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Despite the recent dismal weather, and even though a
month remains until the vernal equinox, it must be time for
some spring cleaning -- an occasion to clean the folder of
interesting items that won't fill a column in
themselves.
There's Image Data, the company that wants to buy driver's license photos as part of a fraud-prevention program, which would work something like this:
You write a check. The clerk asks for your driver's license, punches numbers into a terminal, and a picture appears on the screen. The clerk can compare that picture to your picture and your driver's license photo, and thereby determine whether you're who you claim to be.
It sounds plausible in theory, but assume someone swipes your wallet and begins taking over your identity. To use your driver's license as identification, the thief would have to resemble you, so that the picture would work.
Either that, or the thief would have to fabricate a license that had your name but his picture. And in that case, the picture on the terminal wouldn't match the picture on your license.
But would the clerk notice? As it is, how often do you see a retail clerk take time to compare you to the photo, height, weight, hair color and eye color on your license?
And these same harried clerks are going to take even more time to compare you, the license photo, and the terminal image? What planet will that happen on?
What happens if the pictures don't match? The clerk will tell you that there's a problem and that you need to go over and talk to someone over at the consumer service counter. If you were in there with a fraudulent identity, wouldn't you just leave then, rather than go over to the counter and wait around to get caught?
It seems obvious that Image Data, the company that wants to buy our photos from the state, has something else in mind, since its proposed use would not prevent fraud.
My theory is that Image Data really planned to sell this information for targeted marketing.
For instance, its computers could observe that on my license, the hair is listed as red, but the fellow in the photo has gray hair, and not much of it. That makes me a perfect candidate for an Image Data client to call during dinner hour with offers for Rogaine and Grecian Formula 44.
Another Image Data client might note a height of 5'10
and a weight of 200, and then bombard me with offers of
dietary regimens, exercise programs or hard-to-find XXXL
T-shirts for us
husky guys.
Targeted marketing, rather than fraud prevention, is the only use of this data that makes any sense.
Gov. Bill Owens and our legislature did right in getting Colorado out of this. If Image Data carries out its threat to sue the state for breach of contract, well, I look forward to what our attorney general will find at Image Data during pretrial discovery and depositions.
The other short topic is the dismal performance of the American media during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
Go back to Watergate, and reporters actually interviewed sources, examined records, pounded the streets, knocked on doors and otherwise developed their own stories.
This time around, they sat around waiting for leaks from the grand jury and the special prosecutor's office.
The only new media star
was Matt Drudge, who
gained his notoriety by posting a story on his Internet
site. The story in question was developed by Newsweek,
which wanted more information before publishing it.
Drudge got his hands on an early draft and posted it. It wasn't information that he commissioned or developed -- and yet the last I heard, he was claiming some sort of high moral ground, saying that Newsweek had no right to withhold that information from the public.
For one thing, Newsweek has the right to publish or not
publish whatever it damn well pleases -- that's what the
First Amendment is all about. For another, Newsweek
doubtless desired to break that story, but wanted to get
confirmations, denials and the other accouterments of a
major story. In journalism classes, they always tell you
to try to get it first,
but always to get it
right.
Drudge seems to think that anyone who cares about the
get it right
part is immoral, that all journalists
have a duty to publish gossip as soon as they hear it.
Fortunately, he is a mere flash who will soon be as obscure
as Arthur Kent, the Scud stud
who had his 15 minutes
of fame eight years ago.
To put this another way, Larry Flynt is a paragon of virtue compared to Drudge. Rather than merely pass on rumors or grand-jury leaks, Flynt saw the possibility of a story about congressional hypocrisy, then found sources, pursued their stories and got solid confirmation.
He did what journalists are supposed to do, and if Matt Drudge represents the future of journalism, then I want to get into another line of work, like pornography or procuring driver's license photos, so that I'm not embarrassed to tell my kids what I do.
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