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Pay Dirt in Scanned Driver's Licenses
Posted by
michael
on Thu Mar 21, 2002 12:58 PM
from the sutter's-mill dept.
from the sutter's-mill dept.
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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Pay Dirt in Scanned Driver's Licenses
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so... DEmagentize the freakin card! (Score:5, Insightful)
the advent of the stupid magnetic strip.
This way, people who need the info (e.g. police)
can still get it, but dickheads that like to track
the clientele in their bars dont.
It's not like they're not going to let someone old
enough pay the establishment 300% profit on alcohol
just because their license got demagnetized.
Re:Junk Mail (Score:4, Funny)
About as bad as giving your personal information away for a nytimes.com account.
How Jennifer 8. Lee got her middle initial (true) (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
No License? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it some kind of 'drivers only' club?
Re:No License? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:it seems.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:it seems.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it seems.. (Score:5, Informative)
Go home, take a nice fridge magnet... that pizza place magnet will do..
set the magnet on the strip, rub a few times... Voila
Then they have to type it in.
My drinking habits... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
identity theft versus tracking (Score:4, Insightful)
Worst for CDL/Chauffeur's license holders (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Defacto Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about this... if you were walking in the park with someone, and you were talking about your girlfriend and some new car that she just bought, and someone walks by and happens to overhear you talking about this, it's not an invasion of privacy. You're in the park, it's a public place. Now think of the same situation, but someone is following you around with a microphone recording everything you say. Technically it's still not an invasion of privacy because you're in a public place, and because you're saying it in public, it's public information, but it's still a Completely Different thing.
-Matt
Free Your Mind [digitalmeca.com]
Re:Defacto Privacy (Score:4, Funny)
The irony is that what causes the info-tracking technology to cross the line between helpful and invasive is the efforts of clever software engineers in making information impossible easy to store and follow.
The crux of your analogy is following people around. But what if you could record every conversation within a mile as easily as overhearing it? Even people with the most innoccuous intentions could run roughshod over privacy. That seems to me to be exactly what this bar owner is saying: "Well, I bought this doodad to reduce the hassles that go along with checking IDs properly (or checking them improperly and get browbeaten by local liquor control boards), but as long as it says click here to build Customer-Experience Enhancement Profiles, I figure I'll give this a shot." And then, "Wow, this is really useful to me. I can make my bar do much better business."
Information seems more and more to want to be free. The problem is setting it free without letting run around without its pants on.
Remembering (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
reply to AC (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe if youre the only one with a blanked license they could single you out, but its not uncommon for a licence a few years old to be unreadable. I worked as a grocery clerk for several years, and I can tell you that about 5%-10% of all credit cards are unreadable, and they are replaced much more frequently that driver's licenses. (probably because they are used that much more often)
Also there is the fact that they are in business to make money- they wont woo many customers by turning away obvious adults with valid licenses.
And cmon- The hologram, micro print, state seal, and all that other stuff have to count for something...
From the nation who... (Score:5, Insightful)
You see the pattern? What's an ID card going to do? All your purchasing data and aggregate information already belong to some shady corporation.
If you don't trust your government, then fine. Why do you trust the corporations then?
Re:From the nation who... (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason this is a little sketchy (and maybe different) is that I _don't_ know where scanned license information is going.
I know exactly what happens to my information when I buy something on a credit/debit card with a little saver thing(it gets sold to anyone who might give a rats ass) and I can judge accordingly.
But the article pointed out itself -- that the information for that particular system was stored locally. It's a little scarier (maybe it's just a girl thing) to think that the sketchy bartender now has access to stuff without my noticing. All he's gotta do now is remember my name, instead of name, address, and everything else on my license.
back and forth (Score:3, Insightful)
And people are going to hate it for the same reason that the RIAA and MPAA hate computers--because collecting data slowly by hand is one thing, but the speed with which you can collect a huge amount of data with a computer is another. Ripping an MP3 is not much different from taping a song for all practical purposes, but the fact that it's digitized and compressed means it's easy to share and copy. Having an attendant furiously writing down names is one thing, getitng it all in a <1 second DL swipe is another.
Same thing with automated face recognition-- putting cops everywhere with mug books is one thing, cameras hooked up to recognition software is quite another.
DMV used to sell driver's licence info (Score:3, Informative)
I say used to [wired.com], as the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled it to be wrong in early 2000.
Rebecca Shaeffer and the DPPA (Score:4, Informative)
--
Practical Problems (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, privacy issues asside (sweeping statement I know... stay with me
I'm from the UK and look reasonalbly young.
Does this meen when I visit the US I will have problems buying drink and ciggerettes because I dont have a US driving licence with a bar-code?
Considering the average neandothol doorman will rely so heavily on such a mancine, alternative ways of proving your age (NOT YOUR ID!!!) may no longer be accepted
If I went to a pub here in the UK and someone asked to scan my driving licence I'd tell then to fuck off!
Prove that I am 18/21 yes.... Find out how many speeding tickets I have... No
The Rack isn't exactly known for its privacy... (Score:4, Interesting)
all the customers who are in there. You can even nicely zoom in and pan and tilt the camera if you want. Take one guess what the people running the cam are checking out most nights...
If you want to tell them what you think about them harvesting information of customers without their knowledge or permission (an act about on par with spamming in my opinion), you can find even more information [therackboston.com] about them.
Here's why it's so nefarious... (Score:5, Insightful)
-sk
Re:Here's why it's so nefarious... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real trick would be developing a method whereby only the information you want to give out is accessible.
My first thought would be to encrypt each peice of information with a different key, but then the government would need to distribute private keys to each business which takes the control out of your hands. On the other hand, if done correctly, they could give access to a liquor store to only be able to decrypt a photograph and if a person is over 21 or not (not even age.)
A better solution of course would be a method of allowing each person to control what information a particular vendor retrieves, but practically speaking, is much more difficult than the above solution.
If the above described card was issued as a national ID card, we'd all be a lot better off. Of course then every club would need a little scanner to read the information instead of being able to just look at the front... but that's not my problem now is it?
What's private and what's not? (Score:4, Insightful)
The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to say that everything is private unless I choose to release it. But that approach doesn't work in practice. There are too many instances in which information about me needs to be publicly available. To pick a silly example, it's important that it be public knowledge that somebody lives in my home, because if the building catches on fire I want people to let me know and help me get out.
So some information really should be explicitly public knowledge, and it's important that everybody accept that, especially privacy advocates. We can then have a reasoned discourse about where to draw that line.
Think about your phone number. The phone company publishes your name and phone number in their directory unless you pay an additional fee for an unlisted number. This has been the status quo for my entire life-- 30 years-- and certainly much longer. So it's got a pretty good precedent going. So is my phone number private information by default? Not really. Should it be? Hmm... maybe. If I express no preference at all, should the phone company publish my name, address, and phone number or not?
The other end of the spectrum is information that's clearly private, and protected by law. My medical records and the contents of my communications with my lawyer are explicitly private. If a court wanted to know what my doctor said to me last week, they couldn't ask. It's private.
Everything else is in the middle. Is my street address private? No, by the phone book argument. What about the number of people who live in my house? Maybe. How about their ages, genders, and sexual preferences? Hmm.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: our society seems to accept as a given that we should each have the right to keep stuff private. The slippery slope argument, though often specious at best, implies that the right to keep stuff private must only be abridged when there's no alternative. But everywhere you look there's ambiguity about this principle. Go back to the phone book example; the phone company assumes you want to publish your name, address, and phone number unless you explicitly tell them-- and pay them!-- not to. Likewise, the bar mentioned in the article assumes that it's okay for them to collect demographic information from you.
Where is the line between stuff that is assumed to be private unless explicitly waived, and stuff that's assumed to be public unless explicitly withheld? Like I said before, in principle the line is all the way over to one side: everything is private unless waived. But in the real world, that line will have to be moved a little bit so that some things are public information by default.
I don't have any answers. Just questions.
Re:What's private and what's not? (Score:4, Interesting)
It will never be illegal to purchase things with cash or barter.
It already sort of is [cornell.edu].
The answer to your worries... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's already worse than you think. (Score:5, Insightful)
I went defiantly to the third. NOBODY needs to know when I buy my Milk and Eggs!
When somebody pointed out that Costco, the Chain I love and frequent, and am frankly a cult member of, does the SAME THING, and has done so for YEARS before the Grocery Stores did it really brought me up short.
This is unfortunately a sign of the times. And without turning unibomber and living in a shack in Wyoming, there's not really much you can do about it. It's similar to the emissions and seat belt laws in the 70's. TONS of people didn't like it, but now it's commonplace.
I doubt it's going to turn into the 1984 that the alarmists paint it as, but It's also going to make more than a few people more than a little upset when it's abused. (IT WILL BE ABUSED. And when it does, the public outcry will make it financially unadvisable to abuse it further.)
Re:It's already worse than you think. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, could all this be abused by selling your information to others? Possibly. Except retailers are most likely making money directly off your information themselves, and prefer to keep it that way. Grocers are usually quite territorial with their shoppers and generally would not risk anyone else getting hold of their customers; they make too much money compared to the amount they'd make by simply selling a list.
hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
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Does anyone else find that hilarious?
In the State of Illinois... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if the SSN gets encoded on the magnetic stripe if you request it not be on the face of the license?
Then, buried way down at the end is this little gem...
Any sane person would point out that the bouncer "could" record the information by photocopying, yes, but he couldn't do so without being detected.
Also, because one use of the technology (license) would allow overt data collection doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD have the god-given right to collect data surreptitiously with the same technology.
Bouncers copying your personal data off IDs. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Depolarize your Driver's Licence Stripe (Score:3, Informative)
2-D barcode decoding, and Illinois D.L. (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't see anything obvious in the barcode that did not already appear on the front. I asked that my SSN not appear on the front, and I also did not see it in the barcoded data.
There were around 20 bytes of extra binary data which I didn't put much effort into further decoding. I compared the data on my license with the data from the license of friends and family, some bytes matched, some did not.
No special equipment is needed, any good scanner will work, you do need to make sure that the ID card is aligned at right angles to the scanner, and turn off any anti-speckle features in your software.
Most of the barcode data extraction software for Windows will accept a TIFF file, I haven't found any good free software that directly supports a TWAIN or other scanner plug-in.
The free demo software I found will also generate 2-D barcodes as TIFF files...
It's the correlated data that scares me... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
People, keep your personal information close (Score:3, Interesting)
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.