Drivers License Swipes Raise Privacy Concerns 313
Clubs in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere are requiring patrons to give up their drivers licenses for a swipe through a card reader. Some bars do this too. The card reader displays their birth date and the establishments let it be assumed that the only purpose of the swipe is to check the customer's age. They rarely if ever disclose that the personal data stored on the license — the customer's name, address, license number, perhaps even height, weight, and eye color — go into a database and are retained, perhaps indefinitely. While a federal law forbids selling or sharing data from drivers licenses, there is no prohibition against collecting it. A few states have enacted such prohibitions — New Hampshire, Texas, and Nebraska. Privacy advocates warn that such personal data, once in a database, is bound to be misused. From the article: "'I don't see no problem,' said [a club-goer], 22. 'That happens every day on the Internet. Any hacker can get the information anyway.' [A Web media executive] said such reactions aren't surprising from a generation accustomed to sharing personal information on Web sites such as Facebook.com and Myspace.com. 'The kids don't care,' [he] said, 'because only old people like you and me suffer from the illusion of privacy these days.'"
It's settled then (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess if the 22 year old "club-goer" who can barely speak English isn't worried, I shouldn't be either.
Pretty big generalisation (Score:2, Insightful)
no problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Were you drunk at the time? What kind of places do you visit on the net to give this information out every day?
The amount of private info required is WAAY out of control. And the people asking for it are WAAY out of line. I heard that reality shows were very bad, so I looked up a sign up sheet Deal or No Deal (think that was it). It was unbelieveable how much info they wanted to just choose stupid suitcases.
happened here in AU for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
when it comes down to it theres a choice of, hey, awesome night out at a pub, or go home because of a violation of privacy. I don't see many young people choosing the latter.
I just assumed most pubs were all going down this route, and that it was nothing new.
Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)
Show your passport or another form of ID (military, etc.) which is recognized elsewhere (e.g., a liquor store).
Establishments which do have license mag-stripe readers will likely not have the equipment for machine-readable passports, but the passport will still provide age verification.
They don't care? They will... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. Well, they won't care until that information is used against them, either via identity theft or something worse.
Of course, most people won't experience that, but the easier it is to "steal" or otherwise misuse someone's identity, the more often it'll happen, and that means more people will be affected by it. Not that most people will ever figure out the connection. Thanks to the sorry state of education in the U.S., precious few know how to think anymore.
And not that it matters anyway, even if they did figure it out. This is the United States, where corporations and those who run them rule all. The troubles of the lowly consumer underclass matter not at all here.
It's things like this... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't like, don't patronize such joints (Score:2, Insightful)
Only idiots don't care... (Score:4, Insightful)
I genuinely feel bad for the coming generations of Americans and the pseudo-fascist oppression under which they will be burdened in the name of "for the children". No matter my age, I will fully support and understand their inevitable backlash.
It shouldn't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you care?
Really -- why does it matter? Unless you're planning on using MySpace as a dating service, which is a bad idea for any number of reasons, I don't see why it matters who the actual meatspace person that's behind a particular online avatar matters. It's like asking whether the clerk at the Dunkin Donuts counter is a transsexual, or dyes their hair: maybe they do, maybe they don't. Does it really matter? Is the knowledge really necessary in order to interact with them? Clearly not.
I think there is a bit of an obsession with trying to link online identities to real people; we need to realize that the disconnect between avatars and natural people is both intentional and desired. Who cares whether the controlling entity is male or female, or some particularly well-engineered piece of software -- it doesn't matter.
Re:Not just the bars (Score:5, Insightful)
And therein, folks, lies the beauty of the free market.
The kid's right (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, this is probably the best attitude to have. With our current models for establishing identity, and our current systems for storing and protecting personal data, the truth is if your information is stored anywhere it might as well be plastered on a billboard. Someone's going to get ahold of it somehow, and it's going to be copied, and copied, and copied until it's everywhere. There's no sign of this changing. Even dramatic advances in things like encryption only close one of the many doors to your data, and as long as a single human has access to that data somehow, it's going to get up and walk away someday, and it will live in the wild forever. Ultimately, if you want to keep this information out of anybody's hands, you need to keep it out of everybody's hands. This just isn't feasible if you don't want to go completely "off the grid" and move into a fallout shelter in Montana (or just find a 3rd world country and disappear). Think how many times you prove your identity to some service (both meatspace and online, they're pretty much the same as far as propagating your data is concerned) in a given day.
If you want to live in a society that has access to the vast databases of knowledge and instant communication ours does, ultimately you need to come to grips with the fact that there's going to be a lot of data about you in those databases, and that this data is going to spread like wildfire. Maybe that means learning to live with no secrets, and people getting comfortable with knowing each others' intimate details rather than just their public facades. Kids seem to be going in this direction already, sharing anything and everything with "friends" they've never met, just because they added them to a list on a website and got a couple pictures in return.
Or maybe we need to completely rethink the concept of identity from the ground up, both online and off, if people truly do value their privacy. We're probably going to have to do it sooner or later due to other technological advances anyway, as is illustrated in so many science fiction books and movies. If we don't kill each other first :)
I suppose it's either one of these choices, or we just smash the grid and go back to banging rocks together :P
Important distinction (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps that should read, "while a federal law forbids selling or sharing data from drivers licenses for the time being..."
Re:agreed (Score:1, Insightful)
The primary reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Easier fix (Score:2, Insightful)
The market giveth, the market taketh away (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed it does: the market offered a choice. Not, in all likelihood, because of the invisible hand of competition, but simply because Wal-Mart has not chosen to use monetize (nasty word) customer information like that.
On the other hand, the profit motive is probably what encouraged the other shop to insist on the information in the first place. This story seems to have captured the ugliness of the market right along with its beauty.
Like in the movies... (Score:5, Insightful)
The barkeep grumbles back, "Maybe, let me check my Drivers License Scanner Database". The barkeep then prints out a page of the aforementioned license information and gets proper compensation from the stranger.
Not exactly how it usually goes down in the movies, but if this keeps up then maybe in the near future movies will look a little more like this.
Goverment abuse of private data (Score:4, Insightful)
On the surface, I don't really care if my local pub has my stats. At worst, I'll get an advertisement in the post for free pool on Thursday night. However, going deeper, who is looking at this data, and why? If I go to the topless pub twice a month, are the police going to use this data to profile me as a pervert. Can I expect this data to be used to obtain a warrant to confiscate my computers. Will the police attempt to blackmail me by threating to tell my wife how often I visit the pub? Will my kids be taken away when they find the pictures I took of my wife, despite the files being locked away from the kids?
I can understand the need to keep minors out of the pub. However, they need to maintain and/or create a method that protects my privacy.
Re:Easy fix (Score:2, Insightful)
Cops generally frown upon an inability to produce proof that you are legally able to operate a motor vehicle when they ask you for ID during a traffic stop.
I'm wondering if there's an easy way one could retroactively erase or significantly corrupt the magnetically-stored information on one's ID, so that it is no longer machine-readable. Even if that might be against the law, how would anyone prove that you yourself willingly rendered the information unreadable, as long as there are no obvious signs of willful physical damage to the card?
If I could do that to my ID, I'd expect a little extra scrutiny whenever a machine did try to read it, but the human "scrutinizer" would probably just carefully read what's human-readable on the card and then send me on my way, since I still would have satisfied the requirement that I "prove" my age or what have you.
Re:It shouldn't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mating instinct vs privacy concerns... (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter, really. People are going for the illusion of being special and to be around other people who share that illusion. Our need to distinguish ourselves from the masses results in all kinds of desperate (and ultimately pointless) consumer behavior, but it does prop up the economy nicely.
And don't say "pussy," because in my experience any major metropolitan area is pretty much choked with good-looking women, wherever you go.
True, but they do tend to clot more in some places than in others...
Re:Only idiots don't care... (Score:3, Insightful)
"...anyone think they won't take it straight into the realm of "preventative therapy" using this information?"
Yes, I don't. I also don't believe "they" (MADD) have the authority to implement "preventative therapy" even if "they" wanted to.
"...lead by religious bleeding hearts and hypocritical 60's-era hippy soccer moms."
I doubt 60's-era ex-hippies are leading the charge on evangelical sin prohibitions. Soccer moms may contribute to MADD, but MADD isn't about sin prohibition, it's about saving lives.
"I genuinely feel bad for the coming generations of Americans and the pseudo-fascist oppression under which they will be burdened in the name of "for the children"."
I bet you do. Meanwhile, drunk driving isn't illegal because it's "for the children".
"No matter my age, I will fully support and understand their inevitable backlash."
When you're older and suffer the damage of a teenage drunk driver rather than just being one, perhaps you'll have a different perspective.
Re:no problem - Nope - go to another bar (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount of private info required is WAAY out of control. And the people asking for it are WAAY out of line.
There are two sides to every story. Bars want to swipe your card so they don't get fined for serving to underage kids. By having that data, they have a leg to stand on if/when the kid gets busted.
Of course, legislation is totally not the answer. If you don't want to swipe your license at a bar, go to another one.
IMHO, this is exactly the same as the smoking ban. If you don't want to be around smokers in a bar, go to another one.
Re:It's settled then (Score:3, Insightful)