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.

Comments

She's 7 of 9's cousin

[nucal]

... I think.

grocery stores do this too

[Meech]

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.

Re:grocery stores do this too

[gorillasoft]

found my Kroger card in a parking lot somewhere. I think it was the walmart parking lot.>:) So someone, somewhere, has a bout 14 pounds of cheese, 6 pounds of tofu, 6 cans of beans, and 4 industrial sized cans of Tomato sauce per month showing up on his purchasing record. MUAHAHAHAHHA!!


You forgot the twelve dozen rolls of TP you are going to need.

Re:grocery stores do this too

[spazimodo]

Every few times I'm at the grocery store I turn to the person behind me in line and offer to trade savings cards. Most often, the appeal of fucking with their big database of who buys what puts a smile on their face and then we trade cards. so when i buy depends, treet lunch meat, and 6 pounds of radishes, they may be recording it, but the data is of no value.

Re:My drinking habits...

[Vinson Massif]

So when the wife sees last month's bank statement and it has 23 debit entries to Koch's Liquors, what is she going to _think_ you bought?

hypocrisy

[anthony_dipierro]

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.

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Does anyone else find that hilarious?

This just proves...

[Signa1 11 on]

If you go out to the bar, then the terrorists have already won.

Re:From the nation who...

[October_30th]

Because big government is COMMUNISM and big business is CAPITALISM.

That's why.

Re:It's already worse than you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that the "keychain-scan discount" grocery store near me gets lots of value from knowing the buying habits of Wile E. Coyote.

Otherwise, just trade cards with friends every so often.

Re:No License?

[bsartist]

I was with a friend one night when he was turned away from a club in Boston. He had no driver's license - but he *did* have a valid Mass. state ID. I guess only drivers are allowed to drink.

Re:Remembering

[_ph1ux_]

64 ascii characters should be enough for anybody!

Re:Junk Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Junk mail can be entertaining....mail all the postage paid envelopes, that way the company has to pay the post office. The company has to pay before it is delivered, so they don't know it is return junk ahead of time. If everyone did this a) postage rates wouldn't rise so quickly, and b) the level of junk mail will drop when it starts costing them... I believe I single-handedly kept the last postage increase down by at least 1 (you can all thank me later...)

Re:My drinking habits...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but not on real people, just towelhead terrorists. They deserve to die.

Re:Defacto Privacy

[electroniceric]

Well put.

The irony is that what causes the info-tracking technology to cross the line between helpful and invasive is the efforts of clever software engineers in making information impossible easy to store and follow.

The crux of your analogy is following people around. But what if you could record every conversation within a mile as easily as overhearing it? Even people with the most innoccuous intentions could run roughshod over privacy. That seems to me to be exactly what this bar owner is saying: "Well, I bought this doodad to reduce the hassles that go along with checking IDs properly (or checking them improperly and get browbeaten by local liquor control boards), but as long as it says click here to build Customer-Experience Enhancement Profiles, I figure I'll give this a shot." And then, "Wow, this is really useful to me. I can make my bar do much better business."

Information seems more and more to want to be free. The problem is setting it free without letting run around without its pants on.

grocery stores with "saver cards"

[4midori]

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".

Neodynium Magnets

[A55M0NKEY]

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.

Re:Junk Mail

[spike hay]

Jeez. Sounds bad. Giving your personal information away every time your credit card is scanned.

About as bad as giving your personal information away for a nytimes.com account.

Re:This is why I degauss my D/L.

[daveman_1]

Can you accomplish this by holding it up to the monitor and pressing "Degauss"? I'd never thought to try that until now. Personally, I'd just use a demagnetizer.