1960 spikes when the 40-something crowd comes for the jazz.
Thursday night is popular among people who have the upscale Boston ZIP codes 02109, 02111 and 02113. They come to hear Cat Tunes, a band well known among those who go to Martha's Vineyard.
When the singer Chad LaMarch performs on Sundays, women make up 60 percent of the crowd. "The men always follow the women," Mr. Barclay said.
While attributes like age and sex can be observed from simply looking at the crowd, the hard statistics are more valuable in negotiating with liquor companies over promotions, he said.
Other bars are using the information gleaned to give repeat customers special treatment, similar to the way airlines reward their frequent fliers. Some are planning to tap into the addresses.
"Let's say I'm doing an all-male-performer show," said Kenny Vincent, who owns a bar in New Orleans called Kenny's Key West. "I could just mail to just girls I want to target between 21 and 34. I have all that information. The whole reason to have a database is to advertise and market to your customers."
In some cases the data can be correlated to what customers buy. Polka Dot Dairy/ Tom Thumb, a convenience store chain based near Minneapolis that operates about 100 stores, including the Bonkers chain, in Minnesota and Wisconsin, installed machines made by the Logix Company to comply with age minimums on the sale of tobacco. But Terry Giebel, a controller at Tom Thumb, said the ability to build customer databases was also a selling point.
"Any marketing tool that we have that makes us different than our competition is an advantage," Mr. Giebel said. "We could do direct marketing to people who are smokers."
But such cross-linking of data raises concerns. "As more and more people in the private sector want to make use of that identity document, it becomes coercive since it's linked to the transactions," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The scanner can also be programmed to reject troublesome customers. Simply knowing that a quarrelsome man is named Greg and lives in a specific town can be enough information to lock someone out. The Rack has determined people's identities simply by remembering the face and approximate time of arrival, since the bar also has a digital video camera that films people as they walk in. "You don't need a lot of information to find out who someone is," Mr. Barclay said.
Newer, two-dimensional bar codes that can store more data have been adopted by almost 30 states, including New York. Some states are already using this extra storage capacity to pack in biometric information. Georgia stores two digital fingerprints as well as the person's signature. Tennessee stores a facial recognition template. Kentucky recently became the first state to embed a black-and-white electronic version of the photograph in the bar code.
Such biometric information is designed to add extra security to the document, even though few scanners are designed to read such specialized information.
But as Americans debate expanding the national standards for driver's licenses to improve security, the scanner technology has already gained impetus.
Logan Airport in Boston is using the machines to check the identity of passengers. New York University Hospital scans and stores visitors' driver's license information. Delaware has installed the machines to screen visitors at the state legislature and its largest state office building.
The scanners' manufacturers are generally aware of the potential for personal information to be abused. The Logix Company, based in Longmont, Colo., allows clients like bars to view aggregate but not specific data, to prevent a scenario in which "a bouncer at a bar stalks a blond, 20-year-old, 5-foot-7 girl," said Lana Rozendorf, a sales manager with Logix. "As a company we want to take responsibility for who has responsibility for this information."
But with Intelli-Check's scanners and those of many other manufacturers, the information is stored locally, with the client gaining easy access.
Mr. Vincent, who uses an Intelli-Check scanner at his bar in New Orleans, shrugged off the notion of someone's abusing the information. He said he had no interest in keeping information on people who objected to being in his database. "Will I use it in the wrong way?" he said. "No."
Then he paused. "But then again, what is to stop the next guy?"
I've had the stripe on my credit cards be degaussed over time, but nobody ever figured them for forged credit cards.
:)
I've actually had more problems with the stripes WEARING off, which makes them kinda hard to read
If your driver's license is scrubbed through continual use, the strip will wear off, just like a credit card.
My bank in Tennessee had signs all over the place saying that they would not accept the State "ID Card" for some reason. Not sure if that is still in effect, but I *think* the issue is that the State is not as careful about checking/requiring records for issuing the ID card as they are about issuing a DL.
The GOOD thing about a TN DL is that there is no "big brother magnetic strip" on the Driver's Licenses, nor a barcode! Just your DL # and no SSAN if you want it omitted.
TN only recently began requiring SSAN as a condition of licensing. They always asked for it, but if you did not "remember" your SSAN or did not have one, they would not deny licensing you on that basis.
I just renewed mine a few months ago, tried to do it through their web interface, but they made me call in and give my SSAN, then verified it (someplace) before renewing my license.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
...is the license still valid?
Can a bar refuse to honor a driver's license as proof of age if the strip is demagnetized?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's their store. Remember "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"?
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
My passport doesn't have a magnetic strip. It's supposed to be official id. What would happen if you started going to these places with no drivers license and only a passport? Or some other form of id (military, etc)?
Jason
Of course, to read the article you need to login so they can scan your information.
Sir_Haxalot
stuff |
Just make a purchase at your local big box retailer with a check. Set your license on the security device (the one with the big 'no card' logo). By the time the clerk is ready to punch your numbers it should be good and blank.
Or just sand off the stripe. If anyone asks, you are an avid skateboarder and you had a little accident with your DL in your back pocket. If they press you, offer to show them the scars.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
And yet we still use SSN as both identifier and password. To access my credit card accounts by phone, the system asks for the last four digits of my SSN. It works that way on both my Mastercard and Discover.
Suppose I use my credit card at the doctor's office. They have my SSN and birthdate too, the SSN is my health insurance member id. Now they can check my account balances.
And so on. And we wonder why identity theft is such a big problem.
I can't stop myself from rolling my eyes every time I read stuff like this.
There are 6 billion people in the planet, why would the "system" want to spy on you?
Maybe because you have terrorist plans or a HD full of kiddie porn. In that case, you SHOULD be spied on and put in jail.
I you are not a criminal, chill.
Companies, on the other hand, use personal info to try to target their advertising. Why is this so bad? I rather get advertising related to my interests than random crap. If they target it wrong, they won't sell and the problem will fix itself.
I *want* tiny devices that keep track of all my personal information, daily activities, location, friends, family, pets and bathroom supplies. - As long as it's useful for *me*.
Let's stop being paranoid and start innovating.
Luckily, here in MI, "Information contained in bar code and magnetic stripe is limited to date of birth, license/ID number and expiration date" (as quoted directly from the back of the card). Unless some place want's to do a background check on us based solely on license numbers (or starts copying id's), I don't think anyone in michigan has anything to worry about. -snevine
This only reads the front, but rigging a similar shelf arrangement to scan the backside would not be difficult.
I checked out the 2-D barcode on the back of the Illinois license, and on mine, which does not have the SSN on the front, there is no SSN in the barcode.There does not appear to be any magstripe on the new Illinois licenses.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Lets see, I cancelled my main email address to start new, I now pay the telephone company for a privacy manager. I have to make up email addresses on the fly to protect my main pop account. Do I now have to worry about my local pub sending me junk mail telling me they have a 2 for 1 special. These marketing whores have somehow got business to buy into their "direct marketing" list concept. How many of you think this really works? How many people are they willing to annoy just to make one sale? I have never purchased anything from a catalog, spam, or telemarketer. And I never will. Should'nt I be in a "Never buys anything list"? Seems there would be a value in such a list so companies could save money by only targeting the mindless impulse shoppers. It will be a matter of time before the credit card purchase records at these bars will be tied with the drivers license data. Next you will have a guy calling you on the phone Sunday morning to offer you something for your hangover.
A friend of mine lost his shopper's card for some grocery store. Last year, they had a promotion where every week, they were going to give out $1000 to one card holder. Well... someone must've found his card and used it, because he got the money.
Of course, they probably did this promotion to get people to try to register cards in their real names.
Anyway, he doesn't care.. he has the money
Here in Texas, it is illegal to carry more than one valid ID card/driver's license. I think that this is to help prevent fake ID's, but it would also keep you from having 2 different classes of license on different plastic.
"Who am I" and "Why are we here" are not the problems.
The problem is when someone asks "Why are they here."
If you don't trust your government, then fine. Why do you trust the corporations then?
Because corporations, unlike government, do not have the legal right to use deadly force to achieve their goals.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
In France we have the CNIL (National Center for Computing and Liberty). This is a governemtal agency applying the law that no one can possess and use a computerized database with data associated with names without :
- declaring it to the CNIL
- warning every single person inside the database it contains datas about him
- allowing anyone to know exactly what are the datas regarding himself
- allowing anyone to correct or erase those datas
I think this is one of the best french laws regarding computing.
Anyone who's worried about this, do what I do. Bring your passport to get into bars. Or just take a knife to the magnetic strip and scratch it all up, or scrape off part of it, so it can't be read.
-nt-
Live streaming video right here
From my understanding, it's illegal for anyone over the age of 18 to be in public without a valid form of picture identification. I don't know if this is true, but according to my old high school driver's ed teacher it is ;-) (info dated 4-5 years or so)
And as many people have already said, you can pick up a State ID Card from the DMV (in Pennsylvania at least) that costs all of $9 to get.
On another note, a friend of mine recently purchased a mag strip reader and from what he told me the only info on a PA driver's license is your License #, Full Name, Birthdate, and ZipCode (and oddly enough, everything is in plaintext)
Sorry for the rambling...
--Justin
The State I live in recently switched to Magnetic Strips. This was done to comply with federal regulations which requires states to switch to these kind of ID cards. If the State does not, they forfeit certain federal funding. The Secretary of State fought this switch based on privacy concerns, but lost. So... If your State has not switched yet, they likely will.
Of course, when I received my new license, the first thing I did was run it by an industrial magnet. I don't mind having an ID Card, I just don't want my data accessed that easily.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
But by default... the drivers license number *IS* your SSN. I suspect many people don't care, I personally opted for a unrelated numerical ID instead of my SSN.
I used to go to a bar where they required you to write down your DL number and your name and birthday on a list before you even got your ID checked. It didn't keep anyone from wanting to go in.
"Who am I" and "Why are we here" are not the problems.
The problem is when someone asks "Why are they here."
For example, a driver's license is intended to be read by police; of course, the police may get access to personal information that a bar owner shouldn't have access to. For age verification, the bar owner does not need your name or your social security number.
If we had a real, well-designed national ID system, then you could control who gets what information. Either through SmartCard functionality or cryptography, for example, you could ensure that people only get the information they need and use it only in the way the should. It's not trivial to design a good national ID system, but it's the only real choice we have if we value our privacy.
Check out these card readers...
Anyway.. you guys get the point..
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Go home, take a nice fridge magnet... that pizza place magnet will do.. set the magnet on the strip, rub a few times... Voila
Some states use an extra-high coercivity stripe material that won't be degaussed by a 'fridge magnet.
Go to Radio Shack or a museum's tech-toy counter and get one of those supermagnets. Or just scratch until most of the stripe is worn off.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Where's the privacy policies?
Does the bar inform you that they are not only reading the information (okay IMHO) but SAVING the information (not okay IMHO)?
If they're going to save it, fine, but they need to tell us they're doing it so we can make an informed choice as to whether we want to patronize their establishment or not - and to express our discontent with their "policy".
'
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
I thought chinese culture taught the naming of children based on throwing silverware down the staircase.
I have been doing this to my licenses ever since
the advent of the stupid magnetic strip.
This way, people who need the info (e.g. police)
can still get it, but dickheads that like to track
the clientele in their bars dont.
It's not like they're not going to let someone old
enough pay the establishment 300% profit on alcohol
just because their license got demagnetized.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
- passport, birth certificate or ID without letting them scan it or photocopy it and they don't let me in.
Could I sue them?
Could they make rules not allowing you in, like "OK, you're 21 but look suspicious - go away!"
Is it legal to deny services to person for reasons not covered by law?
Or it's differ from state to state?
I'm not talking about 'clubs' - just regular bars.
Hmmm... Bar code means code for use in bars..
I think this is the final evidence that the libertarians have had it wrong for decades. They're always bugging out about the government this, government that. Turns out the CIA was uploading cookies and even they didn't know about it, for Christ's sake. I've worked in government, and I'm not going out on a limb when I say that the government is too damn incompetent to get anything useful out of tracking our M&M consumption habits, as it were.
It's the private sector that poses real risks to privacy. Uncle Sam is not about to track your damned underwear size so they can focus-group test when the ideal time to offer you a rebate on the 10-48 diet drink.
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
I don't have my driver's license publicly available. I keep it in my wallet, tucked away, and display it only when someone needs to see it. For a police officer, that may require knowledge of my address and full name, and that's well and good.
A bar does NOT need to know that information. The only thing they need to know is whether or not I'm old enough to buy liquor. My name, address and so forth are "need to know" information, and the bar definitely does not need to know that just because I walk in their door.
The bar has absolutely no right to use that kind of information to their advantage. Just because it's written in the same place as my age doesn't mean they have a right to record and data-mine it.
If this becomes a persistent problem, then NY State should respond with an updated license. In addition to the data recorded on that magnetic strip, it should include the equivalent of an opt-in checkbox: "Do you want this data to be used for commercial purposes?" Any merchant who swipes my card would then be LEGALLY REQUIRED to honor my request, under penalty of heavy fines.
Does this checking work the other way, in terms of the liability of the establishment?
Let's say Joe User goes to a bar, and the bartender feeds him drinks until he's blotto. He's out with friends and they can confirm he was at the bar. The bartender continues to pass him drinks even though he is well intoxicated, and in no condition to drive a vehicle.
He tells the bartender he's leaving, walks out of the bar into his car and drives himself into a delivery car filled with some valuable item. Destroying $2 million in goods and injuring the driver.
If the bar he was at has a record of patrons, and his ID was scanned into that list confirming his attendance at the bar, could either the victim of the accident, the driver, or owning company sue the bar for neglect and seize the records of the scanner? Thus potentially holding the establishment liable.
Or what happens if the driver sues the bar after the accident saying they never cut him off knowing he was too intoxicated, they say he wasn't in the bar, but the ID records prove that he was.
It would seem such records are more of a liablity to the establishment than a tool for collecting information.
2 cents.
all i do is bend my card in half and they can never scan it.
gnab.net [ click less, spank more ]
If the bouncers at these bars now blindly trust the machine's output, isn't it now a lot easier to get into these bars underage?
I mean, if all it takes is a geek with an ISO magstripe writer and some crude serial IO programming skills, to read the data, tweak the birth year, and rewrite it, then... I can see this being popular!
Just "loose" your license, get a new one, and get your writer-toting HS budy to rewrite your old one, and you're set!
Why should you care about your privacy? Targeted advertising is only irritating. Modern day cointelpro-like operations become easier & that's pretty scary.
What bothers me the most, though, is the amount of data the police can gather about you without a warrant, then use that to get a warrant. The Law & Order file (someone please chime in if any of these are wrong) in my head shows cops getting credit purchase history, credit reports, banking records, phone usage and toll bridge crossings without warrants.
The problem is that police do need tools to fight crime and it's probable that the majority of people convicted through an evidence chain that begins with information gained w/o warrant are actually guilty. This means there will be little support for prohibiting executive branch acesss without judicial approval until there's a case where the circumstantial evidence leads to a conviction and incarceration an an innocent so egregious that people have to sit up and take notice.
I'd guess that most conviction of innocents will be of "low lifes" with prior drug-related convictions popped for petty theft or trafficking using time & place data from grocery saver cards, license checks, credit cards and phone records (E911 anyone?) as well as a history of banking and purchases that are out of line with the perp's legit. job. No one will care.
Oh, don't forget "security" cameras.
Bottom line? Private interests can gather information that would be seen as invasive if the government did it directly, then hand it over on demand. The only thing left might be Lawyer/Client, but Dr./Patient is compromised by the release of information to insurance companies (which is then pooled).
Don't get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong physical description.
You dolt. You probably have a bar code on it as well. You did nothing but make them use an alternative method to get what they want.
a newspaper article of a few years back here in the Bay Area - John Draper (Capn Crunch) and someother people had got into trouble with the local cops .... seems someone had figured out that you could record a BART ticket (local mass transit) which is basicly a mag stripe by running it through a common tape recorder - what they'd do was take a tickets with $20 on it and record it, then play it back over tickets with 10c on them
>>Of course, when I received my new license, the first thing I did was run it by an industrial magnet.
Are you Corbin Dallas?
"This is a Police Control. Put your hands in the Yellow Circles. Thank you for your cooperation."
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
The Chinese, like the old Romans, do use numbers as names sometimes. Given names like Primus or Yi were/are not uncommon.
In Chinese (using Han zi) there is no distinction between number and character; you couldn't ``spell it out''. The distinction may not have ocurred to her parents when filling out a birth certificate in English. Also, as in English, there are homophones; different words with the same sound but different spelling (in English) or symbols (in Chinese).
I don't generally have a problem with companies that store data about the transactions that I have with them. It's when they start correlating that data with other sources that I start to get concerned.
In this example data gathered by the Registry of Motor Vehicles (or whatever your state calls them) is being correlated with services and purchases at a Bar.
The article mentioned the scenario of how a fictitious bouncer could use that data to stalk women.
There are many scenrios of abuse that this could be used for. Basically the technology allows for your movments and habits to be monitored very easily. That information could be used by others to your harm and detriment. It could be used by governements, businesses, or individuals.
In todays society it is alomst unthinkable to live without a drivers license. That makes it very difficult to opt out. Sure you can stop going out to clubs and restaurants. Perhaps you can use only public transportation. You could even pay cash for everything so theres no need to provide your license when presenting a credit card. It seems that giving up your privacy is becoming the price you must pay to participate in the beinfits of todays society.
The use of these devices is bound to increase as business look to reduce risks and increase profits. It's a very slippery slope. Think about where it's all likely to lead.
I used to think that George Orwell wrote Science Fiction.
Um, I don't see how changing the color of the card is really going to help this. Besides, my driver's license isn't magenta to begin with.
Oh, you mean demagnetize! Never mind.
Virg
Find a nice powerful magnet and rub that sucker all over your drivers license information strip to render it useless to these machines. Then your drivers license will still get you into bars but it wont add to your junk mail.
We have the best government that money can buy.
My complaint about Dick Cheney:
May I be cynical for a bit? I hope you don't mind,
but with Cheney's latest barrage of
malodorous notions, I can't resist the urge to make a
few cynical comments. To get right
down to it, some of the facts I'm about
to present may seem shocking. This
they certainly are. However, it's time that a few
facts had a chance to slip through the fusillade of hype.
What's my problem, then? Allow me to present it
in the form of a question: Where are the people
who are willing to stand up and acknowledge
that Cheney, in his infinite wisdom, has decided
to destroy the natural beauty of our parks and forests?
On the surface, it would seem to have something to do
with the way that his whole approach is repugnant.
But upon further investigation, one will find that
by allowing Cheney to put mephitic thoughts in our
children's minds, we are allowing him to play puppet master.
As for the lies and exaggerations, Cheney's
epigrams are rife with contradictions
and difficulties; they're entirely maladroit,
meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited
for a supposedly educated population.
And as if that weren't enough, if Cheney is going to
obstruct important things, then he should at least have
the self-respect to remind himself of a few things: First, a
true enemy is better than a false friend. And
second, many people respond to his debauched vituperations
in much the same way that they respond to television
dramas. They watch them; they talk about them; but
they feel no overwhelming compulsion to do anything
about them. That's why I insist we pronounce the truth
and renounce the lies.
Even people who consider themselves scornful
foolhardy-types generally agree that Cheney's slurs
symbolize lawlessness, violence, and misguided rebellion
-- extreme liberty for a few, even if the rest of us
lose more than a little freedom. One might conclude
that Cheney is incapable of writing a letter without using
such phrases as "crapulous pop psychologists", "loquacious
exhibitionists", "oppressive personae non gratae", or
some combination thereof. Alternatively, one might conclude
that Cheney has a different view of reality from the rest of us.
In either case, if you're not part of the solution,
then you're part of the problem. His historical record of
fickle pleas is clearer than the muddled pronouncements
of his apple-polishers for a variety of reasons. For
instance, the worst sorts of inconsiderate Neanderthals there
are must be treated with political justice, not with
civil justice, as they are sincerely not real citizens. Let me
rephrase that: I wonder if he really believes the
things he says. He knows they're not true, doesn't he?
A complete answer to that question would
take more space than I can afford, so I'll have to give
you a simplified answer. For starters, if
we let him cause riots in the streets, then greed,
corruption, and tribalism will characterize the government.
Oppressive measures will be directed against citizens.
And lies and deceit will be the stock and trade of the
media and educational institutions.
Even Cheney's bedfellows couldn't deal with the full impact of
Cheney's refrains. That's why they created "Cheney-ism," which is
just a garrulous excuse to force square
pegs into round holes. He plans to drag everything
that is truly great into the gutter. He has instructed
his votaries not to discuss this or even admit to his
plan's existence. Obviously, Cheney knows he has
something to hide. Most of you reading this letter
have your hearts in the right place. Now
follow your hearts with actions. I have traveled the length and
breadth of this country and talked with the best people. I can
therefore assure you that Cheney's artifices cannot stand on
their own merit. That's why they're dependent on elaborate
artifices and explanatory stories to convince us that Cheney's
warnings can give us deeper insights into the nature of
reality. We can and we must protect ourselves by any means
necessary against the unrestrained bestiality
of stupid, quasi-macabre paper-pushers. And that's the honest truth.
And any business that wants to scan my driver's license to make sure my papers are in order before they sell me a drink isn't getting my business.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Find a large speaker magnet somewhere, and leave your license on it overnight. The magnetic strip will become unreadable, and anyone wanting to scan it will have to just look at it instead.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Simple: just scratch off the magnetic strip on the back of your license -- that's what I did. I've been to that bar The Rack more than a few times, and the idiot bouncers always give me a minor hassle about the being unable to scan my license. I tell them "Duuuuh, then I guess you're going to have to do the math all by yourself, aren't you?"
Magnetic strips get erased or damaged so commonly that most people won't think twice about it.
Now those 2-D barcodes some states use are another matter. Those take a little working over with a magic marker. Or if you want to be more subtle, the precision application of some sandpaper.
And without turning unibomber and living in a shack in Wyoming...
:)
:) If you are offended by my remarks, well... Just be glad I'm not naming names.
Two things: First of all the Unibomber was shacked up in Montana, and trust me, there IS a difference between Wyoming and Montana.
Secondly, as someone who spent three years living, working, and (briefly) going to school in Wyoming-- before giving up on min. wage tech jobs to get a salary back "home" in Cleveland, the people in general are just as "normal" as any other cross-section of United States citizens. There are more rednecks in southwestern suburban Cleveland than there were in Laramie or Cheyenne.
And, surprisingly, there were *more* of the cliche, stereotypical, ass-kissing, ladder-climbing, sleep-with-the-boss office politics going on at the University of Wyoming than any other company I have come in contact with, before or since. I think the problem is, that in a state of 400,000 people, with one four year degree-granting institution of higher learning, there is FIERCE competition for advancement. This was true of both faculty members stabbing eachother in the back for research grants, as well as "management" of the Information Technology department.
It's a beautiful place to live... clean air, generally nice people (except aforementioned corporate deviants), and low crime. The tech market is stagnant not because of the "backwoods western mindset", but moreso because-- Why would you kiss ass trying to get promoted in your department of 80 people while making $18,000 a year, when you can drive a couple hours south to Denver and make $65,000 for the same job?
In two years, I quadruped my income. I only hope that those who are stuck in their little niche (be it technology, geology, or whatever) out in Big, Wonderful Wyoming are in it for the scenery and clean air. Because if you're in it for the money and the glory of your resume, you can pretty much forget it. Get out while you can, and come back to buy your retirement condo out there at age 55.
If anyone I know from UW reads this- Hiya.
the piracy aspect of it. once you scan your dl they have a valid card... and ALL the information... then alls someone needs is a high quality printer and a magnetic card writer. not that hard to get. now we hafve a valid fake id business. even worse if someone makes these ID cards the 'national id cards' to fight terrorism there would be MORE of a business for valid card images. personally I think this idea isn't that great. go back to the olden days of when a bouncer would just look at the card and know if it looked fake or not. its not that hard. oh well thats just my two credits.
Anyway, my story was cooler because it included the great closing line from the article,
Aahh, what do I care? I made it into the Washington Post today!
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Sandpaper
This one's easy. Just apply for a saver card with a false name and address. I usually use "George Orwell, 1984 Animal Farm Ln".
That I'd trust the government more than my credit card company, local grocery store, local movie place...
Seriously - all that is tracked. When you buy something via credit card, they may not know the details, but they know where you're shopping. When you use your discount card, same thing, only they pretty much see what you're buying. Same with movie rental stores.
The article mentioned that states have started using 2D barcodes that contain fingerprint information. That, with full name, address and SSN could probably do it. And if they needed your mother's maiden name, well, she's probably been to that store, too. :(
This is making the encrypted national ID cards in Asia look a lot better. If I understood correctly, different info is encrypted differently, so that the bar may access age information, but not anything else.
Until then, scratch the magnetic strip on the back of your card.
Lies about crimes
Would that be Mr. M3 Sweatt?
Hmm. I wonder whether his initials are M.M.M. Sweat.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
So why hasn't she changed her name to Jennifer Eight Lee?!
The statement that "the information is already on the front of the card therefore there are no privacy issues" totally misses the point. Think about the alternative. Instead of scanning the license, the bar has to write all of the info down or type it into a computer, just so you can go into the bar. No customer is going to sit there in the cold and wait for some bouncer that types 5 word per minute to fumble the info into a terminal. There are data entry errors to consider and in the first example below the data, though perhaps not all of it, has to be entered in repeatedly during a visit. Remember that technology serves to make menial, tedious tasks easier and orders of magnitude faster. In the time it takes for Bubba to transcribe the face of your drivers license, this scanner has taken 10 more IDs and updated a hundred databases around the world. The second that information becomes digital, it can be traded, sold, exploited a million times in a second totally unregulated. People who try to apply traditional reasoning to societal issues and technology truly don't understand. Sadly these people are the same ones who make your laws.
When you have a problem and you arrive at a possible solution you have to ask does this solution really solve my problem? Is this scanning solution to the underage drinking/smoking problem really even solving the problem? Ask the RIAA or the MPAA about their efforts to thwart piracy. Long story short, if you can come up with a way to prevent theft, or in this case fraud, someone can come up with a way to defeat it and come up with it faster than it took for you to devise it.
Lets take this scanning system a small step further. Now in this bar, you must show your ID to make your alcohol purchase. Your consumption is tracked and based upon the number of drinks, the strength of those drinks and your weight from your drivers license, it roughly calculates your blood alcohol level. Persons having too good a time tracked and the cops are waiting outside for you to get into your car. So, you might say that this would have a dramatic effect on the drinking and driving fatalities in this country. I reluctantly agree that in this small context that the end justifies the means. Less dead people is good right? Perhaps another example where it does not is necessary.
Now lets say that you are a responsible adult and when you do have too good a time at the pub you foot it home or call a cab. No cops, no night in the tombs (yeah, my Law & Order affection gives me away again) so things are good. Wrong. Remember this information is digital, anyone can buy it. What about your employer? You show up at the office after a weekend of partying only to find your stuff packed and your pink slip on your desk because you booze a little to much in you _off_ time. Or perhaps your auto insurance company buys the same info and considers you a higher risk, higher auto premiums. Same goes for cigarette purchases. Health insurance companies buy up the info and increase your premiums or cancel your policy when they see your addiction is getting out of hand.
Any grocery store that I've been in which had club cards also had a cash machine. The only time I've had information crossover issues there was when the cash machine was down and I happened to be low on cash. Otherwise there's no correlation between a transaction that I might have made with Wells Fargo and the grocery purchase the same night that John Doe made, but the grocery store still gets to correlate whether the John Doe who buys tofu and vegetables also buys cheap beer, good beer, or white wine, and whether the heavily advertised sale on red meat has any correlation with John Doe's purchases of tortillas or charcoal or potato chips or Wired Magazine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem is that it's not blatantly false. Note that the wording is "business or other enterprise", which does not include public services. That's where the confusion originates. The real laws vary from state to state, but according to federal law, only federal agencies are restricted in the use of your SSN. State governments are not restricted in its use by federal law, although some states restrict its use by statute. So, although it's most likely legal for a state DMV to require your SSN, it's not beyond possibility that they aren't allowed to insist on your providing it. Check with your own state's laws to be certain.
Virg
They mostly just discuss the movement to standardize the format of ID cards in the USA. Each state currently designs their ID cards independently, but mostly putting the same information on it.. DOB, address, picture, driving restrictions, physical description, organ donor, SSN (optional, ALWAYS make them remove this if you can, as your identity can be stolen with your SSN and DOB alone). Most states already have bar codes on the back of their IDs so that they can be machine read and more tamper resistant.
What they don't discuss is that since 9/11, many people want to add several things:
*Illegal for adults to not carry their ID card.* Produce it on demand or go to jail (while the state proves who _they_ think you are).
Fingerprints (there has to be a strong reason for your fingerprints to be in the database now)
DNA (not just on the card, in the government database too)
Family members
Religion
Country of birth
Ethnic heritage
Political party
Sexual orientation
Alot of people are saying that if you have nothing to hide, that you should not worry. Just because someone doesn't need to hide behind the US Constitution doesn't mean they should rip it up.
Someday we may go to war with the the home country of my ancestors, and I don't need my loyalties being questioned because I was dumb enough to register myself as a descendant of those people, no matter how many centuries removed.
Stuart Kahler
Can somebody mirror the article for those of us who refuse to give any tracking information to the NYT? Or just copy and paste in a post here? Thanks. ---> Identity Fraud "Victim" ---
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think its inane that you'd want to mod down someone who takes the time to make it easier for you to get the context of the discussion.
Mod down the below comments as they are off topic!
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
You can demagetize anything with refrigerator magnet sized Nd magnets available for 15 bucks from wondermagnet.com. They can lift 100 pounds too. They also cause any tv/monitor CRT within 30 feet to go squrrelly and need degaussing. Although neither I nor anyone else should commit such a heinous crime, the thought of sticking one inconspicuously to the exit of a WAL*MART and watching to see how long it takes for them to figure out why they are having so many TV returns intrigues me.
Eat at Joe's.
Funny, not far from Intelli-Check's offices, I found the name and address of one Frank Mandelbaum...I wonder how he would feel if /.ers were to contact him and let him know how convenient it is to have your personal info shared indiscriminately...
Nothing a big-ass magnet can't fix.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
They don't (or at least didn't in late 90's) even give you the option to use your SSN as the drivers License. When I went to get a new SS card (the old one had been through the wash too many times) the SS dude showed me something interesting.
In the small print on a SS card information (I don't think it's on the actual card, but the paper you have to tear the card out of), it states that it is unlawful to use your federal SSN for other means of identification or labeling (or something to that effect). Texas took that as meaning "Don't use this for state ID", thus the rules above...
just my $0.02
- Sig
You may have noticed that supermarkets are phasing out the frequent user cards (Albertsons here in the Bay Area). Have they suddenly decided it's a bad idea? Nope. So many people pay by debit card that they just use that as the dbKey.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Is there a table with all the states listed crossed with the information stored on their respected drivers Liceses?
s -365.html
FROM THE MICHIGAN DMV:
------
On the back of the new driver license and state identification card is a magnetic stripe and bar code. Under Michigan law, the information on the magnetic stripe and bar code is restricted to only the:
Driver license or state ID number
Holder's date of birth
License expiration date
------
http://www.sos.state.mi.us/drlic/so
!@#$ annoying to click on a link from Slashdot and be yelled at to do the registration bullshit if I want to read the story. What's with no registration disclamer today?
And this is posted here why? SPAM posting???
maybe he enjoys driving german sports cars?
I have heard of people naming their daughters Porsche or Mercedes... Same thing?
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Taco should have stole a better dictionary
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
...until personal integrity really is being violated?
If someone want's to know my length, or if I bought milk today or not - fine!
We're not talking about a mind-reading device here...
No sig to see here. Move along.
Anyone else find the author's middle name to be unusual?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Wow - even if you mis-spell the name of the state? Those clerks really ARE clueless.
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
When I was 16 and before I had my driver's license I had a checking account.
Having recently traveled overseas though I had a U.S. passport.
But a grocery store clerk refused to cash my check "without a driver's license", despite the fact that the passport represented an even more thorough form of identification.
So U.S. citizens get subjected to some of the same kind of stupidity, too.
But here's hoping that my next foreign trip my attempt to rent a car with only a U.S. license is not met with disappointment:)
"Provided by the management for your protection."
64 bytes is 512 bits, which is plenty big. Remember that the card does not and should not store the person's data. The card only needs to have an ID that can be used to index the super-duper top secret gub'mint database.
I would recommend that the card include a 8-12 byte "salt" number (to prevent dictionary attacks) and then the remaining bits for the encrypted (database id + salt). The card reader at the bar/airport/whatever sends the card's 64 bytes to the gub'mint's centralized authentication server, which then decrypt the bytes and checks the database.
cpeterso
It's creepy
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Thats why God invented nails you AC!!!
This is not the sig you are looking for...
When she buys things with her credit cards, if it doesn't work, she gets them to type the # in manually, and I guess she'd do the same if she had to get a magstipe license.
I know I'm tempted to run a magnet across mine.
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
21cn.com
163.net
263.net
163.com
etc
Also there is the fact that they are in business to make money- they wont woo many customers by turning away obvious adults with valid licenses.
:)
Well, they do care. I'm only 18, but I am self-sufficient and work and live in Manhattan, NYC. Naturally, I like to go out and drink. To that end I am currently stuck using a completely fake out-of-state driver's license. It resembles the real licenses from that state fairly closely, so I usually have no problem. However, every now and then the manager or bouncer will have a clue, and discern some of the tell-tale signs of cheaply made fake driver licenses. At this point, it's a no-go. Doesn't matter that I might be dressed in spiffy clothes and have a wad of cash I'm obviously itching to spend -- they're nice about it and all, not assholes, but they are adamant that they cannot let me in. It seems as if even if my ID is really convincing, if it's fake they get in trouble. So they'd rather just not get in trouble, especially when 3 offenses (or something?) will get your liquor license taken away.
As for all of these upcoming privacy violations will be WELL WORTH IT to enforce our 21-year drinking age, right? I mean, sure I already support my own apartment, have quite gainful employment, pay ridiculous income taxes like everyone else and even quasi-support my unemployed S.O. -- gotta have all this process in place to try to stop me from being in bars, right? Even if it only succeeds about 1 out of 500 times...and even if even then I can just go to another bar across the street...onward!
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
magnet with 250lbs of pull - $17.95
e m. taf?itemnumber=36905
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayit
I bought one just cause it sounded like a cool thing to have. turns out, you could probably walk into that bar with this baby in your pocket (weighs about 6lbs) and that would take care of their card scanner...
Its rumored that M3's middle initial is P (eg. MP3).....
If anyone wants the info on my license, they can bloody well type it in again!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Are you Bill Gates with a pseudonym?
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
i can see why you post your plagiarism anonymously, you coward! Were it not for severe time constraints, I'd gladly enlighten you on several aspects of bombastic attack, the likes of which YOU are obviously uninformed.
This scares me to death what I read here.
Our ID cards also contain similar information. While they do not have a magnetic strip on them, the ID card numer is done in an OCRable font.
The only readers I have ever seen that are used to swipe it are when you leave the EU at airports. The EU, not on domestic flights within the EU, you have to fly to some non-EU country.
Our national IDs are also used if you want to get into a night club or somjething, but they are visually inspected by a human being.
I am not sure about our new drivers licenses since I still have an old paper one and not plastic.
We will get new IDs soon because of 9/11 - they will contain some sort of biometric information, either a fingerprint or geometry of the hand or something like that. Presumably these will also be in some machine readable format.
Since we Germans are (rightfully) paranoid about data privacy, many many laws exist to protect data privacy ("Datenschutz") I guess the name will not come up in the machine readable format, but that's only a guess.
I always used to think that they are overparanoid. A lot of public offices would work a lot better if they would connect up their servers, but it isn't done because of the strict data privacy laws. I am becoming really glad that we are so paranoid.
We even have a "Bundesbeauftragten für den Datenschutz" (Federal Commissioner for data privacy) (or data protection which is a more acurate translation).
To see how paranoid we are, type in the word "Datenschutz" in Google. Approx 1 million 200 thousand pages found is the result.
Now search for "Data privacy" (in quotes). My search came up with 200 thousand.
I have a US SSN and US Driving license. I lived there for 5 months last year. While my Driving License was never scanned, I did find it shocking at how many places I was asked for my Social Security number.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
couldn't data on the magnetic strip be rewreitten (instead of erased)? Like have your personal information listed as "Private" or something. Is that even an option?
I use my passport when I don't want people to have all the info that's on my driver's license. Passports don't have the SSN or home address, but do have birthday, making them usable for proving age.
Portia is a name originating from Latin, and Mercedes was a name also before the car company. I do hope you were kidding.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
In Chicago, most of the really expensive (cover >= $10) here already videotape all IDs coming into the place. This to help prove everybody was of age. Dunno if the cops can subpeona this or not. Not as bad as automatic reading, but still more than I'd like.
I looked into registering for their site, but the "Subscriber Agreement" link points to no such document. So by clicking on the button I'm agreeing to something that I'm not allowed to read? Has it always been like this or has the link recently become broken?
Anyway, I tried to use the posted accounts (nospam/nospam, private/private, and nospam/bitch) but none worked. Does NYT only allow "x" number of logons per account?
No worries, yahoo here I come...
Somehow I was able to read the article without registering/etc -- open new window, go to www.nytimes.com/... etc then change it to something else like archive.nytimes.com/... -- it will 404 - and send you back to the frontpage -- close that window -- retry the link from /. and you should be in
I just went into partnership with a guy selling id tracking software. Basically in Pennslyvania the Liquour control board is real strict and hits bars that allowed underage drinkers in with very heavy fines.
The lisence scanning allows the estabilshment to show a good faith effort in checking id by maintaining a list of every one they scanned.
In addition, in PA, if you buy over a certain amount you have to sign a waiver to the seller telling them you are not re-selling the stuff. The program also prints the waiver with everything filled out.
The scanner is about $150 to $250 dollars and plugs in-line with your keyboard. Any magnetic strip card can be read by the scanner. It "types" the data into your computer. You can fire up notepad (or any text editor) and swipe and see what the strip holds.
My feeling on the whole matter is that problem is not with scanners but with a) driver's lisences and b) liquour and cigarettes laws. If you have those types of laws then you need ID. If the state feels that people are ignoring the law then they will require estabilshments to show that they check.
Get rid of or change the law you get rid of the problem. Keep the laws then you need IDs to enforce it.
All that information is printed right on the card.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Having spent alot of time doing AI research, I definitley agree!
Most of the supermarkets in my area allow you to link a phone number to the card, so you can tell them the number every time you buy stuff and they can track your spending habits even if you forget the card. The cool thing is that phone numbers are easy to disseminate. For intsance: 8583362714 works at Ralphs and Vons and affiliated stores (safeway, pavilions, and some others i believe) in california. My purchasing history moves from southern california to northern california far more often than i do. Help it move somewhere else if you want!
And while the store may notice if you enter the number and address of their main office or a 555 number, i doubt there's much stopping you from using a pay phone outside and the name of you choosing. (Thank you Mr Hollings- you saved $3 on you purchase of wine and condoms today.)
eatme45/eatme
The US Treasury has been cleaning up by selling the Chinese "lucky" dollar bills with four eights in their serial numbers at a price of $5.95.
Or whatever the hell they were called?
Who wants to join me in buying these all up (that aren't destroyed) and selling them to the guvment as portable scanners for cops @ $149.99 each?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I've tried applying magnets to my drivers license, and then swiping it through a magstripe reader. The reader still read the stripe just fine. I only used a plain old fridge magnet, but that has been enough to wipe my bank card. Apparently the drivers license magstripes (in Canada at least) are somewhat hardened against that.
A more powerful magnet may have better luck.
I bought a new house whose address was "368". The sales lady told me a Chinese couple would be jealous because having an address whose digits are increasing is lucky.
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
If you could have made your point/s a little, no, a lot more succinctly, then maybe someone might have read your post.
Meanwhile, whatever truth you might have had to tell is entirely lost in your florid prose.
Not to mention you're AC and off-topic.
You freak.
Cops DO NOT need to have all of your personal information. Cops are the number one abusers of civil rights in the United States and are exactly the people we cannot allow to have even more capacity for tyranny than they already have.
Don't you people remember how the slide into Nazism and Bolshevism started: "Citizen, show me your papers." Wake up!
NY State for isntance does not use magnets anymore. They use a scattered barcode type much like what UPS uses, so magnest are useless.
Well, you could take a pen or a marker or a blade and scratch off all that stuff, but I wouldn't do that.
I'm guessing more and more states, etc, will move towards using this type of "barcode" on their ID's.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
those things that demagnetize the products so they
dont set off alarms on your way out the door are
also wickedly good at permanently disabling
all credit cards, licenses, bank cards, etc.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
my point wasnt about whether or not police should
have our information or not, my point was that
the police are the only people theoretically
able to screw me over in the case that I refuse
to give it to them.
a bar owner or doorman can go to hell if he thinks
he is entitled to my Social Security number, among
other things.
on that note, I'm surprised that the Government
isn't stepping in and telling bar owners the same
thing given the current incidence of identity
theft in the USA.
ok, enough rambling from me.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Mr. M3 Sweatt? [geocities.com]
That poor bastard's website has a mailto: link to his alpha numeric pager, and a link to his site just got linked from slashdot. Hope he doesn't pay for spam by the byte...