Yesturday was a rich day for identity related stories.
Feds Start Small on Smart IDs talks about the start of the roll out of
The use of personal identity verification, or PIV, cards for verifying the identities of all federal workers and contractors was mandated by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. The unfunded HSPD-12 mandate specified that agencies must adopt a common identification credential for access to government facilities and computer systems.
Friday’s deadline and an earlier one calling on agencies to develop procedures for verifying the identities and backgrounds of all workers by last October were both considered exceptionally aggressive because of funding issues and the technology and process changes required.
Does anyone know what the procedure they actually developed is?
The register reported that to buy a beer in the UK you will have to give your finger print. The rational is to reduce ‘drinking related crime’. It sounds freakishly Orwellian.
Beer fingerprints to go UK-wide:
The government is funding the roll out of fingerprint security at the doors of pubs and clubs in major English cities.
Funding is being offered to councils that want to have their pubs keep a regional black list of known trouble makers.
The council had assumed it was its duty under the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) to reduce drunken disorder by fingerprinting drinkers in the town centre.
Some licensees were not happy to have their punters fingerprinted, but are all now apparently behind the idea. Not only does the council let them open later if they join the scheme, but the system costs them only £1.50 a day to run.
Oh, and they are also coerced into taking the fingerprint system. New licences stipulate that a landlord who doesn’t install fingerprint security and fails to show a “considerable” reduction in alcohol-related violence, will be put on report by the police and have their licences revoked.
Offenders can be banned from one pub or all of them for a specified time – usually a period of months – by a committee of landlords and police called Pub Watch. Their offences are recorded against their names in the fingerprint system. Bradburn noted the system had a “psychological effect” on offenders.
The Home Office distanced itself from the plans. It said it provided funding to Safer, Stronger Communities through the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Local Area Agreements. How they spent the money was a local decision, said a HO spokeswoman.
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