This practice is becoming more common in the most surveilled nation on the planet. If you are traveling to England you should be aware that this practice is already in place in several cities and will be nationwide despite the grumbling of some customers.
If you want to hire a car at Stansted Airport, you now need to give a fingerprint.
The scheme being tested by Essex police and car hire firms, is not voluntary. Every car rental customer must take part.
Once a customer registers, and has their finger scanned, they can use a fingerpad for payment, with the money directly debited from their bank account.
In the United States, the firm has also launched a version for online shopping, with a touchpad attached to a home computer – with the aim of reducing identity fraud.
All of this data is going to be housed in a database, computer, or certainly laptop. Each of these pose all types of security risks, and I wonder if this information will be quietly shared with other government agencies. These things happen all the time in both the United States (Patriot Act, terror travel scores, etc.) and we only find out about it after someone leaks it to the media.
Next time I go to London, I’m taking the train to Liverpool. Good thing I’ll have all of those cameras watching me to make sure me and the Brits are safe 😉
