Driver Licenses

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Mon Feb 9 16:48:13 PST 1998



At 09:00 AM 2/9/98 +0100, Lucky Green wrote:
>The clerk at my local 7/11 assured me the information captured would not
>be forwarded to a central site. Yet. It appears the stores are installing
>these systems to protect themselves against police sting "test buys", in
>which the authorities take persons just days shy of their 21st birthday,
>put theater makeup and/or a gray beard and wig on them and thus entrap
>store clerks into selling controlled substances to minors.

The original stings were done by young-looking cops, but a few
judges (maybe just New York, maybe Federal?  it's been a while)
threw them out - if the cop is 24, then it wasn't selling to a minor,
so it wasn't a crime or necessarily even a liquor license violation.
So the cops need to hire kids (and for tobacco stings, minors.)
This gets into the interesting legal question of whether you can
insist that the decoys be prosecuted.

>As any fool can predict, the information captured will not remain local
>for long. After all, the system is ideal for monitoring gun^H^H^H alcohol
>purchases of parolees, tracking down deadbeat dads, etc.

Yup.  It's really annoying to have to give the California DMV lots of
personal information about myself so they can track down deadbeat dads,
given that I'm not even a dad, much less a deadbeat dad, and so they
can track down Mexicans who want to drive without citizenship papers,
and similar presumptions of potential guilt.


				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639







More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list