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England Starts Fingerprinting Drinkers
dptalia writes "In an effort to reduce alcohol related violence, England is rolling out mandatory fingerprinting of all pub patrons. If a pub owner refuses to comply with the new system, and fails to show 'considerable' reductions in alcohol-related crimes, they will lose their license. Supposedly the town that piloted this program had a 48% reduction in alcohol-related crime." From the article: "Offenders can be banned from one pub or all of them for a specified time - usually a period of months - by a committee of landlords and police called Pub Watch. Their offenses are recorded against their names in the fingerprint system. Bradburn noted the system had a 'psychological effect' on offenders."
In the united states we also have a system of reducing the effects of alcohol related violence. We call it prison.
Seems lots of people across the pond love to quote 1984 and make references to Big Brother about nearly every single political story about the United States.
Pot. Kettle. #000000
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
In all seriousness, I wonder how many alcoholics and repeat drunk driving offenders will look for ways to skirt the system? If employed nationwide, a cottage industry of fingerprint concealment/modification techniques could pop up that eventually could negatively impact other areas of crime prevention.
Also, how are they going to prevent people from drinking themselves into a stupor at a friend's home then getting in the car? In the end, this could be a pretty significant blow for the bars and restaurants, kind of like the smoking ban in some U.S. cities.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
God forbid that we hold people accountable for their actions while intoxicated. We simply cannot be so rough and judgemental as to do that! Why they're just a good person who did something stupid while drunk!
Yes, just keep giving people excuses to be dumb. This is perhaps the single greatest reason why the Libertarian Party won't gain traction in America besides welfare-related issues. The LP stands for freedom with accountability. Most libertarians I know are sympathetic to the idea that you can punish someone 100% to the letter of the law while engaging in vice. Most conservatives and liberals aren't, and this is the problem on both sides of the pond.
There is no good reason to let people off the hook in these cases, except perhaps in the most extreme cases like someone got caught drunk driving because they got a call that their kid was bleeding all over the place.
Bradburn noted the system had a 'psychological effect' on offenders.
No doubt it has psychologican effects on everyone. You know, that creepy feeling you get when you're being watched.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
You do realise that all visitors to the US are fingerprinted on arrival at the airport?
The real problem with any system that tracks behavior, especially vice-like behavior, is that it is only a matter of time before powerful interests secure access to that data. Fingerprint drinkers today, in the hands of insurance companies tomorrow. Fingerprint pub-crawlers today, in the hands of employment agencies tomorrow. Fingerprint drunks today, in the hands of law-enforcement and government interests tomorrow.
Abuse slowly unfolds, it does not spring into existance overnight. Almost everything that is seriously broken in America started off as an innocent (often temporary) stopgap measure to correct some issue of the day but then slowly grew, was hijacked by various interests and warped into an aberration.
I am personally against any tracking of human beings at all and I could give a god damned about the whinning of law enforcement. The simple fact is that once such data is available to law enforcement, it is also available to criminals and interests that are not working for my benefit and since I am a law abiding citizen, there is absolutely no upside for me - only increased scrutiny and loss of privacy. Only the stupidest of criminals will expose themselves through these channels anyway. The smart criminals belong to syndicates that fscking include law enforcement (and therefore have access to this *data* for nefarious purposes).
Reject tracking, profiling and surveillance in all it's guises. Demand court issued warrants for private data. Retain your rights and your personal security.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Responsibility is equivalent to liberty.
You, my friend, are are rare breed of sane human beings. I'm not nearly as eloquent as you, so I'll leave the talking to you.
Having been denied entry to london pubs, 48% of alcoholic criminals are now committing crimes sober.
If you touch anything that is used in a crime, they will be right at your doorstep.
You have a problem with that? What else are they supposed to do?
I don't mean this as a troll.
So, hypothetically, you have a sorta friend or mutual acquaintance who wishes to kill his ex-girlfriend and not get caught. He waits until someone visits his house where he leaves a carefully cleaned 9mm gun laying around. You are the lucky one who happens to visit sometime, and notice the gun. You ask him about it and he says he was just cleaning it, and tells you it is unloaded so you can pick it up and check it out if you want. You are curious, and do so, and get your prints on it.
Now he just has to wear a pair of gloves when he shoots his ex-girlfriend, and construct an alibi for himself but probably does it late at night when you are probably home alone sleeping and thus have no alibi. He leaves the gun at the scene of the crime so the police will have some evidence to find.
The police show up at your door because your prints are the only ones on the gun, and you have no alibi. Now perhaps you have no motive either, but even if the police question the real killer, his prints aren't on the weapon, there's nothing to connect him to it (he'd buy it from a crack dealer or similar, not from a proper dealer that would leave a paper trail pointing to him) Even if they do suspect him of motive, he's got his alibi, which is better than your story of "I was home alone sleeping, and I have no idea how my prints got on that gun...it must be some mistake!"
You will get prosecuted, and even if you aren't convicted, it will ruin your life pretty well. And if you happen to be black, muslim or anyone else who may be unpopular with a jury of twelve people in the area who aren't smart enough to find a way to get out of jury duty, you are completely screwed.
If your fingerprints aren't on some big database they can just check, the same thing could still happen of course, but it would be an unknown set of prints on the weapon, and at least you wouldn't be undeservedly dragged into it.
THAT'S why you should care, even if you think you have/will do nothing wrong, and have nothing to hide. Maybe this example is a bit extreme, and the odds of it happening to YOU are pretty slim, but I'd submit that the odds it will happen to SOMEONE eventually are probably pretty much 100%. Its what I'd do if I wanted to kill someone, and if I managed to get the right acquaintance to take the fall for it, I could have the extra pleasure of screwing over some guy that really pisses me off.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Good luck with your absolute belief in the state.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
As an American living in Europe, I don't think that the problem is "drunks". By American standards, almost everyone in Europe is an alcoholic, yet no other country has the the same kind of savage violence that the UK sees. Scandinavian countries have hard-core binge drinkers, and both Germany and Ireland have a higher per-capita beer consumption.
Clearly the problem is cultural. It seems to me that a reasonable approach might be to try to change the culture to be a bit more like places where you don't have to be scared of looking people in the eye lest it start a fight, or where the police don't show up in riot vans every weekend to control the carnage.
But, like almost everyone, the Brits love their culture, and are loathe to change even the ugly bits. So, instead they get cameras and fingerprint readers. It might work, but I'm still going be very, very careful in pubs there...
I was watching the movie "V for Vendetta" again last night - as a graphic novel that was written in 1982 it's eerily predictive. For a movie made two years ago, it's practically a documentary.
I'm a Brit who has been living in the USA for the past 13 years and it's hard to say which is more like the movie. Britain with more spycams per person than anywhere else on earth - and soon you can't even have a beer without being fingerprinted! Or perhaps it is the USA in which the faceless secret police can monitor what books you check out from the library, bug your phone without judicial oversight and swoop down on you, merely accuse you of being a terrorist (no proof required) and on that pretext lock you up, torture you, ship you off to god-knows what hell-hole - and all without any right of trial or appeal?
Hmmm - hard call. Between the two countries - it's difficult to say which comes closest to the nightmare that V opposes in the movie. As he says: If you want to know whose fault this is - just look in the mirror.
Our own fear of statistically insignificant terrorist violence (or avian flu or WMD or drunk drivers or...you name it) induces progressively higher tolerance for the State to ratchet down the human rights of the entire population. There will come a point when we realise that this has been a terrible mistake - but will we do that before or after the point where we can no longer reverse it's effects?
Better get that bulk order for Guy Fawkes masks in before the rush. Amazon have them for $5.99.
www.sjbaker.org
Hold on - the linked article says that this scheme is proven to work because in the Yeoville area alcohol related violence had dropped 48% over the trial period. It then went on to say that over that eight month period there were only TWO major incidents. So if there had been (say) four major incidents over the preceeding eight months - which reduced to two during the trial - that would have been a 50% reduction.
(Note that one of those two major incidents wasn't even anything to do with pubs - some kids were at an under-18's disco and obtained alcohol "somewhere else" - it shouldn't even have been counted).
I have two observations:
Firstly: I would submit that whether there were two or four major incidents over a period of eight months is not a statistically valid sample. Especially because the preceeding 8 months would have included Xmas and New Year - both notable occasions for serious drunkenness. No competent statistician or conductor of scientific tests would sign up to these conclusions from such a ridiculously small sample - so we should either conclude that they are invalid - or that they were actually counting something else...which leads me to:
Secondly: For a number like '48%' to have come about, we cannot be measuring a reduction from four to two major crimes - that would be a 50% reduction. This MUST have been taken over a vastly larger sample of incidents. We must conclude then that they are not talking about 'major' incidents such as the two described (a sexual attack in the toilets and a fight between two kids that erupted into a major street brawl). So what this fingerprinting exercise is all about is reducing MINOR incidents.
So let's call this what it is. It's not about cutting down on serious offences - it's about reducing MINOR offences by banning people from pubs who happen to have lost their tempers or done any of the usual things that drunk people tend to do.
Is that worth the loss of privacy that this entails?
www.sjbaker.org
We have all kinds of tough new drunk driving enforcement over here, too. Though thankfully short of fingerprinting people going into clubs. The net effect is people who are problem drinkers drink anyway and responsible people, many of whom don't like the police gettin' up in their business, stay home. Instead we'll have private parties, where our guests can stay the night. Just like I'm guessing a lot of people will skip their pint at the pub because being fingerprinted seems sort of creepy.
You might think that's a responsible solution and you'd be right. The downside is for people trying to run a business. The more enforcement, the more responsible people stay home. It's getting to the point we don't go out on weekends at all. Who wants to run the road block gauntlet just to go out to eat and dancing for a couple hours?
More enforcement is always easy from a political point of view. It's a feel good thing to do that doesn't really work, but since when do results matter in political solutions? I'm not sure there are any easy answers. But I can say for sure, the tougher you get on enforcement, the more your business and entertainment district is going to suffer.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You're up against crime labs who stand up under oath in court and lie through their teeth, and somehow, the prosecutors never get around to prosecuting them for perjury.
You're up against prosecutors who rely on things like the public's belief that DNA tests are 100% accurate and that only one person could possibly have "that DNA" when "that DNA" used to be actually just a match against the presence or absense of 16 or so genes... with only 65536 possible combinations (at 16 markers). While new tests can exactly match one DNA sample to another, DNA "fingerprints" as espoused by the government continue to focus only on a limited number of "markers" meaning that dozens, possibly hundreds of people in a large city will share the same "fingerprint".
You're up against district attourneys who think DNA testing is awesome, unless it's used to prove one of their convicts innocent. Clearly if two people raped the woman, and two people's DNA was retrieved, and the convicted person turned out to be neither of them, the woman must have forgotten the third rapist, rather than picked out the wrong person on a lineup.
As the other person said, "good luck with your absolute belief in the state", and may God help us all.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Pubs scan your fingerprint when you enter. This is obstensibly to be used in investigations if there is serious trouble in the area. If this were the end of the story, then perhaps it wouldn't be too big of a deal, other than you being called in the middle of the night every time you were in a pub the same night that some ruccus breaks out.
Time passes. Powerful interests, such as Insurance companies, put pressure on the government to allow them to use the pub data for actuarial purposes (obstensibly to protect the public). The government concedes... Other interests also gain access...
Time passes.
You break up with your girlfriend and spend an unusual amount of time at the pubs for a couple of months. You receive letters informing you that your automobile insurance and health insurance premiums are rising as a direct result of increased risk exposure related to your bar habbit. Your employer calls you in for review and denies your promotion on the basis of risk exposure related to your pub habbits.
Are you getting the picture yet? If not, i give up.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
What else are they supposed to do?
How about checking for motive, means & opportunity?
Would you like it if the police came after you based on a partial print match, instead of doing his/her job & 'detecting'. Having databases like this encourages merely the appearance of proper police work & procedure. First they'll run any and all fingerprints, then if nothing useful shows up, they'll go about detecting & investigating.
It's a shame that they're going after pub patrons. The Brits might as well start fingerprinting everyone at birth and get it over with, because that's the direction they're heading in.
I suspect this will have a much greater effect on crime than England's current "if you get arrested for anything, we fingerprint & DNA sample you" policy, but I can't say I like it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's not torture until our 'Great Decider' the President *says* it's torture. And prison rape doesnt't count either.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
That's because "cahoots" and "reckon" are actual words.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
And I'm wondering... isn't the extreme extrapolation of this, oh, say, requiring all stores to fingerprint shoppers, to cut down on the number of shoplifters??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Either you've not had to watch your own child get scanned, or you are a VERY different person to me (and frankly, any parent I know).
Its just gut wrenchingly wrong. And why is this nessessary? It clearly isn't. Like I say, its the last time I'll be spending my well earned cash in the States (the only thing the US Govt seems to care about). You may think this is not the end of the world. But I have inlaws there who I'd actually like to see more often than I do. Soon they will be too old to travel. That will be the last time I will see them.
I've been to Africa, Asia, all over Europe, and North America was BY FAR the most over policed, and security mad. And as mentioned above in another thread, there is no benifit to show for this. The crime rates there are terrible. It's only place I've had a gun pulled on me (by a policeman!), and the only place to which I will never return. Again I ask, why should I have to declare my political leaning before entering a coutry? Spreading democracy around the opressed world could start a lot closer to home than you think. Why should my child's retina be scanned and recorded, for God knows how long, and to be passed to God knows who? 5! Passport not good enough? The kind of experiment in the OP is to find out if there is benefit to the lesser, voluntry intrusion described. Was there such a trial to see if scanning my kids eyes is of any benifit?
Frankly I don't care if you think they are regarding her as Osama mini Laden, they are treating her as though she may be. I'm gobsmacked that anyone could try to defend this.
Because you can - or because you should?
I think this is entirely reasonable. Only bloody idiots drive to bars / pubs anyway. If someone knows they are going to engage in an activity which will make them a bad driver yet still driver their car then they ought to be pay more.
Seriously, fuck off. What if you took the subway? A taxi? Had a designated driver? Had two drinks and then spent three hours playing pool, after which the alcohol would be completely digested? Not to mention that fact that when I legally go to the bar and legally have a drink it is None Of Their Fucking Business. When you happily hand your rights over while grabbing your anckles for state inspections, you are helping them do the same to the rest of us as well.