Big Brother Surveillance + Identification Madness Continues

• December 23rd, 2006 | Security, Privacy, Identification, Biometrics, Consumer Use

[commentary] Consumerist writes [via LifeHacker] about a bank who threw out a customer for refusing to supply a fingerprint. WTF?! Seems Bank of America’s rules state that thumbprints must be given if a consumer wants to cash a cheque and they are not a BoA customer. Even if the cheque is issued from a BoA customer account.

More evidence that we’ve entered a world of madness, when regular identification isn’t enough, and we all have to be treated like criminals by the right-wing powers that be. These are the people that have ushered in Big Brother, and sneer at anyone who suggests that that is the case. So not only should you take it, you should shut your face about it already.

The worst part is that “junior” employees often buy into this crap, possibly for fear of their jobs. Or they’ve been brainwashed into believing that everyone is a potential T-word. In this case the consumer, referred to only as Tycho, was subjected to the threat of being escorted out by a security guard for disagreeing with the manager. This stuff sickens me. I’ve experienced similar behaviour towards me since late 2001. Tycho was summarily ignored by everyone in the bank, despite being extremely polite.

Good luck to all of us living in a world where you can’t even cash a cheque without someone “tagging” you. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, most of this Big Brother push isn’t because powerful want to control us all per se but because there is so much money in tagging everyone and everything that the only way to get at least the stupid to buy into it all is to create a fear society, thus justifying a surveillance society. Don’t get me started on who is responsible for this disgusting environment we live in today. Just learn to distinguish between legitimate and bogus applications of RFID and biometric identification.