At 12:23 PM 9/19/96, Jeff Barber wrote:
Oh joy. You no longer need to be arrested to get fingerprinted in Georgia. On the front page of Wednesday's Atlanta Journal, under the headline "Now you can get driver's license in minutes": ... Just what I would have called it: a great idea. Is it true that 31 other states take your fingerprint as part of the license application? I feel sick.
California has it, so that's what about 20 million drivers have to put up with. I'd expect all the states to have this within a few years. (Yes, I disliked being thumb-printed, but I could see no viable alternative. I'm sure Duncan has some scheme to declare himself a Botswanan exchange student, but I decided being thumb-printed was the lesser hassle.) By the way, the next rev of the California driver's license will reportedly have one's *Social Security Number* printed on the card! So much for the statement clearly printed on my card: "For social security and tax purposes -- not for identification." Paraphrasing that famous quote, just which part of "not for identification" don't they understand? (Indeed, I am asked for my SSN in many places. A few times I've refused to give it. Once the clerk just said, "Fine, I have it here on my computer anyway." Refusing to give it is probably no longer meaningful, due to massively cross-linked data bases.) Again, we desperately need an infrastructure of "credentials without identity." --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."