<devil's advocate> Isn't the point that the card contains sufficient information to assure your identity precisely to avoid that sort of problem? </devil's advocate>
Of course - the scheme has drawbacks which would have to include a design to ensure that the net benefit is greater than the drawbacks. I'm firmly of the opinion at the moment that the scheme has far greater drawbacks and little benefit to me or the rest of the population.
I don't trust the kind of people who will be operating the readers to do it properly.
I spent a few years signing all my credit/debit card slips at Tesco as Mickey Nouse. I only got called on it once, and I used to shop there at least once a week.
No.. but going back to devil's advocate again, if the readers took fingerprints/retina scan/dna sample in addition to your pin number would that not make authentication a lot harder to fake?
Fingerprint and retina scans aren't yet accurate enough in affordable units to be of any use in this application. And I seriously object to the thought of a DNA scan at every turn, for any reason, no matter how secure it is supposed to be... :S
Yep. So there are the (enormous) hidden costs of this scheme in order to make it effective. And who do you think is going to pay for this? The merchants will pass this on to the public through higher prices.
As far as DNA scans go, presumably it would only be a partial DNA scan, along the same lines of argument that they use for the fingerprint information - they only store enough information to confirm that a fingerprint matches the one given earlier, not enough to recreate the fingerprint...
It's not that they'd want to store the info that bothers me so much with DNA (though that thought isn't a particularly appealing one in itself). It's the thought of having a sample taken all the time that I object to most strongly. No, thank you very much, I'd rather not give someone a swab with my cheek lining every time I want to buy something with an age restriction, or do something with my bank account (like change my address for instance, something that requires you to prove your ID).
True, that is not appealing either. Who knows, though. Perhaps they'll be able to invent remote DNA analysers, so reading your DNA becomes no more difficult than a bar-code scanner... just think of the implications of that!
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 01:56 pm (UTC)I guess the most worrying thing in that case would be what the person who finds your wallet might get up to in your name.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 01:57 pm (UTC)Isn't the point that the card contains sufficient information to assure your identity precisely to avoid that sort of problem?
</devil's advocate>
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:08 pm (UTC)This could get rather circular. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:09 pm (UTC)I spent a few years signing all my credit/debit card slips at Tesco as Mickey Nouse. I only got called on it once, and I used to shop there at least once a week.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:30 pm (UTC)As far as DNA scans go, presumably it would only be a partial DNA scan, along the same lines of argument that they use for the fingerprint information - they only store enough information to confirm that a fingerprint matches the one given earlier, not enough to recreate the fingerprint...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-27 02:42 pm (UTC)