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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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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...
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 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.
You could also move someplace that doesn't use them. Nevada still uses old-school Polaroid-generated licenses, for instance. (I think that might change in the next few years...on the upside, though, they quit issuing licenses with numbers derived from your SSN a few years ago.)
It'd be interesting to see what would happen if you "accidentally" left a license with a magnetic strip sitting on top of a really powerful magnet...assuming that all the stuff anybody needs is also printed on the license, maybe that's a fix for your problem.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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.
...is a magnet.
Ah, it happened to me once, but the other way around. I was at a grocery store in California buying beer. The cashier asks for my ID and I show her my U.S. Georgia driver license. She then tells me that she is sorry but she is not allowed to sell alcohol to out-of-State resident.
WTF?
I eventually walked out of there with the beer because I happened to also have my Belgian passport with me. That was ok.
Go figure. It has probably to do with rural superstition or something. Don't deprive Belgians of their beers!
Could get dangerous. The world might stop spinning . An asteroid might hit the Earth.
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
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.
IIRC the method for deriving you SSN from your nevada DL was (dl#+26)/2
might have another step... cant quite remember...
I'm a non-driver who was on a trip to Chicago -- tried to get into the Excalibur. The bouncer actually had a nice thick book, about 100 pages, with details on what all of these different licenses and ID's look like. He thumbed to Louisiana, looked over my ID, and waved me in. As for my friend who didn't have a collared shirt... Anyway, how hard is it for these knuckleheads to get something like this?
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
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.
It will never be illegal to purchase things with cash or barter.
It already sort of is.
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.
Ok, but why does a National ID card do anyone any good? Just as individuals can forge passports they will be just as able to forge ID cards. In fact, making things electronic just give the potential for individuals to hijack other individuals identities more rapidly.
It's not just a matter of privacy, but of usefulness. It's sort of like the gun-control argument whereas people argue that making it harder to obtain a gun permit will keep guns away from criminals. Well, hate to burst everyone's bubble, but criminals never got friggin permits to begin with!
Likewise, a terrorist isn't going to be stopped by a 'National ID' card. If I really thought it would protect the country from terrorists, I would let Doubleclick.com stick a tracking probe up my ass. The fact of the matter is, this is just rheotric that is only gonna to cause more harm and headache for the average Joe.
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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.
Well, the private sector is a bigger worry, but Kenneth Starr used Monica Lewinsky's shopping habits on her credit card to see where she was at any point on a given day via a court order, which is a level of insidiousness that isn't given to the private secotr, sans maybe the merger giants like AOL/Time Warner.
"There are 6 billion people in the planet, why would the "system" want to spy on you?"
That is not the point.
First: It can without my consent.
Second: The costs to do so are dropping towards zero.
This is troubling.