Re: Fingerprinting in CA [was Whoa: British SmartCard rollout]

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 7:40 AM -0800 2/6/98, Bill Stewart wrote:
>>>   How did you CA cypherpunks feel about being fingerprinted?
>
>Well, if I'd been thinking about it, I'd have put some rubber cement and
>whiteout on my thumb before getting the license :-)
>More the issue at the time was that the politicians were
>busy deciding that your ability to drive safely obviously depended
>on whether your citizenship papers were in order (the month
>I got it they'd temporarily stopped doing that.)
>I recently renewed the license, and they didn't ask for papers
>or thumbprints, but they still don't print the license at the
>remote DMV offices; they print them centrally because it simplifies
>verifying your information with the INS thugs.

And don't forget the "Department of Deadbeat Dads" thugs. As I recall
things, there was a bill passed in the California legislature to beef up
computerized tracking of driver-units so that deabeat-units can be
identified and marked for collection.

The invasions of privacy in the driver's license process is just
symptomatic of a larger problem:

* government claims that some activity is a "privilege, not a right," and
so claims that normal constitutional protections are irrelevant.

(One wonders if they believe the First Amendment doesn't apply, that Big
Brother may monitor what drivers are saying and deny licenses to political
troublemakers: "driving is a privilege, not a right.")

* government claims that the "regulation of commerce" language applies much
more broadly than the original interstate commerce and very general
rule-making language.

(One abuse of this was to say that if a student received federal loans, a
college could not practice certain of its normal practices...and the
college was forbidden from stopping the student from receiving these loans!
Catch-22. At this rate, churches will come under federal regulation because
they receive Postal Service deliveries. Or because government roads are
their only access.  And so on.)


>Back when I lived in New Jersey, the cops would set up traffic stops
>not only to look for drunk drivers (at 9am?!), but also to check
>if your papers were in order.  I haven't seen much of that in California,
>but presumably the Southern part of the state does it more often
>to catch Spanish speakers who are loose in the population.

Warrantless roadblocks are in place in my town, and, according to the local
newspaper, any driver who is seen turning around so as to avoid the
roadblock check will have his vehicle subject to detailed search.

--Tim May

Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^3,021,377   | black markets, collapse of governments.