Clubbing in Fortress Amerika (fwd)

[Meyer Wolfsheim]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote:

> on Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 12:56:02PM -0700, Giovanna Imbesi (pho at tuttomedia.com) wrote:
> > Last night my friend and I stopped at a Venice club/bar.  At the door
> > they were doing the normal ID check, but then took my driver's license
> > and swiped it into a little Palm-like device...and all the info popped
> > up on the screen.  I was startled, amused and outraged all at the same
> > time.  My friend knows the new owners of the building and told me that
> > the owners had rented part of the upstairs space to a guy with a youth
> > marketing company, also coincidentally a long-time friend of his.
> > What are they doing with this information?  I've been wondering what
> > real implications a national ID card would present and here was a
> > clear example of potential abuse.  Is this even legal? Aren't they
> > authorized to check date-of-birth but no more?  Is it legal to retain
> > the data?  What data is stored in the magnetic stripe on a California
> > driver's license - name, address, DOB, license #, and signature?

A friend of mine recently informed me that he has access to a mag-strip
reader, and scanned several drivers' licenses (as well as Safeway cards
and other random credit-card like items.)

Most contained the information displayed on the front of the card, and/or
some seemingly random numbers (most likely, the ID numbers.)

California DL's have nothing interesting stored in that magstrip that
isn't on the front of the card. And no, the signature isn't reflected in
the magstrip.


-MW-