Swipping IDs can be dangerous :: essays research papers

ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their drivers licenses to a doorman, who swipes them with a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through. provided around of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, rescue date and other personal details from a information slip of paper on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes mixer Security number are registered."You swipe the license, and all of a fast someones whole life as we know it pops up in apparent movement of you," said Paul Barclay, the bars owner. "Its al most(prenominal) voyeuristic."Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out pocket-size drinkers who use fake IDs. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate per spective on his championship that clear be useful in marketing. "Its not just an ID check," he said. "Its a tool."Now, for any given night or hour, he can break down his clientele by sex, age, ZIP code or other characteristics. If he wanted to, he could find out how many a(prenominal) blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how many of his customers have the middle initial M. More practically, he can build mailing lists based on all that data and keep track of who comes back. Bar codes and other tracking mechanisms have let one of the most powerful forces in automating and analyzing product inventory and gross sales over the last three decades. Now, in a trend that alarms concealing advocates, the approach is beingness applied to people through the simple drivers license, carried by more than 90 percent of American adults. Al admity, about 40 states surface drivers licenses with bar codes or magnetic stripes that carry standar dized data, and most of the others plan to issue them within the next few years.Scanners that can read the licenses are slowly proliferating across the country. So far the machines have been most popular with bars and convenience stores, which use them to thwart underage purchasers of inebriant and cigarettes.In response to the terrorist attacks last year, scanners are now also being installed as security devices in airports, hospitals and government buildings.