I remember this! I got finger printed at some event where police had a booth next to the fire dept (who were espousing bike helmets and teaching kids how to properly wear one etc, actually useful safety info). It wasn't until I was a teenager when my first car was broken into and the speakers stolen that I realized how useless that endeavor must be. The officer who responded (my first time calling the police, not running from them!) was pretty upfront with me. As he took finger prints from the area where the door was jimmied, I was like "cool, finger printing!" and he told me this wouldn't likely lead to anything. First he said "You'll never get your speakers back, even if we found them we wouldn't call you, they'd probably be in a lot of all kinds of other stolen stuff and it's impossible to sort through and return stolen items." Bummer number one. Then he explained that the finger prints would only be useful if the thief got picked up for doing something else, he wasn't going to go run the prints and try to find the person etc like I was probably imagining (I was, I admit, thinking that's what happened when they took finger prints - thanks TV). Standing in my driveway I flashed back immediately to that finger printing booth where my parents were told it would help if I got kidnapped, and thought "Oh great, I'm in the system." Not that I had a life of crime in mind, but the internet of the early 90s really gave me a healthy distrust of being tracked, logged, etc. (Oh if we only knew the hellscape ahead.)

There's a science-fiction short story I've been trying to remember for quite some time.

I'd all but certainly read it in an anthology during the 1970s or early 1980s, probably one of the award compilations (Hugos, Analog, etc.).

A computer programmer and his boss are working on a large data tracking system that is about to be activated, in which everyone's identification and personal information are entered. The boss gives the programmer the choice of opting out of the system. The programmer opts out.

For the life of me I cannot remember the rest of the story, the author, year, etc. But it's stuck with me, and comes to mind often as a slew of ever-more-invasive online information systems (ISP email, some early LinkedIn-type start-ups, MySpace and Facebook, Google Gmail, Google+, etc.) have come on to the scene.

If anyone can remember what story this was, or others reasonably similar to it, I'd be grateful.

three short stories by Roger Zelazny - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Legion_(short_sto...

And yes, that does seem to be the piece / include the scenario.

(There may well have been others.)

Thank you!!!

I saw someone posted the story, appreciated the comment/connection - going to read that one!

I suspect running fingerprints is much easier now, depending on how long it's been. It's very automated now.

> "You'll never get your speakers back, even if we found them we wouldn't call you, they'd probably be in a lot of all kinds of other stolen stuff and it's impossible to sort through and return stolen items."

Wait what? So police simply keeps stolen goods with no option for the original owners to get them back? Because civil asset forfeiture isn't enough I guess?

The police don't keep stollen goods, don't be silly.

They auction them off and use the profits to buy tanks and grenade launchers.

I got bonded (Police background checks with fingerprinting etc) for a job which had a large cash handling component. dealing with > 100K in twenties and fifties in a Casino. My prints were kept for elimination after the process, but the police were very eager to inform me that they don't get kept past two years.

The police had petitioned the government under the guise of privacy laws to make sure they had to throw away the records. Which seems counter intuitive until you realize it'd require me to go through the same process again at a later date. More money for them.

I've less fear of my biometrics being tracked than I do of rent seeking behavior from public officials.

For those of us with an inverted threat model, the profit motive here seems an interesting approach.

It also means they don't have to deal with the problem of having shit tons of fingerprint data. Depending on the laws around who was responsible for it, that could be quite a hassle.

Fingerprints aren't even particularly useful here.

Our irises are considerably more information-dense, accessible and stable over time as evidenced by the famous identification of Sharbat Gula: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/afghan.html

A close-up photo should be enough to reliably identify a person years after they went missing.

> Our irises are considerably more information-dense

Someone should give you free cryptocurrency for a scan of your iris.

It’s already been done: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/10/21/sam-altmans-worldcoin-wa...

As someone who wants to enter and profit from the burgeoning underground iris transplantation economy, where do I start? I get the sense that there is an arbitrage opportunity between the cost of eye surgery and crypto returns but exactly how do I capitalize on this?

I suspect GP was being facetious.

Poe's law strikes again. Any joke about crypto scams has already been implemented for real...

(That was the joke.)

Still worth linking because that is quite an obscure reference.

Everest uses biometrics to tie your information to your wallet. The tech is actually pretty cool in my opinion - they have the Everest ID coin itself, but I am more interested in the identity management part of it.

I'm not sure I'm 100% on board, but the tech is really interesting and their approach to privacy seems much better than I would expect from an offering like that. The aim is to be able to offer Know Your Customer using their identity platform to a mulititude of services.

Everest.org is their site

While most people do have stable iris patterns it is not the case for everyone. Numerous conditions can cause changes in the eyes. Glaucoma being the most obvious one, but there are a whole host of other conditions like lisch nodules, Uveal melanoma, etc.

However, perhaps with training, identification could be made in spite of changes to the iris.

The algorithms used are pretty robust - your typical iris scan won't be done with a fully opened eye and there's also the question of eyelashes. Some examples:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-outline-boundaries-s...

Interesting link, thank you. Sorry for the late reply. The idea of wearing camouflaged contact lenses, and the work to defeat the attempt is interesting.

Interesting

But your irises don't tend to leave traces everywhere, and are thus only valuable for telling who you are, not where you've been.

Although that depends on the number of cameras around, access to them, and how much they are recording. Fingerprints are a lot simpler and easier to access.

Did not know that! How easily can irises be identified in person, though? Has a handheld scanner been developed yet?

Fingerprints can also be left on objects, which can be helpful for tracking someone.

> Has a handheld scanner been developed yet?

Yes - I used one as far back as in 2010 on a science fair where we enrolled people to a research database.

A phone camera close-up should be enough in the right conditions, but additionally Samsung's Galaxy line used to include and iris scanner, which was just a near-infrared LED and a camera.

Yes, they were using them to catalog folks in Afghanistan

https://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could...

Of course, the Taliban were able to seize this collection of data.

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/17/afghanistan-taliban-mili...

Regular photo camera can take photos of irises

Yep, I remember getting fingerprinted at a mall. Thanks to my folks for preemptively snitching.

Happened to me as well. Now the FBI has my fingerprints on file even though I've never committed a crime.

I had a discussion with my Mom a couple years about this and she admitted she screwed up. I can't blame her of course. Especially since at the time there was plenty of FBI propoganda about missing kids terrifying parents and claiming this was a solution.

In the U.S. we used to collect palm/foot prints on every child within a few days of birth. Newborn fingerprints are difficult to collect, as skin is very delicate. Now we require DNA collection at birth.

https://www.aclu.org/other/newborn-dna-banking

With my youngest I found a clever way to "opt-out". Unfortunately at my child's 6 month pediatric appointment at a private clinic, the nurse charged in and demanded a sample to send in on the spot. She said they couldn't proceed with any services unless they sent the card in, as their license would be revoked unless doing so.

https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/04/baby.dna.government/in...

In my state you can REQUEST to have the collection card destroyed after 6 weeks, and before 18 years. But they do not guarantee it gets done. Which is just for the collection card. They make sure to "transfer but not sell" the samples to separate entity between that time, which keeps a copy and digitizes it.

This is bizarre and should not be legal. There is definitely not any public awareness of this practice. Increasingly people are aware of the very real implications of allowing the government and insurance agencies to have your data. Your genes are your data

I remember reading about a country doing DNA collection of every single person born, since the 80s or something like that, leading to that country now sitting on the most extensive DNA database of its kind. I can't remember which country it was though. Searching for "most extensive DNA database" and similar just leads me to various voluntary databases from the US, but I think this database I'm thinking about was involuntary, and every single person in the country is basically registered in it.

California destroys the newborn's blood sample when the parents ask [0], but their privacy policy says that sometimes they don't do it [1]:

> You have a right to ask the Newborn Screening Program not to use or share your or your newborn’s information and/or specimen in the ways listed in this notice. However, we may not be able to comply with your request.

[0] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DGDS/Pages/nbs/MyBabysB...

[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DGDS/Pages/nbs/nbsnpp.a...

Tell us how you cleverly opted out?

I think most states [edit: apparently only some states] in the US require a fingerprint in order to issue a drivers' license or for a state ID. So I guess you could be somewhat anonymous till you had to get your state ID and then they'd know who it was.

Well this sent me down a tangent since I had never heard of this. Per https://www.cga.ct.gov/2001/rpt/2001-R-0858.htm (circa 2001) the only states that require a fingerprint are California, Colorado, Georgia, Texas although apparently Alabama and Florida used to do so. Feels pretty crazy to me

Oklahoma requires a thumbprint. Electronically.

IIRC, California just takes a thumbprint, so obviously don't use that thumb while committing crimes and you're fine. OTOH, I got the full set of fingerprints (in ink!) and affirmed an oath to uphold the constitutions of the US and California as a condition of working for a school district, so I'm not available for crimes anymore.

I've never had a print taken for a license in four states.

> I can't blame her of course. Especially since at the time there was plenty of FBI propoganda about missing kids terrifying parents and claiming this was a solution.

So long as we keep giving people a pass for falling for this crap they have no incentive not to fall for this crap.

Let's keep the blame on the government which is meant to serve us, not the people who were only doing what they thought was best after having been deceived by that same government.

Holding your mom accountable for a mistake she made when you were a baby isn't helping anyone, holding your government accountable for building a database of our DNA/fingerprints against our wishes helps everyone.

>Let's keep the blame on the government which is meant to serve us, not the people who were only doing what they thought was best after having been deceived by that same government.

At some point the people enable the government. People need to feel stupid for falling for that crap or they will keep falling for it.

>Holding your mom accountable for a mistake she made when you were a baby isn't helping anyone, holding your government accountable for building a database of our DNA/fingerprints against our wishes helps everyone.

This is not how it works.

If people cannot find the will to hold the people in their lives accountable then they will never find the will to hold the government accountable.

I'm not saying the dude has to pistol whip his mom and set the house on fire over it but it'd be nice if people would resent those kinds of decisions made by their parents and other people in their lives (like the aunt who submits her DNA to one of those ancestry services that shares it) a little more.

My parents were paranoid about kidnappings. It was like perfect social engineering on my parents' generation with TV movies like Adam - the story of John Walsh's son who was kidnapped and beheaded:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085136/

My parents had me and my siblings watch that movie with them - it is still unsettling to me thinking about it.

And then the FBI contacted my school and provided a voluntary program for parents to have their children fingerprinted. From my memory 95%+ of kids all lined up in my school and got fingerprinted to "protect them from kidnapping".

It honestly seems surreal - looking back it sure seems like a black ops campaign to get biometric data on a large portion of the U.S. youth population.

Or, they actually were thought to be useful for kidnappings and this was an honest attempt. Perhaps largely security theatre, I could imagine there have been a handful of cases where this was enough.

The ever growing mistrust in government and society will become a self fulfilling promise. I worry about our future when no good and honest talent wants to work for the greater good at reduced pay.

There is abundant evidence suggesting that arrow of causality between FBI activity and public perception of them as dastardly flows in the opposite direction from the one you have presumed here.

This was a very big thing in the late 80s apparently. Our local Kiwanis Club had provided IDs for parents in the community who wanted them. They just had a photo of the child with some other physical descriptions like eye color and birthmarks. Still, kind of a local, analog version of this, but without the dystopian bent.

I agree, this feels more creepy than useful/helpful service.

There was a moral panic about kidnapped children in the '80s that resulted in parents getting their kids fingerprinted. The macabre side of it is that it wasn't for reuniting living kids... Very many children who can talk (i.e. 8 years old) would be able to describe their parents to the cops well enough to track them down from phone book data. It was really useful data for identifying John and Jane Doe corpses though.

If it was a ad, was a company involved? Sending biometrics to any company should always make someone think twice.

I'm not sure that's relevant to this. This app just makes it easier to give police or security the information they ask for if you lose your child (note not necessarily kidnapped), like a photo, age, and height. And they claim the info is only stored locally. Maybe that claim is false, but if it was, then once that was discovered it would probably cause a lot of legal and PR problems for the FBI.

I remember that as well. Just assumed that the unstated reason was to assist in identifying deceased kids.

A friend of mine noticed that the cameras at the bart stations were extremely hi-res a few years ago. He thought they could probably capture fingerprints with them.

I wonder what kinds of drive-by biometrics are really collected, especially when protecting children.

no need for any campaign anymore, most kids in EU have biometric passports, though not sure at what age they start fingerprinting them, which they don't do because their hands are growing too much so fingerprints world be quite useless under certain age

though some countries like Germany issue some simplified passports for kids, Czechia and Slovakia for instance issue same as adult passports, only difference being validity

> No child's fingerprints are getting checked unless some foul play is already suspected.

A simple way around it is to have the kid fingerprinted and only release the information if the kid needs to be tracked/located.

I think the comment is pointing out that if your child is kidnapped and raised elsewhere, there will not be a reason to fingerprint them then for comparison unless there's already a reason to think they may have been kidnapped.

That is, it might help on the back end, but the comment is suggesting that mass fingerprinting is not likely to move the needle much.

A small chance is better than no chance. I was answering to the privacy concern, not the effectiveness of the method. It seems like a plausible business model to professionally collect hold biometric data encrypted with the owner's keys, opaque to the party storing the data.

It's a bit like the businesses that store umbilical cord stem cells for the very unlikely chance they'll be useful at some point in the future.

Got it. I had thought you were responding to the part you quoted.

That's a very good point. Sorry for the confusion.

I think thier point was even if you registered your kids fingerprints with the police they are not going to go around to every kid in all the dinners checking fingerprints to compare to.

My point was to only release the information to the police if and when the kid needs to be located.

release what valuable information here? What information is being "released" that is going to be helpful in a way that if it wasn't for the FBI App, you would be regretting it?

My suggestion was to have the information with you, and release it to the police if and when privacy concerns are not as relevant in comparison.