Connecticut To Store Biometric Information 732
AugstWest writes: "I just got word that when I renew my driver's license, I will have to submit to allowing the CT DMV to store biometric information, as well as smile for facial recognition software from Viisage to be able to continue driving. I am so appalled, I don't even know where to begin. With all of the national law enforcement agencies opening up their databases to each other, is this the first step in taking a surveillance society to a tracking society?"
They already do facial recognition in many places. (Score:2, Informative)
in nj (Score:1, Informative)
we still have the old picture-less licenses. blows their mind at the out of state car rental counters. just renewed mine and it expires in 2006, so i guess i am hopefully good until then.
Re:I don't see how this is much different than req (Score:3, Informative)
Do you think the government should know where you are at all times? That's what they're shooting for.
Biometrics is nothing new... (Score:3, Informative)
But.... It's the government. (Score:5, Informative)
My wife writes Biometritech [biometritech.com], and she's the one who pointed this out to me, among many other very frightening similar stories, and she's telling me that this has already happened in Mississippi, Virginia and several other states, with more to come.
Iris scanning is already being done in airports in the US, and it will only spread further. According to her, Kennedy and Dulles airports have already implemented iris scanning. It's like getting fingerprinted to get on a plane, only more definitively.
The only comfort that I can find in this is that it's all being implemented by the government. Well, more to the point, it isn't even "just the government," it's the DMV.
I feel a small sense of comfort in knowing that it's the most ineffective organization known to mankind that is trying to implement this, but that sense of comfort is somewhat negated by the knowledge that it will only take one or two individuals to abuse this sort of thing for their own gains. (it's also somewhat negated by having seen Brazil [imdb.com], a Terry Gilliam movie which you owe it to yourself to see if you have any feelings on this issue whatsoever
Which, honestly, is the only reason to get into politics to begin with.
Here's a direct quote from a report called "Child Support Enforcement: Most States Collect Drivers' Social Security Numbers and Use Them to Enforce Child Support", which was a government study into what kind of implications could come out of linking driver's licenses with social security numbers -- which were, of course, a well-minded government plan to identify indivudals only for social security payment reasons, which was at one point the only allowable argument for allowing the identification of individual American citizen by a number.
Here's the quote:
State officials and privacy experts we spoke with generally did not express privacy concerns regarding the policy that MVAs collect SSNs for child support enforcement. Although many of these individuals did express concern about the increased dissemination of SSNs throughout society, most did not extend this concern to MVA-collected SSNs. However, the report went on to state: Privacy, however, can be compromised if SSNs are not properly safeguarded. Our survey of MVAs indicates potential weaknesses in this area.
(for more on this, see this article [biometritech.com])
Who will have access to the DMV databases? There is no answer available to this question. How well will it be secured? While the state will give you one answer, the answer will not come from the individuals actually doing the securing, it will come from talking heads whose job it is to convince us that it will be well secured. God only knows if these individuals will be using MS SQL (we are talking about state employees here) who may not even think twice about using "sa" and a blank password for securing the database, nevermind disabling the dozens of insecure stored procedures install by default.
In the past several months, we've seen MASSIVE sharing of databases among federal, county and municipal law-enforcement agencies, and while the afore-mentioned "sense of comfort" from the fact that this is nothing but fairly incompentent government agencies trying to build a massive system, it's still creepy to anyone who has read and absorbed 1984.
There is a potential here for a system in which a government employee can wonder "where is Joe Schmoe right now," and simply enter Joe Schmoe's social security number into a pleasant little VB application, which can query a database to find the most recent image of Joe Schmoe's last appearance in front of a camera anywhere in the nation.
I can see the argument of "what does this matter as long a you're not breaking any laws, but i still will argue that the government should not have this ability. Every fiber of my being tells me that this is just plain wrong.
Orwell may not have gotten the date quite right, but his premonitions seem to be fairly well backed up by the current path of privacy invasions.
Re:A New World (Score:2, Informative)
Example 1: Nazi Germany. Not a hell of a lot of freedom there. Back then, the threat to Germans' livelihoods was not terrorism, it was hyperinflation and the Great Depression. So the Germans made a deal with Hitler to trade their freedoms in exchange for decent employment and material comfort. Well, the safety of 6 million Jews and others Hitler considered enemies were pretty thoroughly compromised between 1933 and 1945.
Example 2: Stalin's Soviet Union. Very similar to Hitler, both in the circumstances leading to his acension to power, and in the way he treated those he felt threatened his power base. As a matter of fact, Stalin may have killed [bigeye.com] up to 40 million people during his 30 year rule.
Example 3: Twenty-first century Israel. How ironic, considering that within the lifetimes of many of those living there the Jews were themselves the targets of one of history's great atrocities by a police state. And now, by and large, they have become one themselves. Granted, Prime Minister Sharon and his predecessors have not been as evil as Hitler and Stalin, but the tendancy since Israel's founding, and especially since 1967, has been towards increasing government power and declining individual rights for the sake of trying to prevent terrorism. And look where this policy has gotten them: absolutely nowhere. Suicide bombings at supermarkets, on buses, and in nightclubs and restaurants have become literally a weekly occurrence. While Israelis are still certainly freer than many other nations' citizens, they are undeniably less free than they were 35 years ago, and will probably be less free a generation from now than they are today. In fact, if Israel decides that the terrorist situation is worth going to all-out war for, this decline in rights may accelerate. And look how much safer Israelis are now in exchange for giving up many of their rights. Not much, if at all.
Bottom line: Police states tend to be no safer than democratic states, and in the long run can prove to be even less safe than free states. In addition to all the kinds of external threats that free states like the U.S. face, police states usually add one more threat to the mix: citizens' own government. IMHO, the Israeli situtation is a good lesson to Americans that giving up freedoms to the government in exchange for safety is a bargain in which the government usually doesn't hold up its end of the bargain for very long.
Instead of giving up our freedoms, we must find a way to get these herds of buffalo to defend their own interests and directly attack the threats of their safety and freedoms. It can be done. In fact it was done on September 11, where the passengers of Flight 93 gave the hijackers the finger and took control of their own destinies. They made sure that no more Americans on the ground would become additional victims the attacks (the hijacking of 93 came after the crashes in New York and Virginia), even if it meant the deaths of everyone on board that plane.
A couple of months later, the infamous shoe bomber was stopped by people who took personal responsibility over safety and freedom. Imagine how much safer and freer we could be if we could convince everyone to take responsibility for themselves. No, it still won't be a perfect world; once in a while a terror attack will manage to take place despite the best abilities of those best positioned to stop it. The only reason why those on the first three planes did not try to stop Sept. 11 is because they had no way of even imagining the plans of the hijackers. Occasionally sickos will again manage to outimagine sane people and carry out attacks; no government however free or totalitarian is going to stop these attacks either.
However, even in these circumstances, we can minimize the collateral impact of these future attacks by getting our asses immediately back off the canvas, implementing the appropriate measures (I don't consider things like installing Jersey barriers to deter future truck bombings of major buildings to be an assault on liberty) to prevent a similar attack from ever happening again, and moving on with our lives without relying on Uncle Sam to tell us how everything is going to be OK. Determination is the most potent weapon against terror, not guns or bombs. If the government or media can steer this herd of buffalo toward one goal, with time and effort we can steer it toward the goal of protecting both liberty and safety simultaneously. If we manage to do that, then we can all then laugh as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and all those who agree with these guys' tactics for expressing their political ideas get caught in the stampede.
Georgia already has thumbprint IDs (Score:1, Informative)
I think this is a good thing, it's not like the government has planted a tracking device in it. If anything it has the potential to reduce identity theft, which is a big problem in the US
Re:Undue Restrictions (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, not having a car is most certainly a hassle.
I'm 26 and I have yet to own a car. At this point, the novelty has been completely lost, and yet I still need one.
Shopping is ridiculous without one. I can only buy so much as I can carry, which in terms of groceries is usually half of what I want. In terms of capital investments like tools, lumber, or furniture, being carless becomes an absolute joke. Home Depot laughs if you ask about delivery; why would you go to home depot without a car?
I'm limited in my shopping range to only the most convenient, rather than cheapest/best stores, which means I spend more money on inferior products. And it takes a minimum of an hour to go to the supermarket, even though it's right inside my freaking neighborhood.
Travelling is a joke. I tried going to suburbia once without a car, I figured that since everyone in suburbia has one, it would be fine. Nope, disaster. And in the urban environment in which I live, the few people who have cars are so protective of them that asking to borrow one is a serious imposition.
The economics of public transportation are a joke. The next-nearest airport to this city is an hour away. Bus fare is cheap ($15), but if you add in shuttle or taxi fare, round trip becomes $50-80.
If it wasn't the airport, I'd rent a car, as I do for all other trips. A car is $50 a day. Divide by 12 for a two-hour stint, and that $80 trip to the airport should be $4. Where did the other $76 go? To pay for the bus driver?
I admire the fact that you went your whole life without a car, but I can't imagine that it wasn't a hassle, or that you did it without generous help from car owners. My experience being carless is that simple tasks become logistical nightmares. Being carless consumes far more of my planning abilities than it deserves.
Re:But.... It's the government. (Score:1, Informative)
I realize that most people here on
The application asks for just about every single detail of personal information you can think of: SSN, Alien ID #, DOB, paycheck stubs, bank accounts, children's non-custodial parent info (down to the level of eye color, and if the person has a beard or hunts), who eats together, all family relationships, if you eat in restaurants and if so how often, etc, etc, etc. (If you're really curios about just how much info this is get a welfare application sometime). All of this info is put into a statewide mainframe system and then much of it is interfaced all over hell. Data goes to/from the chld support system, the Social Security Adminisration, the IRS, the state department of economic security, the state Medicaid system, and in a newer twist they are also doing some interfacing with crimial records (not sure *how much*).
Starting to see how the government systems are becoming a "web"? You may think you only gave the information for your Driver's License, but is there anything to stop some other agency from interfacing to that system? I've not seen actual numbers (if they're even available), but I would not even begin to be surprised that "government" (local, state, and federal) is the largest data collector in the world.
ALSO, we ask for information on people in the household (read house) who are not applying. Not much information, but probably enough for an intelligent person to figure out who you are (name/address at a minimum). Starting to see how this might relate to you? How well did you know that roommate you had in college? Are you *sure* that your live-in gf/bf never applied for welfare? Ever live with grandma/grandpa? Still think the welfare system knows nothing about you?
And is there a limit on how long any of these computer systems keep this information? It's very legally unclear, but as a matter of practice we keep info on our system until we need to make space or improve efficiency. In other words, we don't move it until *we* find a reason to do so.
Lately, the politically noisy/powerful groups have been able to arm twist to avoid requiring their data. But this is a very, very small group. If more people were bothered by it, and gave their legislators hell about it things might change. But it's NOT AT ALL public just how much information "the gov't" has and what the hell it does with it. Think SSA keeps all of your info to itself? THINK AGAIN.
But I do want to be clear: ALMOST NONE OF THIS IS THE FAULT OF PEOPLE DOING THE WORK. State agencies do what their TOLD to do by the people making the LAWS. We would NOT waste anyone's time asking about restuarant meals if some sadistically inspired congressperson hadn't dreamed it up and passed it into law (and there's a 50/50 chance the law was passed with less than 30 days to implement it).
Anonymous...for obvious reasons
PDF-417 bar codes (Score:2, Informative)
And unfortunately Georgians need to put their right index finger on a scanner to get a license.
But as far as the bar codes go, which in Georgia are printed on the back of the licenses, don't worry. After a few months of taking it in and out of your wallet with the raised numbers of a credit card behind it rubbing on them, it gets completely unintelligible and smeared.
Yes, they (state DMV, and thus likely Fed Gov't computers) already have the biometric info you "voluntarily provided" (digital face scan, finger print, etc), but the vehicle of the DL card itself accurately retaining this is a very short-lived affair.
Andy