"Um, Shouldn't You Have Asked Me These Questions Before I Got on the Plane?"

Correction, you may be living in a 'papers please' country - there is a whole big, wide world out there where little to none of this crap happens...

 

Papers, please is the rule, not the exception. Many nations have compulsory national ID statutes requiring even more invasive things like biometrics and local police registration. Many nations have even more odious stop and identify statutes, often requiring production of a physical ID itself. Some nations are even issuing government ID smartcards intended to become the foundation of ID on the Internet.

Laws also cover the private sector. In some nations, it is compulsory for entities like landlords and Internet cafes to obtain identification from customers and keep it open for inspection.

On a population-weighted basis, global laws view people as cattle. I'd certainly like to know where papers, please is not in full force, and I'm not saying that sarcastically.

 

Businesses are jumping on the papers, please bandwagon, too.

Alcohol establishments are notorious for this. I'm visibly above the drinking age and I get carded on the few occasions I partake or when picking up a bottle on the way to a gathering.

It has reached such a ridiculous level that many clerks are scanning peoples' drivers licenses on the spot, all over a bottle of wine. I use my passport any time I go because they can't scan that like they can a DL. It's ridiculous to get scanned into a database over a bottle of wine, especially in the American culture of behavioral profiling/tracking and abusive marketing.

A friend told me Facebook and Google's social network are also requiring scanned ID from everyone now.

Where does this nonsense stop? Will people wake up, so we can stop having our assigned permanent record follow us everywhere we go? Whether at the hands of government or marketers, history has shown us this information will be used to abuse and dehumanize people.

 

I think I may have posted this in another thread at some point, but can't remember.
By Erik Larson, author of many books, including THE NAKED CONSUMER in 1992 (pub Henry Holt), about privacy and data collection, from p. 14 of the book:

My research for this book convinced me there are four universal laws governing the flow of data collected about individuals, which I call the 'laws of data dynamics':
1. Data must seek and merge with complementary data.
2. Data always will be used for purposes other than originally intended.
3. Data collected about individuals will be used to cause harm to one or more members of the group who provided the information or about whom it was collected, be it minor (the short-term aggravation of a 'junk call' during dinner) or major (the sorrow of getting a free sample of formula just after your miscarriage).
4. Confidential information is confidential only until someone decides it's not.

 

Thanks, the description sounds interesting. That's something I'm definitely interested in reading.

That brings up a rather ironic situation: reading about the pervasiveness of datapoints, their collection, and their use in an older book will happen at a library, Amazon.com, or a special order at B&N, creating a datapoint in itself.

I'm worried about the future of books and the right to read anonymously. Amazon deleting "1984" from the Kindles of customers was a real wake-up call.

 

That's complete B.S.

 

Google and Facebook? I'd recheck that one. I refuse to supply id to purchase alcohol. They just lost a sale...

 

I just flew out of MSP last week. The special flashlight was replaced by a small box, about 4x3x3. The clerk stuck the ID in it and a light was glowing. I was wondering if these things were some kind of "capture" device. Why else would they have it? After all, if all they did was replace the special flashlights, why do they now need a special, small box?

Of course, they aren't going to tell you if they're capturing data.

 

Usually such devices are for the use of people who don't understand that shining a UV light into their eyes is bad for them. So the little box makes it impossible for them to do so.

It's kind of like child-proofing - idiots will generally find a way to defeat it anyway.

(I'd bet against a capture device in the little box at this time, but will bet that it'll happen.)

 

Facebook actually asked me for ID to be an advertiser. I told them to f off.

At bars I use my concealed carry license, which is a valid state-issued ID but has no magnetic strip. I used to use this with the TSA (before November 2010) and they actually always accepted it after a few moments of confusion, but I try not to stand out at the checkpoint now.

--Jon

 

Tell the clerk that the box device is a mirror...