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Police Ask Stores to Take Fingerprints
Coffee Warlord writes "Operation Thumbs Up, scheduled to begin citywide Sunday, aims to help
authorities identify check theft and forgery by obtaining a source of
identification that can't be stolen or faked - fingerprints.
Dawson doesn't expect complaints from customers.
"I anticipate if you are not guilty of anything, it's not going to
matter to you if someone takes your thumbprint," she said. -- There are so many things wrong with this, I can't even begin to start."
Why stop there? If check fraud is really that big of a problem, why not just take a hair sample from everyone who writes a check. Then, if you get a fraudlent check, just do a DNA test. I mean "...if you are not guilty of anything, it's not going to matter..." Right?
Wrong. If information is power, you disempower yourself when you give up your personal information to a store, to the government, or to anyone. And I, for one, would never shop at a store with such a blatant disregard for my privacy. Here's an idea. If check fraud is that big of a problem...stop taking checks!
If fingerprint readers can already be easily tricked, why would it be hard to use the same techniques to forge fingerprints on other things?
"Participating stores will be clearly identified to the public."
Translation: Warning sign...
This has always been the way things happen. ATMs take your photograph, stores take drivers license numbers, and some even try to take your SSN...I've seen this happen alot with student IDs (maybe unknowingly) that use your SSN.
There's always cash....However, I can't see how this is designed to help the rightful owner...if someone steals a checkbook, they can always go to a "non-participating location"...
Your phone/power/cable/water company isn't making you give them a fingerprint. I personally don't know of many ppl that still use a check...most ppl that I know are using "Check Cards".
... that if you are not guilty of anything, it's not going to matter to you if the po-lice installs a few cameras in yer house.
After all, you are not pursuing any criminable activity within your own walls, are ya!?
I'd say, that if you _do_ mind being watched by an innocent camera, you behave suspiciously, and are probably guilty of a crime. After all, people who have nothing to hide usually cooperate with us.
If you do not want to cooperate with us, we will just assume that you in your house run a brothel, manufacture alcoholic beverages, grow marijuana, rip-mix-burn intellectual property protected material, commit sodomy, engage in adultery, prepare for polygami, manufacture Anthrax, communicate on ham radio with suspected terrorists and overthrowers of state, download lewd material on the internet, develop open source Communist applications, and showing anti-patriot emotions posting to unconventional and unorthodox bulletin board systems.
You, sir, are a threat to our free Christian nation, as given to us by God! You have the right to remain silence, be beaten to death in jail, be transferred to Guantanama Bay for unlimited time, be executed in our humane criminable system even if later DNA tests will prove you're less guilty than we first assumed. Everything you say can and will be recorded and used against you, anywhere, anytime, anyhow.
frawaradaR anahaha islaginaR!
Stores have been doing this for years. I remember years ago a particular store required you to have a store card that 'allowed' you to write checks over certian amounts (ie, you could write a check to $20 without the card, and up to $500 with the card). Many not only require your address and phone preprinted on the card, but they ask to see your drivers license and write down the DL number as well.
The solitary bare naked truth is that checks are so easy to forge that companies lose millions a year with forgeries that are never caught, or difficult to prosecute. Companies have a right to determine what forms of payment they will accept and what stipulations they will place on various forms of payment. Obviously check processing is a huge industry right now, and most of the stores here fight this sort of fraud by doing electronic check processing. You sign the check, they put it through a reader, and the funds are instatnly transferred. If the bank refuses the check then another form of payment is requested before they ever leave the store. The problem here is that these companies charge per check in a manner similar to credit cards (fixed per transaction + percentage of transaction) which can sometimes be a bigger overall cost than the fraud. So turn to some low-tech solution - fingerprinting, which is cheap, and there's no charge unless there's fraud, and if the fraud is small they make a note of it and store it for future prosecution if that customer returns, or send the info to the police.
The bottom line is that they are trying to run a business. They have a financial interest in preventing fraud of many forms, and I believe that they deserve the right to do so. If you desire to keep your fingerprint out of their file drawers, then chances are you're paranoid enough to pay by cash for everything anyway, and this won't bother you.
-Adam
I swear, some people just love to go to the beach and moan. Don't tell me you sad story - suck it up and adapt.
You say that like they're being paid enough to deal with BS that was proposed.
If enough people on a regular enough basis were to do something like this, sure, it would work. On the other hand, going to the manager with one month's worth of grocery receipts(be sure to have them totaled,) and telling him politely that you, your friends and neighbors are not going to be shopping at his store anymore because of the policy is a much more productive way of dealing with the situation. Trust me, if you give the manager hard numbers, like a stack of receipts, it will make them sweat more than loading up a cart, throwing a tantrum in line, then making employees run all over the store putting up items will. If you do that, you're just a jackass, not an activist.
"My religion is to live --and die-- without regret." -- Milarepa
I work at a store, and I'll tell you.. This will NOT work. Just asking for a drivers license number gets most people huffy. Fingerprints? No way.. Unless check is the only form of payment in your store, this will not work.
Is them saying that Drivers Licences are not secure enough to prevent a simple crime like check fraud, yet our whole response to the terrorism in the sky threat is to show your drivers license to about 1/2 dozen people each time you fly...
At least Arlington admits to reality, even if I don't like the solution
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them