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Japan To Begin Testing Fingerprints As 'Currency' (the-japan-news.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from The Japan News: Starting this summer, the government will test a system in which foreign tourists will be able to verify their identities and buy things at stores using only their fingerprints. The government hopes to increase the number of foreign tourists by using the system to prevent crime and relieve users from the necessity of carrying cash or credit cards. It aims to realize the system by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. The experiment will have inbound tourists register their fingerprints and other data, such as credit card information, at airports and elsewhere. Tourists would then be able to conduct tax exemption procedures and make purchases after verifying their identities by placing two fingers on special devices installed at stores. The Inns and Hotels Law requires foreign tourists to show their passports when they check into ryokan inns or hotels. The government plans to substitute fingerprint authentication for that requirement.
They're using them as an identifier to connect with your actual currency.
Speak for yourself.
is the certainty with which I presume anything digital will eventually be stolen if it matters enough to someone else.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Nice idea, but news bulletin to Japanese government: Crime is already nonexistent in Japan compared to every other destination for foreign visitors, and ease of payment isn't what's keeping people from visiting.
How about you make the country more affordable to visit instead?
Let's see. Give my fingerprint, financial info and positive identification information to a foreign government. What could possibly go wrong?
10 to 1 odds this is backed by the NSA.
This is like leaving my bank PIN number and bank card on everything that I touch. Do. Not. Want.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
They don't need to cut off fingers to steal your money. Just collect a sample of your prints and print them onto latex gloves coloured to look like human flesh. Easy, cheap, and nobody knows until a month later when you get your bank statement and the thieves are long gone.
What are you smoking? Go to the US and you get fingerprinted. Christ I went to Universal Studios back in 2008 and they wanted your finger print at the gate to go with your ticket.
Japan has zero crime and there is no requirement to use this system. If you are really worried about the govt tracking your daughters purchases get her to pull cash out of an ATM (useful tip 711s ATMs accept foreign cards not all others do) then buy a Pasmo or Suica card in any one of a zillion train stations and load it up with the cash. That card can be used just about everywhere in tokyo. The rest of the time use the cash. Of course if she bends the card or loses it monies gone. But it's anonymous right!?!?
Your daughter going to Japan would be a really good thing for her. She will get to see another highly developed country that has almost nothing in common with the US. She will get to see a totally different way of doing things and hopefully she will come back more well rounded for it.