The Texas Department of Public Safety might as well be called the Texas Department of Public Invasiveness.
They’ve launched a plan to fingerprint every single person of driving age in the state, after which they will add the person’s prints to the criminal database.
Is it just me or is that a rather Dystopian plan?
Jon Cassidy of Watchdog.org writes:
The credit for breaking the news on those two items goes to consumer affairs columnist Dave Lieber of the Dallas Morning News, whose long-running “Watchdog” column often shows up in my Google Alerts, for obvious reasons.
As an old-school columnist, Lieber tends to keep his opinions subdued, and he doesn’t generally call people dishonest. But I have no problem with doing that, so I’d like to point out that the DPS spokesman he quotes at length is less than straightforward about his department’s legal authority.
Last month, Lieber broke the news that DPS had started collecting full sets of fingerprints on everyone who went in to renew their license.
Friday, he followed up with a story on DPS’ dubious legal authority to do so, and then posted lengthy quotations on the issue to his blog.
Lieber quotes an entire email from DPS spokesman Tom Vinger, who quotes Transportation Code Sec. 521.059 at length, including the key phrase, “The department shall establish an image verification system based on the following identifiers collected by the department: ….an applicant’s thumbprints or fingerprints.” (source)
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3 comments:
To me personally that's a great idea.We were fingerprinted while still in school.In a legal situation, refusing to submit to a polygraph is one thing.Giving a person the option of submitting his/her fingerprints is another.With the newest technology that scans and prints without ink simply by the person placing their hands on a glass surface the procedure can do hundreds of prints in a day.
In Delaware, it's no longer just fingerprints, it's palm and the sides of hands too. And I question whether or not DNA is collected when they wipe off the glass before they start, then immediately after your finger/palm/side prints are collected? We all know they lie to anyone/anytime so collecting DNA without telling would be par for the course.
I think this breaches on our privacy rights. You think Texans would know all about personal liberties...
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