BIOMETRICS CAN PROVIDE A "TOUCH OF HOLIDAY CHEER"

[Jcrowley]

A Fingerprint May Replace Cash Or Credit
Ever get to the supermarket only to realize you forgot your wallet? For the more than 3.3 million consumers who’ve signed up for biometric technology, that’s no longer a problem. Customers at several retailers can now literally pay by touch. By placing their finger on a scanner at the checkout and entering their home phone number, these tech-savvy shoppers can deduct the cost of a carton of milk directly from a bank account or credit card.

http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2006/edition_11-12-2006/Food_News

The program, "Touch of Holiday Cheer" not only helps take some financial burden off families preparing for this and the upcoming holiday season, but also seeks to show shoppers how they can get their shopping done more efficiently.
 
One of the most frustrating things that occur at holiday time is the over-crowded stores and long wait times in line just to make it out of the store. However, thanks to Pay By Touch's biometric payment solution, shoppers now have a fast and secure way of moving through those shopping lines.
 
Biometric fingerprints are clean, fast and secure. They eliminate the need to carry around cards and money as well as the risk of loosing or having them and passwords stolen. Even just the time spent fiddling through a purse or pocket to find cash, cards and IDs can be significantly reduced with the swipe of a finger.

http://www.tmcnet.com/biomag/articles/3674-pay-touch-offers-biometric-payments-helps-spread-holiday.htm

In order to overcome this natural aversion, VeriChip Corporation has introduced the VeriMed RFID microchip “designed to provide immediate access to important health information on patients who arrive at an emergency department unconscious, delirious or unable to communicate,” according to a press released posted on Yahoo Finance.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061201/nyf063.html?.v=101

[enlightenment]

1. Over my dead, bloated body. n/t

[Kiouni]

2. Another Big Brother ploy

it's bad enough that all these retailers track your spending habits with their supposed discount cards but now they are trying build up those RFID chips credibility. "it could save your life!" my ass more likely to make the patriot act more applicable. too many secrets.

[Jcrowley]

3. Big Brother Is Uncle Walt

Disneyland wants your fingerprints. Scanning of fingerprints at entrance turnstiles outside of the Magic Kingdom “enhances the experience of the park,” according to Disney IT security. For now, “customers, who still have concerns about using their fingerprints, can choose to continue using a photo ID card as a form of identification.” No guarantees down the road, however, as in the near future all turnstiles will have scanners, designed to enhance the Disney experience, of course.

ARTICLE:
It is with this philosophy in mind that prompted Disneyland to take a closer look at its deployment of biometrics.

Hong Kong Disneyland this week launched a fingerprint scanning technology that would not require an overly tedious process of safeguarding its customers' fingerprint data and privacy.

Dubbed Ticket Tag, the ticketing system takes 50 points of a fingerprint — captured in a numerical value — and runs the numbers through an algorithm and adds encryption to it. The biometric system also detects physiological data "underneath the finger" to monitor blood flow and cartilages, so prosthetic or fake fingers are not allowed to pass through.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,39284864,00.htm

[Rage for Order]

4. No thanks, I'll stick with cash

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Pass out drunk ... wake up with no 'credit finger'.

Or just walk through the wrong neighborhood.

That is so much better than not forgetting your wallet.

[Kiouni]

6. you forgot about

the new security feature! YOu get to pick which finger to go with.

[Jcrowley]

7. That's the spirit lad

Santa's sleigh under surveillance
With a little help from the Nonproliferation and International Security (NIS) Division, children of all ages can track Santa Claus' trek from the North Pole to points around the world on Christmas Eve.

<snip>

Los Alamos space scientists will use satellite-tracking dishes located in Los Alamos and Fairbanks, Alaska, to monitor Santa's progress as he races around the world delivering presents and goodies to children everywhere. In addition, Los Alamos scientists will keep an eye on St. Nick with sensors on the ALEXIS and FORTE satellites, and the U.S. Air Force with its nine tracking stations around the world also will help monitor the sleigh and its eight tiny reindeer.

"We like to think of our efforts as another way to help spread glad tidings," Roussel-Dupré said. "This is our present to the communities of Northern New Mexico."

http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/newsbulletin/2002/12/23/text04.shtml

[Jcrowley]

8. A new meaning to digital rights

Trusted computing and Digital Rights Management

Availability: now-5 years.

Trusted Computing doesn't mean computers you can trust: it means computers that intellectual property corporations can trust. Microsoft's Palladium software (due in a future Windows release <2004: due in Windows Longhorn, renamed to NGSCB>) and Intel's TPCA architecture are both components of a trusted computing platform. The purpose of trusted computing is to enforce Digital Rights Management -- that is, to allow information providers to control what you do with the information, not to protect your rights.

Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. Microsoft will be able to lease you software that stops working if you forget to pay the rental. Want to cut and paste a paragraph from your physics text book into that essay you're writing? DRM enforced by TCPA will prevent you (and snitch to the publisher's copyright lawyers). Essentially, TPCA will install a secret policeman into every microprocessor. PCs stop being general purpose machines and turn into Windows on the panopticon state. It's not about mere legal copyright protection; as Professor Lawrence Lessig points out, the rights that software and media companies want to reserve go far beyond their legal rights under copyright law.

<snip>

Surveillance need not even stop at our skin; the ability to monitor our speech and track our biological signs (for example: pulse, pupillary dilation, or possibly hormone and neurotransmitter levels) may lead to attempts to monitor thoughts as well as deeds. What starts with attempts to identify paedophile predators before they strike may end with discrimination against people believed to be at risk of "addictive behaviour" -- howsoever that might be defined -- or of harbouring anti-social attitudes.

We are all criminals, if you dig far enough: we've broken the speed limit, forgotten to file official papers in time, made false statements (often because we misremembered some fact), failed to pay for services, and so on. These are minor offenses -- relatively few of us are deliberate criminals. But even if we aren't active felons we are all potential criminals, and a case can be -- and is being -- made for keeping us all under surveillance, all the time.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/panopticon-essay.html