RE: Cashless? FDIC to Monitor All Transactions??

[Greg Peisert <gpeisert@jamesgregory.com>]

Roy;

  You raise a good point about the thumbprint issue. Anyone who has ever 
been in the armed forces is finger-printed. It's just SOP. If you need to 
get a security clearance (just a NAC [National Agency Check] for Secret) as 
thousands of people in and out of government must do, your prints must be 
on file. Same with a host of other jobs. So, my pinkies are on file as 
well. I don't view that as a big deal. We are to the point in our society 
where the government databases are sufficient to pretty much carry out the 
worst-case scenarios, if it came to that.

  How might it come about? Well, what always "justifies" totalitarianism 
and the loss of freedom is a perceived national threat. Usually it is a 
war. I wonder how much further the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, the 
war on crime, etc., all couched as "war" in order to justify the violation 
of privacy and rights, will take us. How much will we as a nation sacrifice 
in the interest of the perception of personal security?

  Speaking of the Y2K issue, I made ten predictions back on 1 Jan, as I 
like to do every year. [Maybe I ought to share them with this list, just 
for fun.] One of them was that the Y2K problem will be more nettlesome than 
many folks [particularly those of us in the IT business] want to admit, 
with more unpredictable or unanticipated ripple effects, but that it will 
be quite manageable. It will be annoying, not disabling. Issues like the 
9th of April will be interesting tests this year. (April 9th is the 99th 
day of the year. It could be registered in computers as "9999", which in 
many systems signals an EOF [end of file]).

Best,

  --Greg



On Thursday, January 14, 1999 7:00 PM, Hegge, Roy [SMTP:Roy_Hegge@adc.com] 
wrote:
> Greg,
>
> As a computer professional I can attest that the idea that banks would 
use Y2K as an excuse to stop distributing cash is totally rediculous.  This 
is one of those turn of the century scare stories that we are going to see 
more and more of this year.
>
> The thumbprint thing could be true.  It's proven technology and easy to 
do.  Is it the right thing to do?  It all depends on what they do with the 
print. If they simply use it  to catch a prepretrator in case the check or 
signature turns out to be fraudulent, maybe that's ok.  But it will most 
likely wind up populating a law enforcement database.   In my case, as an 
ex-GI and one who has partied a bit too much on occasion as a teenager and 
spent the night in jail, it doesn't really matter because my prints are on 
file anyway.  For someone who has never had
> reason to be fingerprinted, perhaps they would not want to frequent that 
bank so that they can maintain that sense of secrecy.  But to be frank, I 
have not worried much over the years because my fingerprints are on file.
>
> Roy
>