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

No License?

[EnglishTim]

What happens if you don't have a driving license?

Is it some kind of 'drivers only' club?

Re:No License?

[JoeBuck]

I know of some cases where US bars refused to let foreign tourists enter, even with a passport, because the stupid bouncers don't know what passports are and insist on a US state driver's license.

Re:No License?

[jCaT]

Passports, regardless of what country they are from, hold to a pretty good convention as to where stuff is and what it's supposed to look like. Drivers licenses on the other hand aren't that consistent. In the 8 years that I've had a drivers license, california has gone through *4* different designs, and there's one older design than that. If we consider that there is still part of the population with this design, that's 5 different possible license designs for this STATE.

Not to mention that certain states have the most god awful looking drivers licenses... so easy to create fakes it's not even funny. Hell, my roommate in college printed out a florida drivers license on his inkjet printer, got a picture at kinko's, and used it for THREE YEARS before a bouncer took it away.

identity theft versus tracking

[peter303]

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 reminds me of the assholes at Wells Fargo

[Profane Motherfucker]

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.

Defacto Privacy

[rev_icon]

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

Re:Defacto Privacy

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

You're totally right. I think people make the mistake of thinking of privacy as an all-or-nothing, absolute kind of thing, like freedom of speech. I have the absolute right to say whatever I want (well, almost...but that's how we like to think of it.) But using publicly available information any member of the public, given infinite time and resources, can probably figure out anything they want to figure out about me.

Does that mean I have no privacy? If privacy is all or nothing, yes. But instead we might think of the word "privacy" as refering to the amount of difficulty that people who aren't supposed have information about me have in getting said information about me.

Thinking of it that way, developments like this clearly reduce the privacy that we have, simply because they increase the convenience of accessing what is technically public information.

Re:Defacto Privacy

[happyclam]

You make some good points, and I was being flip with my choice of words. And yes, I have been scammed once or twice and will probably end up being scammed several times more before I die.

...it is unacceptable to me for people who haven't even met me (only read data about me in a database) to have the power to judge and affect my life with as much impact as this technology would give them...

But it already is happening. Just by living where you live, by being male or female, by having gone to college or not... all these things already are being used by people who have never met you to affect your life. Don't tell me you've never gotten a "you're already pre-approved!" credit card offer.

Knowing this information can prove beneficial in several ways. Twice I've had my credit card forged, and both times the credit card company caught it--once they even caught the perpetrator in the act of purchasing a computer. They actively called me and asked me about the purchases. That, to me, is a valuable service.

As to the "crap mail" from that bar: If the "crap mail" they send you consists of vouchers for two free drinks, or a two-for-one cover charge, are you likely to use it or throw it out, particularly if you actually liked the club?

The real worry, for me, is identity theft and the hassles that would cause. That is why I think it's important for the technology of preventing abuse to keep up with the technologies of opening up the information.

From the nation who...

[Anonymous Coward]

• pays their phone bills with credit cards
• buys food with credit cards
• buys gas with credit card
• buys bus/train/airplane tickets with credit cards

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?

Re:From the nation who...

[checkitout]

If you don't trust your government, then fine. Why do you trust the corporations then?

Because the companies can't send you a ticket when you buy gas on one side of town, and then make a purchase on the other side of town faster than the speed limit would allow.

Credit cards are optional, ID's are not.

Re:From the nation who...

[daoine]

The interesting thing is that it's a choice to purchase things with credit/debit cards. Granted, I'll generally have a paper trail with my bills, but if I'm in the supermarket or the drugstore buying stuff I don't want the world to know I have - I skip the little saver card thing and I pay cash.

The reason this is a little sketchy (and maybe different) is that I _don't_ know where scanned license information is going.

I know exactly what happens to my information when I buy something on a credit/debit card with a little saver thing(it gets sold to anyone who might give a rats ass) and I can judge accordingly.

But the article pointed out itself -- that the information for that particular system was stored locally. It's a little scarier (maybe it's just a girl thing) to think that the sketchy bartender now has access to stuff without my noticing. All he's gotta do now is remember my name, instead of name, address, and everything else on my license.

/mildly paranoid

back and forth

[sootman]

"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."

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.

Re:This is new?

[Glove d'OJ]

I think that the points of the story is that:
* The information is all encoded on the back
* The primary way people would check your age or other information would be to scan the back
* The information could be used for more than you would think.

Yes, my name, address, height, etc. is on the front, but when I go into a club and they check my ID, they just look at the date. What the author is saying is that they are doing the equivalent of looking at everything on the entire license, and writing it down.

Here's why it's so nefarious...

[Squirrel Killer]

From the story:

"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."

If I went to a bar that tried to photocopy my driver's license, I'd damn sure turn around and go elsewhere. By making the privacy invasion so subtle, they've muted reasonable objections.

-sk

Re:Here's why it's so nefarious...

[Jordy]

The debate against National ID cards still confuses me. It seems to me that if they built a national ID card where everything was contained electronically and there was little to no information on the front, you could do *more* to protect privacy than the current standard of relying on driver's licenses.

The real trick would be developing a method whereby only the information you want to give out is accessible.

My first thought would be to encrypt each peice of information with a different key, but then the government would need to distribute private keys to each business which takes the control out of your hands. On the other hand, if done correctly, they could give access to a liquor store to only be able to decrypt a photograph and if a person is over 21 or not (not even age.)

A better solution of course would be a method of allowing each person to control what information a particular vendor retrieves, but practically speaking, is much more difficult than the above solution.

If the above described card was issued as a national ID card, we'd all be a lot better off. Of course then every club would need a little scanner to read the information instead of being able to just look at the front... but that's not my problem now is it? :)

reply to AC

[Srin Tuar]

Nice idea, but the club uses the strip as a counterfeit-prevention device, and likely would refuse service to anyone with a mangled bar code because they couldn't be sure it wasn't a fake id.

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...

Re:it seems..

[studerby]

I suspect that some places, particularly bars and banks, will assume that the license is forged and treat you/it differently...

What's private and what's not?

[foobar104]

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.

Re:What's private and what's not?

[markmoss]

What's private and not depends on the situation. Going into a bar, all they need to know is whether you are of legal age or not. So I would consider recording your name and address to be bogus...

What, the guy can look at the picture to see if it's really your ID, but can't read the birthdate to see if it's before this day in 1981? Even bouncers need _some_ brains.

It's already worse than you think.

[Matey-O]

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.)

Re:It's already worse than you think.

[CoreyG]

The only real reason grocery stores have food cards is to make more money. They use various combinations of data mining tools and predictive analytics to figure out what people like to buy, who the best(read most profitable) customers are, and who are the cherry pickers(read most costly). Then they market to their best customers and not the cherry pickers. Or they devise promotions to sell a well-selling item with a poor-selling item. Or a well-selling item with a high-profit item. The list goes on and on. The only reason they do it though, is to make money. The only way the analyses are at all accurate is because of the aggregate amount of data they collect. Performing an analysis on 1 person's data would be useless. Most retail-specific applications don't even provide tools to look at specific customers, only categories of customers that satisfy specific criteria. Retailers don't make money by looking at your purchasing habits. They do it by looking at everyone's purchasing habits together. You alone are not valuable to them.
Now, could all this be abused by selling your information to others? Possibly. Except retailers are most likely making money directly off your information themselves, and prefer to keep it that way. Grocers are usually quite territorial with their shoppers and generally would not risk anyone else getting hold of their customers; they make too much money compared to the amount they'd make by simply selling a list.

copyrights and SSSCA

[happyclam]

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?

In the State of Illinois...

[Karl Cocknozzle]

...By law, you have the right to not put your Social Security Number on your driver's license.

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...

"It's the same information as the front of the license," said Frank Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive of IntelliCheck, 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."

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.

"Just what's on the front of the license"...

[skippy5066]

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

Re:They can make you do anything you want.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"

Yah, especially those blacks and hispanics.

See how quickly this gets abused?

ID cards=bad, logins=??

[192939495969798999]

Of course, to read the article you need to login so they can scan your information.
Sir_Haxalot

Legal issues...

[JustinCourts]

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

Re:Legal issues...

[BCoates]

Holy shit! That doesn't bother you?

Fortunatley, that's totall bullshit--if you're driving, you have to have a driver's licence, and you have to show it to the police if you are stopped, but aside from that, no, the only thing you need to be out in public legally is clothing. The DMV gives out ID cards as a convienence, so you can prove your identity without needing to get a passport or somesuch.

--
Benjamin Coates

so... DEmagentize the freakin card!

[CrudPuppy]

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.

Freakin' libertarians

[Wintersmute]

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.

Re:Freakin' libertarians

[datamyte]

But only the government has the power to enforce and maintain a centralized database. Sure private companies can track you, but it's voluntary. You can always opt out of shopping there. I believe that original article was about government issued driver's licenses being used to collect data. You think it's bad now, just wait until a Nationally Uniform Driver's License/State ID (i.e. Personal ID card) is made law.

Libertarians are against all forms of tyranny. They just focus more on government, because only government has the means to force you to do things. They may not track your buying habits. But they can track your travel habits, the amount of money deposited into your bank account, your criminal record, etc. That is far more an invasion of privacy that tracking what you buy.

Re:This is why we *need* a national ID card

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Partly right. There might be a case for a national standard on state driver licenses, but a national is going much too far. I have grave privacy concerns on a national ID. Even the linking of state DMV databases is IMO going much to far.

As far as SSNs on driver licenses go, the law states SSNs are only to be used for social security. Many or most states will put another number on the license if you are persistent enough.

I found the following at http://www.sierratimes.com/02/02/27/eddf022702.htm and now put these questions to you.

20 Questions to Ask National ID Supporters by Duncan Frissell:

Here are some questions to ask supporters of a modern "enhanced" ID system for the United States.

1. Under your system, can one's ID fail online verification for any reasons other than authentication failure (ID is not in the database or biometrics don't match) or expiration? Can a valid ID be cancelled for any reason (beyond expiration)?
2. Does your ID system have protections to prevent legislators and bureaucrats from adding other conditions to ID use? For example blocking ID authentication for failure to pay fines, failure to pay taxes, criminal arrest or conviction, etc.? The drivers licence system currently allows suspension for many such acts or omissions.
3. Will your ID system supply risk assessment services in addition to ID verification services. That is, will it provide a "credit score", "fraud score" or "criminal risk score" in addition to ID. What information beyond ID validity will the system supply to users.
4. If your system supplies risk assessment services, will it accept foreign government criminal, civil, or administrative records and apply them to the IDs of US citizens? If so, how can these records be challenged, how do you assure that the alleged acts would be crimes or civil wrongs if committed in the US (e.g. hate speech), and how do you deal with differing due process standards in different nations?
5. Should government subsidize wealthy financial corporations by supplying them with free or low-cost ID authentication and risk assessment services?
6. How can people challenge the accuracy of these assessments?
7. Will one's ID be the sole ID accepted for any goods or services? If so, which goods or services?
8. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that anonymity and refusal to identify oneself to the police are constitutionally protected actions. Do you favor a constitutional amendment to reverse these court decisions?
9. Four million US citizens are not residents of the US. Since they cannot be denied entry to the US and do not require visas to enter the US, what ID are they supposed to use in the US? They currently use a US passport, a foreign drivers license, and domestic or foreign credit cards.
10. Do you favor the end to the visa waiver program which allows citizens of many OECD countries to enter the US without visas? If so, what ID are they supposed to use in the US? They currently use a foreign passport, a foreign drivers license, and domestic or foreign credit cards.
11. Do you favor the abrogation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other treaties which allow citizens of other North American countries and some Caribbean countries to enter the US without passports or visas? If so, what ID are they supposed to use in the US? They currently use a foreign passport, a foreign drivers license, and domestic or foreign credit cards.
12. Have you warned the American people that once these passport and/or visa waiver programs are cancelled, foreign countries are likely to require passports and visas to enter their countries making international travel (including Canadian, Mexican, and Caribbean vacations) much more difficult to prepare for?
13. Passport design is not under US control but under the control of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Do you favor the replacement of the current passport with an "enhanced" identity document? How are poor counties supposed to afford the infrastructure necessary to support high-tech online-verifiable ID documents?
14. If your ID system is based on the state ID system, will any non-residents of the individual states be able to receive the new state IDs?
15. Do you favor cleaning up the existing ID system? Will you require all Americans to reverify their identity to receive the "enhanced" ID? If so, what documents or other proof of ID will they have to present? For example, will entries in a family bible be acceptable as proof of identity?
16. What provision have you made for persons who present themselves for identification but who have no (or inadequate) identification documents and whose biometric identifiers are not yet in the system? [The current system allows the testimony of others to establish identity for such purposes as passport issuance].
17. Do you favor requiring address registration (the requirement that all residents to register their address with police or local government) as part of your new ID system?
18. Will the homeless be able to obtain ID without a fixed address?
19. What do you envision happening to the millions of US residents who fail to qualify for the new IDs (or whose IDS are cancelled) or who refuse to apply for them for religious or political reasons?
20. Does your system envision any controls on false IDs intentionally issued by foreign (or US) governments for intelligence or witness protection purposes?

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Re:The answer to your worries...

[commonchaos]

The first thing I did when I got my ID was to take a hard drive magnet to the strip, it is the best way to ensure that I have more control over who gets to see my personal information. It would be crazy for somebody to declare my ID to be invalid because the mag strip is "bad". It has the holograms, and the mini picture, which are pretty hard to forge...

Re:Why so paranoid?

[PsiPsiStar]

Remember there are so many bad uses that this can be put to.

The FBI was tracking Martin Luther King Jr., trying to find somthing embarassing on him.

Clinton was looking at his opponents FBI files.

Bush was head of the CIA, for crying out loud, and his family is thick into politics.

I'm sure that information about who is buying condoms, or depends, or a laxitive could be used to embarras someone, at least. And the reason that I'm able to filter out spam now is that it obviously isn't personalized. The ability to gather large amounts of data makes mass mailings of personalized (mail merged) spam a lot more likely. And that is a threat.

On a more malicious note, why couldn't a country do economic espionage, stealing trade secrets from one corporation, possibly in another country, and selling or giving them to companies in their own country. Considering the CIA actually sold cocaine to fund its activities, this wouldn't surprise me.

Re:Neodynium Magnets

[viking099]

do those magnets screw with TV's that are off?
I mean, there's no cathode gun firing, so it wouldn't mess it up when it's off, would it?

Re:Why so paranoid?

[WNight]

It's all about ease.

Why would the government want to put an FBI surveillance team on someone? It had better be a good reason.

Why would they detail one agent to checking into your library borrowing, your shopping, your phone calls? It'd have to be a suspicion that you were worth it.

Why would the government pull your debit card purchase record and correlate it to "suspicious" profiles? Perhaps because you're in the same city as a suspected criminal with an odd profile.

Why would the government force you to identify yourself in all transactions, making a digital log of your every move and purchase? Because at a negligible cost they get information that *may* be useful.

As the cost goes down, the reasonable ammount of surveilance on someone goes up. At some point the cost is close enough to zero that they can put cameras with face recognition on every corner, monitor all purchases, record all phone calls and automatically transcribe them looking for keywords, etc.

And when they need to "think of the children" to stop "terrorists" who "look just like us" they might decide that perpetual surveillance, "for their own good" would benefit we the people.

I'm not paranoid enough now to think that I stand out enough for anyone to care about me. But if this information starts to be collected who knows what bad uses will be found for it. Hell, maybe I'll piss off a scientologist and be declared "fair game" and they'll get these records and use them against me.

I don't do much that is a "secret", but I'm sure someone could find something embarrasing or that if taken out of context looks bad, and use it to hurt my reputation.

So, why collect that information if it's so easy to abuse?

Re:Why so paranoid?

[gad_zuki!]

I you are not a criminal, chill.

You should just rephrase that as 'if you've got nothing to hide then why are you using encryption, envelopes, etc.'

There are 6 billion people in the planet, why would the "system" want to spy on you?

What system? Did you read the article? This is just a guy who owns a bar and suddenly he's got more information on the people in his neighborhood than the census bureu can legally ask for. That's the main practical problem - where is the accountability? Who protects my SSN. Identify theft and credit card fraud are very, very real and now individuals without any accountability have the information to pull these crimes off.

Less practical, but just as important is the principle of privacy. Everyday we're discovering that business and government are compiling data without any disclosure. Usually government rules force agencies to state what they are collecting and why, but in the realm of business such rules rarely apply. Look at all the people who dropped their jaws when they found out all their Tivo watching was logged after that article about the superbowl.

Accountability is VERY important. It lets us know who is doing what. It helps law enforcement find the bad guys and lets us know what activities compromise privacy. Prviacy is important, its a long held tradition to leave the individual alone unless she has done something wrong. Just because technology has made data collecting cheap doesn't mean its right.

Re:My drinking habits...

[cabbey]

Not in the state of Utah. Out here bars are 'Private Clubs for Members'. They have to maintain a membership roster, and keep records of who visits the club. You have to provide an ID to get in, not to prove you're of age, but for record-keeping.

That's what you get when you let a church run your state.