Learned the following today: starting soon --Jan 2002 IIRC-- you can't use an unswipable drivers license to buy a gun in CA. When asked, the <gunstore> employee said there was encrypted info on them that was harder to forge than the holograph-laminated front. When I said that the licenses could be read with a regular cardreader and that info could be forged, he suggested it was the newer license (with two pictures vs 1 and an optical bar code too). He suggested that the "encrypted info" was harder to forge than the laminated front. This would be possible if the front info was securely hashed with a secret key. Anyone have more info? Good citizens are curious if they did this right, and what all the bits on the strip mean. So monkeywrenching the magstrip will impair your constitutional rights. A replacement license is $12; perhaps a good citizen needs a spare. In any case Govn'or Slime Davis signed a law requiring fingerprints in a year or two. I bet they'll be taking hair samples or cheek scrapings in five years.