Swiping Your ID
Published by Ninth Stage June 7th, 2007 in Commerce, Educational.Ever have anyone swipe or scan the barcode of your ID while making a purchase? It’s never happened to me but lewlew at yak attack just had it happen while buying booze.
What purpose does it serve except to dump all my info into another conglomerate database?
A conglomerate having these data wouldn’t bother me, it’s when the government decides it wants it that bothers me.
There is the rub— the data in that database is ripe for the plucking by the feds, any hackers that bust the system or any employee looking for information.
Exactly. Say you or anyone else is suspected of dui or some such. The .gov gets a supoena and finds that you purchased three cases of beer and two bottles of Tequila last week. Nevermind the party you might have had over the weekend, now they peg you as an alcoholic and gee he also bought some ammo . . . anyway it can go on and on but you see what I mean - I’m with you totally on this.
There are several purposes:
1) It proves for liability or insurance reasons that they actually checked ID.
2) It makes it harder to fake-up IDs; it’s a lot less trouble for a non-serious-pro counterfeiter to fake the barcode (especially if the scan also pops up the name and age for the cashier to verify against that printed on the front) than to fake a DOB.
(How does one get “suspected” of DUI, anyway? One gets arrested or one doesn’t, typically - the evidence is normally either a breath test, a blood test, or failing a field sobriety test.
No US court would accept “you bought a lot of booze last week” as evidence for “you were intoxicated when driving at date X”.
I just don’t see any great reason to worry about The State acquiring this information somehow.)
“1)” no problem wit that.
“2)” agnostic.
“How does one get “suspected†of DUI, anyway?” In the usual way, weaving. ;) I meant not yet convicted, better I said charged.
“No US court…” yeah, what I wrote does sound stupid on second reading.
I’m concerned about some possible future where the single payer in a single payer health care system might try to deny you tratment because you engage in some non-approved activity or the state using ammo purchase records to ferreting out unregistered firearms. With .gov access to this info it becomes possible.
A private company collecting and keeping the info does not bother me per se but most companies will cough it all up at the vaguest request. I do have a problem with “The State” acquiring this information somehow.
““No US court…†yeah, what I wrote does sound stupid on second reading.”
Not really. Evidence of behaviour patternscan be admissable. Suppose somebody else stole your car in the middle of the night, and hit and run (not an unlikely scenario.) you report it, but they suspect you might have been the one, might have been drinking and driving, and check public records (including any coporations sales records, which are subponeable.)
I’ve personally had my car stolen and used for an extended period of time (when it was recovered, many months after the polic wrote it off as unrecoverable) the thief had driven it across 4 states and back, as evidenced by receipts and paystubs in the car, and bad checks written from my checkbook at gas stations along the way.
The thief was eventually caught, but never charged, while in my car and I had to use the police report to prove I didn’t write the bad checks.
In other words, purchases made by a thief were my problem, in this case bad checks, but it could easily have been credit card fraud using my stolen id.
All of which is somewhat peripheral to the privacy issues of having extensive personally identifiable databases on purchasing habits. I refuse to give my phone number or anything more personally idenitifying than zip code to stores collecting demographics.