[HN Gopher] How to spot a good fake ID
___________________________________________________________________
How to spot a good fake ID
Author : klevertree
Score : 216 points
Date : 2021-07-22 22:55 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (trevorklee.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (trevorklee.com)
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Weird that ID's still don't have, say, QR-codes or something
| similar with a cryptographic-signature to verify that the info's
| accurate. Or chips like with credit-cards. Lots of different ways
| stuff like that could be done.
|
| Holograms and such seem like a clumsy strategy.
| mcherm wrote:
| The issue is that those are mechanisms to validate a card
| against a central authority. But most usages are in cases where
| the ID is self-validating and cannot be authenticated against a
| central authority.
| kadoban wrote:
| With pubkey crypto you could easily allow validating with a
| self-contained device. That's just a signature check.
|
| The obvious way to do that has some drawbacks though, the big
| one being that if the private key ever leaks, your whole
| system is now useless and needs to be replaced (cards,
| verifiers and all). And you'd need to either generate all the
| cards in one place, or the private key would need to be
| available in multiple places. Not really a recipe for success
| long-term.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| > The obvious way to do that has some drawbacks though, the
| big one being that if the private key ever leaks, your
| whole system is now useless and needs to be replaced
| (cards, verifiers and all).
|
| That's a problem addressed with [public key infrastructure
| (PKI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastruct
| ure).
|
| In practice, it could be done pretty securely and cheaply.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > That's a problem addressed with [public key
| infrastructure (PKI)]
|
| I don't really agree.
|
| Yes, you want to use PKI. But it doesn't solve the
| problem of needing to immediately update all your
| equipment when there's a key leak, and replace or
| reprogram a huge number of cards. PKI just makes things a
| bit smoother in general.
|
| My suggestion is pretty simple. Have a few different
| locations that sign keys, have them all sign each card,
| and require multiple valid signatures. Exact details up
| to the implementer, but that way you could have at least
| one key leak without causing any user hassle.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| There's been multiple efforts towards some type of PKI
| verification of driver's licenses, but they've all failed
| to gain adoption for various reasons. Perhaps the simplest
| is this one: driver's licenses are not really intended by
| the state to be verifiable offline, as in basically every
| case the state has to verify a driver's license they will
| need to perform an online check anyway (for revocation, for
| example, if not also for warrants and the whole NCIC
| gamut). So the level of motivation for the state (and more
| specifically the AAMVA which promulgates standards for
| driver's license) to implement this kind of verification is
| pretty low. Add to that the moral hazard of normalizing
| digital imaging of driver's licenses (which is a real
| concern as "digital ID" schemes or anything that looks like
| one face significant political opposition in the US) and
| practical challenges (cryptographic signatures compact
| enough to add to the PDF417 are possible but not as well
| standardized, the federal government has consolidated
| cryptographic ID efforts on ICC "smart cards" which are
| costly) and it's just a hard sell.
| porker wrote:
| > cryptographic signatures compact enough to add to the
| PDF417 are possible but not as well standardized
|
| Do you know which are compact enough while remaining
| secure? I looked into this recently and failed to find
| one. Went for online verification in the end so data
| being signed was minimal.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| [Removed: Mistaken information.]
| nemo1618 wrote:
| Signatures aren't just uniformly-distributed entropy,
| like hashes are; they encode real information, e.g.
| elliptic curve coordinates. Hashing and truncating the
| signature would destroy that information, meaning the
| signature could no longer be verified.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Ick, yeah, you're right: might've been thinking hash-
| then-sign, but backwards.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| An ECDSA signature for example can be represented as 64
| bytes with good security, and adding 64 bytes to a PDF417
| isn't too big of a deal. That's basically just the curve
| coordinates and nothing else though, so the verifying
| device has to either guess-and-check or use some other
| data to figure out what public key it should be verifying
| against, and there's no expiry or anything like that. In
| practice, now that we have elliptic curve algorithms that
| tend to allow very compact keys at a good security level,
| the bigger problem is less the actual cryptographic
| signature and more all the PKI metadata that normally
| needs to be tied to a signature to make it useful
| (especially if you have multiple levels of authority,
| which you probably want to or revocation becomes a huge
| problem). There are ways around carrying around PKI
| metadata with the signature (i.e. a normal x509
| certificate) but there are tradeoffs and it's not like a
| well-established standard, which tends to make government
| organizations uncomfortable about adoption.
| kuschku wrote:
| In the EU, most states have eID systems. The German system
| is as follows:
|
| You've got a central agency, responsible for IDs, paperwork
| and currency, with a root key in an HSM. From this key,
| intermediate certificates are generated for each ID
| production plant. This HSM is kept offline in the vault
| that also keeps the mint masters for coin and currency
| production.
|
| The ID production plants then sign IDs with their
| intermediate key, also kept in an HSM, and tack their own
| certificate on.
|
| The ID now has an X.509 certificate, or rather multiple
| ones, with a certificate chain going back to the root
| certificate of the agency.
|
| Now if you send a correctly signed request via NFC to the
| ID, the ID will generate a response in its own HSM, and
| return a signed response with the whole certificate chain.
|
| Such a request can be "given the following date, is the
| owner of this ID above 16?" (18, 21 are also available).
|
| The request can also be "what is the full personal data for
| this person?"
|
| To send such a request, the request also needs to be
| signed, also with a certificate chain going back to the
| same root CA.
|
| The agency provides certificates with different features
| enabled or disabled to different users. e.g. a bar can get
| one that allows them to query IDs for "are you 18 today?"
| with a certain limit of how many requests per ID they can
| make per day (the ID verifies that) to avoid brute forcing
| the actual birthday.
|
| This is for example used in fully automated cash-operated
| cigarette dispensers.
|
| You can also get a certificate that allows you to request
| all ID data, but is restricted to your own ID.
| zeeZ wrote:
| From my anecdotal experience working with those cards,
| they'll fail and brick early into your brute force
| attempt anyway.
|
| The card can use the date in the certificate provided to
| approximate the current date, and will remember the last
| good date it saw, so you can't just decide to change the
| date and do another x years old check. AFAIK there is no
| "rate limit" for those.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| What prevents someone from checking an ID against a central-
| authority?
|
| I mean, doing so online isn't necessary -- there're plenty of
| validation mechanisms that could work offline, and presumably
| they'd be useful in the odd cases in which internet-
| connectivity isn't available. But internet-connectivity tends
| to be pretty accessible in most scenarios where an ID would
| need to be checked anyway, right?
| spoonjim wrote:
| They do. I've been to bars where they verify the 2D barcode on
| the back. I don't know if you need to be a bar to get the
| verification system.
| _moof wrote:
| It's just a copy of the info printed on the card, in a
| standard barcode format.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| In the US, the 2D barcode (PDF417) contains no signature,
| only a plaintext duplicate of the information on the face of
| the card. It's intended purely for convenience. Nonetheless,
| it's not too uncommon for bouncers to use an app to read the
| barcode because counterfeiters will surprisingly often
| generate the barcode improperly (causing failure to parse
| against the AAMVA specification) or outright duplicate it
| from another ID such that none of the information matches the
| face of the card. The specification for the barcode payload
| is a bit obtuse but it's available online and there are
| plenty of libraries out there for parsing and generating
| them.
|
| Most US driver's licenses also include a 1D barcode along the
| top edge that contains just an excerpt of the information
| from the face. This is also according to an AAMVA standard.
| Animats wrote:
| "QR and Barcode Scanner" from F-Droid will decode those
| 2-dimensional barcodes on a CA driver's license. It's
| mostly the same info that's on the front. You see it as
| lines of raw unparsed text with that program.
| nemo1618 wrote:
| Sorry, pet peeve of mine -- "obtuse" means "slow or dim-
| witted;" you want "abstruse," which means "difficult to
| comprehend."
|
| Granted, using "obtuse" in this way is apparently becoming
| more common, so this is probably a losing battle...
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obtuse#note-
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Pretty sure it's just a public data format with the same info
| as on the physical license. The design specs are here:
| https://www.aamva.org/DL-ID-Card-Design-Standard/
|
| Decent quality fakes will have the correct info in the
| barcode as well. I guess it weeds out the cheap ones at
| least? At my cousin's sorority they'd just find a similar-
| looking girl over 21 who would "lose" her ID and request a
| replacement, not sure how a bouncer would be able to detect
| that.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Pretty much all passports do have a chip you can read using
| NFC. The data on the chip is signed using a CSCA (Country
| Signer Certificate Authority), so you can validate the data. On
| most documents you can also perform a challenge-response
| protocol to determine the chip is authentic and not a copy (you
| can read the public key but not the private key).
|
| There are free smartphone apps available for both Android and
| iOS that let you read and verify the chip.
| blensor wrote:
| I worked at a project on automated border gates a while back and
| those automated scanners are really interesting.
|
| They usually scan the document in several stages using different
| light sources to check UV/ IR / visible light features and
| sometimes illuminated from different angles but usually with a
| fixed camera position.
|
| This leads to the interesting effect that you could present
| different images in quick succession to show the correct image
| for each spectrum even if you don't have a document that can
| appear correct in all spectral ranges at once.
|
| You can't obviously do that by hand but we ended up using a
| display (even a high dpi smartphone) that synced up to the
| scanning process for security testing.
|
| [1] if you are interested
|
| [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6975597
| alexcnwy wrote:
| Very cool. Can you give some more detail on how you process the
| different images?
| blensor wrote:
| Well we cheated a bit there as we used the images the
| document scanner recorded and put that on a phone.
|
| So we had exactly the images the scanner expected, but it is
| not an unreasonable assumption that a document forger would
| have access to such a device.
|
| In the final version we had it running on an Android device.
| We did know the exact scanning sequence and timing (first IR,
| second visible light, third UV exposure) so the phone showed
| the IR image by default and used the brightness sensor to
| detect the first flash of the recording, then an internal
| timer ran to determine when to switch to the second and third
| image.
|
| If I recall correctly the digital part was done with JMRTD
| [1] flashed to an empty smart card
|
| The certificate check obviously would have failed, but as
| mentioned in a comment above that is not always an issue.
|
| [1] https://jmrtd.org/about.shtml
| closeparen wrote:
| Interesting that an automated scanner would care so much about
| the physical security measures. It's not sufficient to look up
| the passport number to find the details it _should_ contain, or
| check the digital signature?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I assume it would part of layered defense, and specifically
| targeting someone replicating credentials.
| user5994461 wrote:
| >>> It's not sufficient to look up the passport number to
| find the details it should contain, or check the digital
| signature?
|
| That would require access to the passport database of each
| country and 24/7 network connectivity.
|
| For border control in an airport, maybe it's possible to
| operate in these conditions. However the product certainly
| has more use cases.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Checking a digital signature (as proposed by GP) would not
| require database access or network connectivity.
|
| If the biographic details were cryptographically signed,
| you'd need only a public key for each passport-issuing
| country.
|
| I'm not sure how you'd deal with key revocation in
| situations like this.
| blensor wrote:
| It's actually done this way. Back in 2014 there were
| basically two ways to get the public certs. Donwload them
| from each government site individually or use the only
| PKI infrastructure available for this task which was
| pretty expensive and did not have all certs either.
|
| And as far as I recall signatures were only checked for
| being signed by a valid key not if the key matches the
| country of origin. So someone in country A could sign a
| forges passport from country B (but not 100% sure on that
| anymore)
| blensor wrote:
| Revoking a CSCA especially towards the end of the
| lifetime (passports are usually valid for 5 to 10 years)
| is probably not economically possible since it would
| invalidate millions of passports all at once so you have
| to fall back to optical features anyway
| blensor wrote:
| Exactly. And there would be a lot more hurdles since
| countries generally don't give such access without good
| reason.
|
| Another issue would be reliability. Doing an attack on the
| network to break the verification backend would cause a
| fallback to manual border control which is a problem if
| your whole process is already relying on the automated
| gates and you have scaled back the available agents.
|
| Doing that during a time with very high demand would allow
| an "attacker" to use it to get more people through due to
| less attention of the border guards.
|
| If I remember correctly the usual timespan a border agent
| is considered to be attentive enough is 2 hours, at which
| point they would need to be rotated out, but if your demand
| has unexpectedly increased so much that you operate twice
| the manual gates you don't have the people for the normal
| rotation
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Observation: China, a few years back. The train system
| has been going from a paper ticket approach to a ID-based
| approach. (You've had to show ID to buy the paper tickets
| anyway.) They also work on a system where you scan your
| ticket upon leaving, also--it catches someone who rides
| further than they paid for.
|
| At the time some cities were fully converted and were
| willing to accept (with some difficulty, the scanners
| were picky!) our passports others only had the local ID
| readers. (The local ID has embedded RFID, you just touch
| it to the scanner plate and the gate opens.) However,
| others were not--a couple of times security simply let us
| out without doing any sort of check.
| closeparen wrote:
| I had no idea passport control would be offline in this
| day and age. TIL. Thanks!
| blensor wrote:
| Not sure how much I am able to say, it's already several
| years old but the bottom line is there are so many different
| documents that it's not always possible to check the digital
| signature, either because it does not have a digital
| signature (we are not only talking about passports but all
| possible documents), can't read it because the chip is
| damaged, or has no way to verify the signature because the
| scanner does not have the certificate chain. And there are
| attacks where you simply forward the communication over the
| network to a remote reader so that the gate thinks it's
| talking to a real passport but the physical passport is
| somewhere else.
|
| And older passports use weaker hash functions to verify the
| integrity of the data
| [deleted]
| jagrsw wrote:
| It's interesting to observe the process of bartenders or club
| bouncers in USA verifying foreign driver licenses, esp. if
| someone looks like they are in their 30s or older.
|
| A person turns the driver license around a few times, too quick
| to read anything on it and gives it back to you, or they ask you
| where the birth date is and quickly check whether the four-digit
| number you pointed them to is smaller than whatever the current
| cut-off date is.
| daneel_w wrote:
| The item you referred to as "fake passport" is a Swedish national
| ID card. While not a passport, it will double as one when
| traveling _within the European Union_. How did you come across
| it?
| xioxox wrote:
| I think he's wrong about reflectivity on passports too. My
| European passport picture page is extremely reflective - it's
| hard to read anything on it at the wrong angles, and the
| reflective holograms make my picture very hard to see. The
| photo is printed with very low contrast and uses an online
| user-supplied photo, too!
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I wish more jurisdictions would make age verification cards. A
| photo of me, the police logo, and the words _This person is
| plenty old enough_.
|
| I don't want to be identified. I just want a beer.
| JackFr wrote:
| The biography "Genius" has a picture of Richard Feynman's New
| Mexico drivers license from WWII. Under name it just shows
| "Engineer #123" (can't remember actual number) and address is
| "Special List".
| Maursault wrote:
| Checks out. [1]
|
| [1] https://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e201157
| 1d0...
| otterley wrote:
| "Occupation: Housewife"
| teddyh wrote:
| To quote myself1:
|
| This would be great and all, but all parties who are in a
| position to choose to implement this kind of system or to keep
| the status quo are already motivated to keep (and expand) the
| existing systems, for any number of reasons. Everybody (except
| the end users) loves to keep that juicy metadata and incidental
| logs of everything.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26538052#26560821
| Aachen wrote:
| There's an app for that!
|
| I Reveal My Attributes (IRMA) proves things like age without
| giving up SSN or whatever. I don't know the details but I've
| been hearing about it from nerds for years so I'm assuming
| there's a solid signature scheme behind it or some way to prove
| you're not carrying your of-age friend's phone.
|
| Doesn't seem like anyone's interested in rolling this out
| though... something something proof of vaccination in the EU
| without compromising privacy, perfect solution mumble mumble...
| nazrulmum10 wrote:
| On your real ID, the laminate is almost unnoticeable, except for
| a slight glossy sheen. It ends at the end of the card, although
| if you look very closely at the edge of the card you can see two
| or three layers: the laminate, the card stock, and possibly
| another layer of laminate.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| There are also several security features only visible with UV and
| IR light. Any good bouncer will have at least a UV light within
| reach.
| dpifke wrote:
| When I was 19, I had a perfectly valid California ID card for my
| 23 year old cousin who kinda looked like me. A bouncer in Seattle
| confiscated it because "every California license I've seen says
| 'driver's license,' not ID card."
| l33t2328 wrote:
| That's theft. They can't just take your property
| michaelt wrote:
| Ah, but it wasn't his property, it was his 23 year old
| cousin's property.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Unfortunately, many bars are essentially criminal enterprises
| anyway. No concern of theirs. Not unlike towing companies
| that serve parking lots!
| rdtwo wrote:
| I mean really the objective is to show that you put in an effort
| that was good enough for the state inspector. Most places that
| check ID don't care if it's actually fake just that an effort was
| made
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| How do they know that some of these issues aren't just
| manufacturing defects? Once you suspect that an id is fakeis
| there a way to confirm it!
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > You'll notice it's smooth with rounded corners. This is because
| your ID is laser cut.
|
| Does laser cutting give better surface finish than machine cut? I
| thought it was opposite
| Igelau wrote:
| So I'm thinking my state-issued driver's license might be fake.
| Some of its qualities:
|
| - Does not have any raised lettering
|
| - Has weird edges around my hair from the shadows that look just
| like the ones the author called Photoshop evidence
|
| - The hologram looks like crap. Nice to see that Massachusetts
| doesn't skimp on it the way $STATE does.
|
| - The aspect ratio of the picture is squished because they just
| used my last photo. COVID, you know.
|
| - Clearly says "NOT FOR REAL ID PURPOSES" which I know refers to
| "RealID", but still makes me laugh.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The top of my ID photo has a fade-to-background, but I'm bald
| and white so the top of the photo loses contrast faster than
| the designer probably expected and as a result it looks like I
| am vanishing into thin air.
| kmano8 wrote:
| Run for it Marty!
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| He said he was being erased from existence, not that it was
| the Libyans to whom he sold a shoddy bomb casing full of
| used pinball machine parts!
|
| edit: some folks need to go rewatch _Back to the Future_...
| noduerme wrote:
| I feel like my shadow is only half as dark as other people's.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| A large portion of states contract their driver's license
| printing equipment (on a maintenance & operation basis) to the
| same company, which I believe used to be a division of Polaroid
| but has been bought and sold since then. So many of the norms
| that this article mentions are specific to that equipment and
| to many US states, but not to all of them. There are still some
| states that use relatively commodity (uncontrolled) plastic
| stock and transfer or sublimation printers, that you can get on
| eBay used for under a thousand. You can imagine that results in
| more counterfeiting which encourages states to switch to the
| more expensive and controlled equipment and stock.
|
| Raised print is particularly variable, a lot of states don't
| use raised print. As I understand it, it's done by a specific
| machine that is especially costly (the rest of the laser
| features mostly come already done from the stock manufacturer).
|
| Edit: it's L-1 Identity Solutions. I believe the ID card
| printing component used to be with Identix before they merged
| with a newer company to form L-1.
| cbsks wrote:
| My DC license from ~2012 was just 2 decals stuck to a white
| plastic card. No raised lettering. The front decal started to
| peel back after a few years. It sure looked like a fake ID.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This kind of leads into the thing I was wondering about when
| reading the article: What about false positives? What are the
| consequences of denying entry to someone who did, in fact,
| have a real ID? Could they potentially sue the bar?
| bigyikes wrote:
| I don't think there would be any standing for a lawsuit.
| The bar can deny entry or kick you out for any reason.
| You're not entitled to entry.
| funkdified wrote:
| Temporary paper IDs are issued in some states while you await
| receiving your real ID in the mail. They are easy to Photoshop
| and print and must be accepted with a photo ID with matching
| name, like a college ID.
| vzaliva wrote:
| If you talking about temporary driver licenses, at least in
| californoa they say "NOT A VERIFIED IDENTIFICATION" on the top.
| funkdified wrote:
| Yes, that's what I'm talking about. It's possible that things
| have changed since I was in college ;)
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| You can use the temporary drivers licenses as driver
| licenses (for actual driving), but I don't think they are
| generally accepted in other situations.
| funkdified wrote:
| Once upon a time, it worked very well.
| ghaff wrote:
| Once upon a time, alcohol usage among college students--
| regardless of age--was something that a blind eye was
| mostly turned to, including most local bars and the like
| to say nothing of the college itself. From what I can
| tell, this has mostly changed a _lot_.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Having read this, I went and found my Global Entry[1] card. It
| has remarkably few of the security features mentioned: it's
| clearly machine cut and has visible laminate layers, and the
| raised features are incredibly easy to miss. I've used this card
| to enter and leave the United States multiple times, but every
| bartender thinks it's fake.
|
| Oh, and my picture on it is laughably bad. I distinctly remember
| the border agent using a consumer Logitech webcam to take it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Entry
| zaychikk wrote:
| I have one of these too (including the terrible logitech
| portrait) and I think the important verification going on is
| that 1) once you're approved, your passport number is linked
| and the book can be cross-referenced and 2) I believe DHS is
| now doing facial recognition at global entry terminals, which
| does away with the card totally.
| [deleted]
| cafard wrote:
| When I was in college, the laws were not quite so strict as they
| are now: in that state, persons over 18 could purchase 3.2 beer
| (3.2% alcohol by volume). Still, a fraternity or fraternities
| would bring in a fake-ID manufacturer every fall. Somebody on the
| student paper wanted to do an article on it. But his boss or
| bosses had had such a fake id. The article never ran.
|
| Let me add that the age of drinking was set to 21 across the
| country because the Reagan administration did not wish to make
| airbags mandatory. It was argued that raising the drinking age
| would produce an equivalent or greater savings in life compared
| to mandating airbags in new cars. The Department of
| Transportation could withhold funds from any state that allowed
| those under 21 to purchase alcoholic beverages.
|
| Those of you younger than I am will know how much effect raising
| the drinking age really had. My impression is, Not much.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| >Those of you younger than I am will know how much effect
| raising the drinking age really had. My impression is, Not
| much.
|
| I think it had a very negative effect of creating a cohort of
| second-class citizens, who had the responsibilities of
| adulthood but not the rights.
| [deleted]
| enkid wrote:
| Actually, a quick search shows the Minimum Legal Drinking Age
| (MLDA) of 21 has had a pretty significant impact in reducing
| drinking and drunk driving in those under 21. [0]
|
| [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20497803/
| pas wrote:
| Not surprising. This seems like a big externality of car-only
| transportation.
| dhosek wrote:
| Wisconsin was one of the states with a drinking age of 18 while
| Illinois had 21. The border between the states was referred to
| as a "blood border" because of the large number of drunk
| driving fatalities of 18-20 year olds crossing the border to be
| able to legally buy alcohol.
|
| So, yes, the fact that the drinking age was 21 didn't prevent
| me from consuming excessive quantities of alcohol during my
| first three years of college1, but it also eliminated
| differential situations like Illinois-Wisconsin which had a
| measurable impact on reducing DUI fatalities, so it was a bit
| more than not much.
|
| ---
|
| 1. During the late 80s, the dorm soda machines were stocked by
| the students. Many of the machines had a slot dedicated to beer
| (often a "random" slot where you took your chances. You might
| get something good, you might get Coors Light. The soda machine
| of the era were capable of dispensing glass bottles of beers
| even though they were designed for cans. Mostly capable.
| Occasionally, your 60 cents would end up buying you a pile of
| broken glass and beer foam. Regardless, having campus being the
| only place to feasibly buy alcohol meant that drunk driving
| incidents were rare to non-existent.
| grp000 wrote:
| I went to college in 2010, and it's unreal to hear about beer
| vending machines.
| TylerE wrote:
| I'm a bit older than you - maybe a decade.
|
| I can't beleive beer vending, either, but I do remember
| cigarette machines.
| dhosek wrote:
| The beer vending was semi-underground. The machines were
| kept in semi-private locations (dorm lounge or a store-
| room that only students had access to), administration
| looked the other way and if service was needed from the
| vending machine company, the beer would be removed and
| replaced with soda for the duration of the service visit
| (and the labels on the buttons changed to more innocent
| choices). On-campus underage drinking was widely
| tolerated. My cohort was probably the last to have such
| freedom. There were a number of serious alcohol poisoning
| incidents and the lax approach to on-campus alcohol came
| to an end in the course of the 90s.
| ghaff wrote:
| I graduated in Massachusetts in 1979. I've never seen a
| beer vending machine.
|
| But even after age 21 drinking came in in the state, most
| of the bars where I went to school were perfectly fine
| with a college ID with no age on it. (And my drivers
| license at the time was an unlaminated piece of index
| stock with no photo.)
| watertom wrote:
| Graduated in 85. Drinking age was 21 in my state.
|
| First two years, any student could sign out the dorm lounge
| and with $40 and the school would provide 1/2 keg of beer,
| $80 would get you (2) 1/2 kegs, $120 etc.
|
| Spring weekend, not break, First two years $5 wrist band
| let you drink Friday, Saturday and Sunday, regardless of
| age. The school provided the beer, and a constant run of
| bands on 3 alternating stages.
|
| The end of my 2nd year, there was a really bad drunk
| driving accident with 3 underage students killed, the
| school stopped sponsoring alcohol at events. They also
| started enforcing drinking age laws.
| fredophile wrote:
| Is that any different from the large number of DUIs in and
| around dry counties? If you make it so that people have to
| drive somewhere else to drink then you're going to have some
| of those people making the return trip drunk.
| jfoutz wrote:
| I had a professor from Germany that strongly recommended
| drinking when young, and driving when old. I think there is a
| lot of wisdom there.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I learned to drive the ride on lawn mower when I was 6. I was
| small and light enough that the dead man switch sometimes
| shut off the mower when I went over a bump. I learned to
| drive the farm truck when I was about 12. I literally looked
| through the steering wheel rather than over it. At that age,
| it was still a big scary machine that I treated with respect.
| By the time I could legally drive on public roads, I was
| quite comfortable and confident with handling a vehicle. I
| already knew what I could get away with and what I couldn't.
| I think there is a lot to be said for learning to drive
| before you are a stupid teenager.
| pas wrote:
| The problem comes when confident drivers meet their new
| best friend, alcohol.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| There is a difference between confident because you
| actually know what you are doing and confident because
| you are a dumb teenager. I don't know, maybe I was
| unusually smart, but I never dared mixing alcohol with
| driving.
| pas wrote:
| Most people avoid accidents, so anecdotes are likely to
| skew toward "no effect". But the incidence of
| recklessness is still higher in young people, hence in
| countries where a lot of young people drive, there will
| be a bump in the DUI accident numbers for young people.
|
| My argument is that unless young people have experience
| with both, it's unlikely that there won't be an initial
| increase in DUI accidents until they get that experience.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Yes, and my argument is that you can reduce the risks of
| that recklessness by teaching them about driving (or for
| that matter about alcohol) early, rather than treating
| them like children.
| JackFr wrote:
| What do you mean? Self-reported ability typically goes
| way up.
| pas wrote:
| Yes, exactly that. After a few beers everyone's gangsta
| and feel like they are going to beat the Fast & Furious
| franchise on the road home. Even drunk driving takes
| experience, and young people don't have it, no matter
| what they start with (driving or drinking).
| wil421 wrote:
| Do you have a source? That's never been the story I've been
| told. MADD and a few other groups lobbied for the age to be 21
| and they tied it to federal highway funds. It's one of the
| reason Louisiana had really bad roads, they held out for longer
| or so the story goes.
|
| Mandatory airbags and seatbelts happened at the same time but
| MADD was focused on the alcohol part. 21-24 year olds had the
| highest rate of drunk driving but 37 year olds were the most to
| die in alcohol related crashes.[1]1993
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/4/10/reagans-sober-l...
| mshroyer wrote:
| This author is almost as skilled as the staff at my local AMC
| Theatre, where I was a bystander to a woman getting denied a beer
| on account of her Washington, D.C. driver's license not being a
| "state-issued ID".
| blhack wrote:
| Oh my god that is either hilariously stupid, or some _top_ tier
| trolling.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| It's technically accurate, and some _serious_ bullshit:
|
| 'No taxation without representation. But also, no beer until
| representation.'
| ghaff wrote:
| I haven't encountered this in years and years and especially
| with REALID standardization I assume it's vanishingly rare,
| but driver's licenses used to vary enormously from state to
| state and many didn't even have photos. So I assume the logic
| on requiring in-state government ID would be that a store
| clerk had no way of knowing whether an out-of-state license
| was a blatant forgery or not.
| alibarber wrote:
| I don't think they meant 'in' state, more so 'issued by a
| state' which DC isn't.
|
| I always thought it meant state as in 'nation state' - so a
| passport would count.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's usually "government issued photo ID." I have seen
| (but not for many years) cases where a store wouldn't
| accept out of state ID for alcohol purchases.
| huy-nguyen wrote:
| Then you probably haven't heard of airport TSA agents turning
| away people with New Mexico license, thinking that New Mexico
| is in Mexico and not the US.
| Gunax wrote:
| So... no passports or green cards either?
| Leherenn wrote:
| Or foreigners.
| martinpw wrote:
| I remember trying to buy beer in a grocery store in Arizona
| as a visitor using my passport as ID. The cashier called out
| the manager to decide if they could serve me. The manager
| said no.
| elygre wrote:
| If you want the details on security features of EU/EEC drivers
| licenses, the European Union has published a handbook for that:
|
| https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-96809-ea.pd...
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| The thing that gets me is that in order to get one of these dandy
| IDs with the holograms, micro lettering, and laser cutting is a
| birth certificate and an electric bill. My birth certificate is
| hand typed on an IBM Selectric typewriter on common security
| paper and the only real security feature is the embossed emblem
| of the rural county of the rural state I was born - and unless
| you have a sample to compare with you really can't validate. Most
| utility bills are printed on cheap lightweight paper by a common
| laser printer and the only security feature might be a bit of
| color or a slightly non-standard size. Once you have a drivers
| license you are only a fee payment away from a passport.
|
| Granted I might get a lot more scrutiny if I walk into the DMV
| wearing an El Tri t-shirt and speaking with an accent but barring
| that it seems a very low bar to turn a crappy hand-typed 50s
| birth certificate into a modern secure ID.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Do they actually just go by what it says on the paper, or do
| they contact the organisation which issued it and check their
| records?
| tedmiston wrote:
| In my state, they just look at the birth certificate and
| utility bill for a minute or less.
|
| However, they may make a copy of the utility bill to keep on
| file, but my memory is fuzzy about that part.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| So how do you prove you actually passed the exam, if all you
| need for a drivers license is a birth certificate and a utility
| bill?
| tedmiston wrote:
| That is for the renewal.
|
| I suspect this varies by state, and I can't speak for other
| states, but in Ohio the initial driver license also requires:
| a knowledge test; vision screening; and a driving skills test
| consisting of two parts: (1) maneuverability, (2) on road.
|
| Surprisingly I don't believe there is any updated vision test
| requirement on renewals once you have a valid license.
| djrogers wrote:
| For the states I'm familiar with, you'd also need a Social
| Security Number that matched the birth certificate, and a few
| also require a thumbprint. If you attempted to get an ID card
| for Joe Smith with SSN 123-45-6789, but he already has one,
| your photo also wouldn't match the existing digital photo on
| record.
|
| You would likely be able to get an ID card issued in someone
| else's name, but it's not as easy as typing up a fake birth
| certificate and electric bill.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I've never seen a birth certificate with a social security
| number. If you've ever had a child, you'll know that you
| don't apply for a SSN until long after birth and the issuance
| of a birth certificate.
|
| Source: three different states, personal experience
| maxerickson wrote:
| You are over-interpreting.
|
| The SSN has a name attached to it. That has to match the
| birth certificate (probably with some rules about other
| records for name changes and the like).
| Igelau wrote:
| I forget what it was my wife and I were applying for, but we
| had to produce a "certified copy" of our marriage license. We
| were just like "yeah, whatever" and toted along the real thing.
| This was shot down because they _needed a certified copy_ ,
| which turned out to be a completely bland and unremarkable
| printout that could have come from anywhere.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| That's how I feel every time I get asked for a utility bill
| as proof of anything. Security theater at its finest.
| xmprt wrote:
| I suppose attempting that would get you a much higher quality
| fake however now your fake as well as your address is recorded
| in the system and you're screwed if they ever catch on. Use
| someone else's address and it's a federal crime if you go
| through their mail. I also think there's probably some higher
| level of identity fraud for messing with government officials
| as opposed to just messing with a bouncer at a bar.
| avereveard wrote:
| Here in good old Europe you either produce a valid ID to obtain
| one (renewals) or you need testimony of two person with valid
| ID (i.e. theft) or two parents (traditional birth) or one
| parent ID and a certificate of birth, but the one signed by the
| hospital, not the birth registration certificate from the
| government (single parent birth) or a valid visa and a valid
| foreign ID (immigration)
|
| Seems to cover about all cases and pin your identity to
| previously verified identities recursively
| siva7 wrote:
| in most countries faking especially a birth cert alongside
| other official ID documents is a serious criminal offense.
| certainly not worth it for getting beer.
| isatty wrote:
| People who fake birth certs aren't doing it for the beer.
| catillac wrote:
| Surely one could not just make up a totally fake birth
| certificate from nothing and have any licensing office take
| that seriously? Surely there are additional electronic records
| or other security features?
| [deleted]
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| I know you can purchase books of identity documents from
| various locations and years and those give details of the
| various security features that were present and material
| samples to compare with but I've never encountered anyone
| using them. Usually it's just making sure I have all the
| documents, compare with my application, then go stand in line
| for a picture.
|
| Though when I applied for the trusted traveler program they
| did keep my documents for a few weeks so they might have been
| doing that sort of verification.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| When I did Customer Service at Blizzard EU many years ago
| they had a product with a catalogue of samples of different
| passports and identity documents which we could use to
| compare with the image we had received from someone
| claiming ownership of an account.
|
| It was most amusing when the document you were trying to
| validate had the exact same person's photograph as in the
| sample document.
| tedmiston wrote:
| I'm sure an electronic database of birth certificates exists
| _somewhere_ to handle the case where an original is lost. But
| I do not think the BMV / DMV does anything to validate your
| birth certificate itself electronically.
| djrogers wrote:
| No, one could not do that. You'd need at least a real name
| with a valid SSN who's birthplace and DOB matches what you're
| trying to get issued. Definitely possible, but more work than
| just completely faking up a couple of papers.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah it's cross-referenced if possible.
|
| The hot shit is to use a baptismal record instead (accepted
| most anywhere but usually found only for older people).
| User23 wrote:
| How many businesses actually care? Isn't the business a victim of
| fraud if a customer uses dishonest papers to gain admittance?
| Last I knew fraud vitiates everything.
| toast0 wrote:
| Depends. My wife's identity was recently stolen, and the
| fraudster rented an apartment; it's not clear if the fraudster
| showed a fake ID in that process, but they may have. The
| apartment complex is likely going to be out rent for several
| months as this plays out, better vetting could have prevented
| that loss.
|
| If it's a bar, they might be on the hook for underage drinking
| if they don't do a decent job of checking.
|
| (PS, lock your credit reports)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What have they lost?
| evgen wrote:
| > Last I knew fraud vitiates everything.
|
| Not even close. If you take a fake ID to a bar in the US, get
| drunk, drive home and slam into a bus full of nuns just before
| you reach your destination then the bartender who served you
| will need a criminal attorney as well as the bouncer who
| checked IDs at the door and probably the owner of the bar.
| Strict liability applies here.
| lupire wrote:
| Fraud does not vitiate statutory rape of a minor.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Usually in common-law jurisdictions, absolute liability (i.e.
| mens rea is not required and due diligence is not a valid
| defence) cannot legally apply to criminal offences. Is that
| not the case in your jurisdiction?
| tyingq wrote:
| When I was a kid, we would make fake IDs using a huge poster
| board. We used pinstriping meant for cars to make the "grid" that
| all the text went into, rub-on letters for all the text, and a
| highlighter to draw "see through" stuff like the state seal.
| Then, you cut out the space where your photo went and actually
| held it in front of your face. A friend takes photos from various
| distances, then you pick the photo that's closest to the size of
| an actual license. They worked, even with the obvious flaws they
| had, because the bouncers really just wanted plausible proof that
| they had checked.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| The sooner we use PKI for identification in some oauth2 like
| system (where we can choose to redact irrelevant information such
| as our name or address) the better.
|
| Brisbane Australia scans ID cards on entry to nightclubs (I think
| there's a control where if you're booted from one club you're
| barred from all for the night). I'm all for a safe nightlife, but
| good luck asking a bouncer what their data retention, data
| privacy, and operational/technical security are without getting
| laughed out of the cue.
| markzzerella wrote:
| I've left parties because they go to clubs that scan your ID
| and take your photo before you can enter on several occasions.
| Cryptographically verifiable identification is not a good idea,
| regardless of intentions.
| nojito wrote:
| What's wrong with scanning your ID?
| joppy wrote:
| An ID (I'm thinking specifically of a drivers licence in
| Australia) usually contains virtually all information
| anyone would ever need to identify themselves as you over
| the phone - name, address, date of birth, drivers licence
| number, etc. Having someone scan this and save it is not
| something you really want anyone to ever do.
| [deleted]
| wmf wrote:
| I assume they get far more information about you than they
| need.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Then sell it to marketing teams, or send goons to your
| house if they think you're causing trouble, or stalk you.
| gwerbret wrote:
| Hired goons?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Nightclub owners aren't the least shady people, I'm sure
| there's already some on their payrolls so no need for
| more...
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd assume the information on the 2d barcode is the same
| as what's printed on the front. The problem is that you
| have no idea whether a scanner is connected to a larger
| surveillance database. A GDPR-style law and real
| enforcement would go a long way to restoring some
| societal trust in the US. As things stand right now, it's
| prudent to put tape over the 2d barcode and the printed
| ID number, and only remove it when necessary (eg actually
| interacting with the police).
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| There are phone apps that can read the barcode with the
| camera, I've tried them and they have a lot of info, like
| eye color and address.
|
| I wonder if it's legal to print one's own barcode as a
| privacy shield..
| mindslight wrote:
| Well, your address is printed right on the front too. I
| thought eye color was printed on the front, but I guess
| not. So perhaps there are a few fields like that.
|
| I wouldn't think printing out your own 2d barcode with
| some fields masked would be strictly illegal, as long as
| you weren't committing _fraud_ by putting fake info.
|
| Practically though, even just covering mine up with tape
| I've run into a few people who call it a "tampered" ID.
| IIRC this has only happened for situations where I accept
| they're going to require the identification number, so
| I've removed the tape from the printed number on the
| front but not the barcode on the back (because it's
| harder to nicely put the bigger piece of tape back). When
| I hand over my ID I ask them to key in the number instead
| of scanning, and most people will happily do so. But the
| occasional person will get tense and say it's a
| "tampered" ID and refuse to accept it. I've always
| quieted them right down by removing the back tape and
| handing it back to them. But I can imagine if you have a
| different barcode and someone notices it might set off
| similar "serious business" flags that you won't be able
| to assuage so easily.
|
| But if you've got the bandwidth to try it, go ahead.
| Human rights aren't going to defend themselves! Just
| remember to be pleasant in your interactions, and it
| helps to have examples ready of why you want to keep your
| information out of databases.
| Shacklz wrote:
| > Cryptographically verifiable identification is not a good
| idea, regardless of intentions.
|
| Technically not an identification, but Zero-Knowledge-Proofs
| might be the solution to that. If I remember correctly, some
| countries in the EU are looking into this for medical
| prescriptions - proving your eligibility while exposing zero
| information about you.
| vzaliva wrote:
| I had an argument with my local supermarked when they
| insisted on scanning my ID each time I buy beer. To add
| insult to the injusry: I was in my forties at this time with
| grey hair. I stopped shopping there.
| [deleted]
| StopHammoTime wrote:
| They are not as complicated as you think. They don't retain
| your ID, they simply OCR the license number and check against a
| known list of offenders.
| 15155 wrote:
| Absolutely false.
|
| Dispensaries, nightclubs: many if not most all retain
| information parsed from the AAMVA-encoded text within the
| PDF417 barcode on the back.
|
| Most of these devices aren't using OCR, either, because why
| would you when you have a 2D barcode standard?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| How can you tell? Plus, even if they're not as sophisticated
| yet, all it takes is some marketing oxygen-wasters to say
| that they could improve profits/conversions/etc by 1% by
| capturing ID information for this to become reality.
| 15155 wrote:
| It's an advertised feature on this product:
|
| https://patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars
|
| I have no idea where GP lives in that this information
| wouldn't be retained for some reason (in the US.)
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| But PKI still doesn't solve the ,,two people who look similar"
| attack, right?
|
| All PKI can do is ,,this photo matches this information"
| perfectly.
|
| It cannot do ,,this person matches this photo" perfectly.
| gruez wrote:
| You need some sort of smart card/secure element to ensure the
| ID itself can't be duplicated.
| toast0 wrote:
| Duplication isn't needed if I just borrow a similar enough
| looking person's id and return it before they notice.
| shalmanese wrote:
| You could have an optional service where the DMV sends you a
| push notification/SMS every time your ID is scanned.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Yeah correct, but IDs are easily fake able anyway. The
| purpose of ID is to stop low leve falsification, high level
| ID forgery involves bribes for .
|
| Worst comes to it, I'd opt more for biometric verification
| provided the software / hardware is produced by a sane entity
| such as local government and not some seedy nightclub.
| phyalow wrote:
| Arguably PKI can do that exactly if it is paired with a
| facial recognition toolkit... A slippery slope.
| bdhess wrote:
| You could use the PKI's revocation capabilities to ensure
| that each person only had one valid ID.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Yes but what about deliberate borrowing of a PKI from a
| similar looking friend?
| zeeZ wrote:
| The German ID card works something like that. The fields you as
| a vendor are approved for, you can make either required or
| optional server-side. The user can then choose what they want
| to add or to abort process. It can be read either with a pin
| that's printed on it, or with your Personal six digit pin,
| depending on use case.
|
| You can tell it to just do an age check (has completed nth
| year) or a place check (lives in community with x ID) and it'll
| just return yes or no. There's also a pseudonym function that
| returns a unique ID per card+vendor combination (so the same
| vendor can tell it's the same ID again, but a different vendor
| would receive a different ID).
|
| I can't see it used in night clubs though. There's a staggering
| amount of requirements you have to meet in order to receive
| certification to go to one of the handful of service providers
| that meet even more requirements to run a secure server that
| are connected to the PKI allowed to talk to the ID card.
| gumby wrote:
| Why should a bar care? Just do a "decent" enough job to make the
| cops know you're trying.
| runnerup wrote:
| This was how it was done in 2008 at least, when I bartended.
| Our bouncers were very, very good at identifying fake ID's from
| almost any state. Sometimes when they confiscated them, the
| people would call the police and the police would look at the
| ID and hand it back (there's not a lot of verification that can
| be done in the field). This is despite that the ID was, in
| fact, 100% fake - often our friends who were staff at other
| bars who were drinking as "regular" customers could confirm
| that they admitted in private it was fake afterwards.
|
| Depending on the night we'd instruct the bouncers to be either
| more strict or less strict about checking ID's. Everyone's
| paycheck came from the tips so if it was too quiet then staff
| might not be able to pay rent. If it was too crazy, staff might
| get hurt.
|
| Yes, technically serving minors is "strict liability" but the
| city police didn't enforce it that way. If someone had a
| reasonable quality fake ID it would let us off the hook as far
| as the usual cops were concerned. Obviously it wouldn't help us
| if the alcohol enforcement agency specifically showed up that
| night (very very rare) or if an underage drinker died in a
| drunk driving accident (never happened thank god).
|
| Our bouncers were better than police at checking fake ID's
| because: 1) they check many orders of magnitude more ID's than
| cops ever do 2) part of our on boarding is to give the new
| bouncers a pile (200+) of fake ID's to study which we had
| because we confiscated them. These included real ID's which we
| confiscated because they were being used by not-the-owner of
| the ID. Then 1-3 months later they are tested against a
| different set of fake/real ID's and needed to get some absurdly
| high % correct.
| Zak wrote:
| > _technically serving minors is "strict liability"_
|
| As an aside, strict liability in criminal law strikes me as
| unjust. There should always be a culpable mental state
| attached to a crime, even if it's just negligence so that
| people are only punished for behavior that the relevant
| legislative authority has deemed _bad_.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You confiscated them? Deny entry, sure, it's your business
| and you have no obligation to risk liability (although as you
| say, there's little risk and you bend the rules when your
| revenues are weak).
|
| Nut how does that give you confiscatory rights? How do you
| come to be exercising police powers and deciding that you can
| take other people's stuff on behalf of your local
| jurisdiction? Is this a legal requirement, and if so, how do
| you justify a) bending the rules as described and b) not
| surrendering the confiscated property to the civil
| authorities?
|
| (I realize you were tending bar, not operating the business,
| yourself.)
| runnerup wrote:
| It varies state-by-state. In my state it was explicitly
| legal for bar staff to confiscate fake ID's.
|
| This has a list of most states' rules on the matter:
| https://law.stackexchange.com/a/41818
| aix1 wrote:
| > These included real ID's which we confiscated because they
| were being used by not-the-owner of the ID.
|
| Wait, how does this work? You (as a private, non-government
| entity) can just confiscate an ID simply because you suspect
| the bearer isn't the person whose ID it is?
| michaelt wrote:
| Presumably the bouncer says "I'm confiscating this, you can
| leave or we can get the cops to sort it out" and anyone
| using a fake ID who isn't dumb chooses the former.
| [deleted]
| runnerup wrote:
| Yes this is exactly what happens, to a "T".
|
| Most of the bars I knew of had their own collections of
| fake ID's. The good ones would use them for training
| purposes and the bad ones would find ways to sell them on
| the black market.
|
| Holding onto them for training purposes may be illegal
| but generally we had very good relationships with the
| police, it wasn't something that would have ever been
| enforced.
|
| To dispel the notion that this was some "bootlicker" bar
| that got special treatment from police, it was the
| actually the most popular bar in a college town very much
| like Berkeley or Austin or Cambridge. When Obama won the
| election the bar was standing room only but the manager
| had the staff give a free shot to everyone in the bar.
| mike_d wrote:
| It doesn't. If you confiscate an ID document you are
| supposed to turn it over to law enforcement. You don't just
| get to build up a collection of other peoples stuff.
|
| In many states _possession_ of a fake ID is a crime, in
| addition to laws that cover use or intent to defraud.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| But what if law enforcement is manufacturing fake ids
| themselves?
|
| That's one of the many ways Trump loyalist Matt Gaetz's
| best buddy pedo-pimp Joel Greenberg got in trouble,
| making fake ids using information from surrendered
| driver's licenses.
|
| https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2020/07/16/joel-
| gree...
|
| >The report claims that some customers came to
| Greenberg's office to surrender their driver's license --
| for instance, when they were receiving a replacement or
| renewal -- with the understanding that their old ID would
| be shredded.
|
| >Instead, federal prosecutors allege that Greenberg used
| the information from at least two IDs, one from Florida
| and one from Puerto Rico, to create a fake driver's
| license that would have his picture on it along with the
| victims' names, date of birth and other pertinent
| information.
|
| >"Joel Micah Greenberg used the surrendered drivers
| licenses that he had taken to cause fake driver licenses
| to be produced that had his photograph but the personal
| information of the victims whose driver licenses he had
| taken," prosecutors wrote.
| runnerup wrote:
| This was explicitly legal to do in our state. Here's a list
| of laws on that state-by-state:
| https://law.stackexchange.com/a/41818
| catillac wrote:
| They get huge fines from the state alcoholic beverage office.
| This is strict liability, and punishment can be gigantic fines
| and revocation of the alcohol selling license. So, intent
| doesn't matter in most states and no matter how real an id
| appeared, selling underage creates these consequences.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Why do bouncers in the US enjoy looking at IDs so much, even for
| OBVIOUSLY adult people? In Austria and Germany, you don't usually
| get asked for your id, unless you look underage AND the
| clerk/bouncer is in the mood to check.
|
| When I was clubbing in New York, the bouncer would even control
| my id very closly when I went back in after a smoke. It was cold,
| he saw me leave, he saw I wasn't wearing more than a t-shirt in
| the cold night. Yet he took 20 seconds to check my passport.
| People tell me I look like 35.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Had this in vegas. But it seems to depend on the bar/staff. One
| would absolutely refuse to serve me without seeing my passport,
| another wouldn't even ask.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Security; e.g. if trouble kicks off it helps to both identify
| people who may have left the scene, and warn entrants that
| facility is in use.
| coldpie wrote:
| The police here send underage people to bars with fake IDs in
| order to try to punish the bars for serving the underage people
| the police sent. Really. The punishments are pretty severe,
| including losing their liquor license for some time or even
| being shut down entirely. So they are pretty rigorous in their
| ID checks. The system works, I guess.
| tedmiston wrote:
| > The police here send underage people to bars with fake IDs
| in order to try to punish the bars for serving the underage
| people the police sent. Really.
|
| Source?
| otterley wrote:
| I don't have a source but I personally visited a restaurant
| that had their license temporarily suspended for serving a
| minor who turned out to be an undercover cop.
| Unsurprisingly these places prefer not to have this fact
| publicized, and it was their first offense, so you're
| unlikely to find stories about it in news articles on the
| internet.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| I don't know about the US, but so-called "test purchases"
| are an extremely well-known practice in the UK and it's not
| the least bit controversial to suggest they happen - and
| everyone knows it if they've ever worked on a bar. I know
| someone who lost his job for failing to ask for ID when the
| customer was a test purchase.
| Aachen wrote:
| That happens in every country with drinking age laws right?
| This can't be what makes the USA different (assuming GP's
| thesis is correct, I've never been to a place that had a
| bouncer let alone to the USA).
| refurb wrote:
| It might have to do with enforcement. Some liquor control
| boards don't give a shit if someone had a fake ID, they will
| fine or shutdown them bar if someone underage comes in.
|
| And I know in my city they'll hire folks who are underage, with
| fake IDs to try and get pdf the checks.
|
| The bar has probably been busted before and told the bouncers
| they'd be fired if they didn't check closely.
|
| Just a guess.
| tedmiston wrote:
| This varies widely by city and state. There are some cities
| where you'll almost never get carded, and others where you'll
| get carded at every single bar.
| Zak wrote:
| The level of scrutiny you're describing sounds unusual for most
| parts of the US, but the broad answer is that the relevant
| enforcement authorities are more aggressive in the US than they
| are in Austria and Germany. This leads to inflexible policies
| so that the establishment's lawyer can more effectively defend
| against prosecution for any failures.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| In your case, I think he was possibly just curious about your
| passport. In the general case, bouncers do this to not seen as
| slacking on the job by their peers or manager.
| uncomputation wrote:
| This is a well designed web site. Kudos
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Minimizing teen drinking is all very well, but I despise the
| permission-seeking society we've ended up with with you have to
| show ID in all kinds of places and beg for permission to exist.
|
| Last winter my wife was ill with a cold. I stuck my credit card
| in my pocket and went to the drugstore to buy a box of Theraflu,
| an over-the counter decongestant. They wouldn't sell it to me
| without ID and when I protested this they grabbed the box and
| told me to get out of the store or they would call over their
| armed security guy. This was a corporate change, I had bought the
| same product many times before without ever being asked for ID.
|
| People are forced to ask permission far more today than a few
| decades ago, and everyone is treated like a suspect if they
| object. I don't know who's more contemptible, the petty
| authoritarians or the people meekly giving up their privacy and
| dignity to get permission to engage in the most ordinary
| activities.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| UK resident here, and I'm pretty sure I've only ever once been
| asked for ID for alcohol -- and that was at a private work
| event where everyone was definitely over 18 (and I was 38 and
| not drinking).
|
| I've never been asked for ID for either OTC or prescription
| medicine, and while I obviously need to present a passport to
| travel internationally, the airline doesn't need to see it. And
| all my recent travel has been domestic, and not needed ID.
|
| (Since I turned 18, the government scheme for when to ask for
| ID for alcohol has ratcheted up from nothing to "Think 21" and
| on to "Think 25" so a younger me would probably have needed to
| show ID at least a bit. But I don't think that's entirely
| unreasonable)
| miracle2k wrote:
| In the UK, you have to show your ID if you want to buy
| scissors.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Nonsense! I bought kitchen scissors from a hardware store
| in the UK a couple of weeks ago (but I'm 65, with a white
| beard; perhaps they'd have tried to card me if I might
| conceivably have been under 18).
| tialaramex wrote:
| No, for two reasons. One, while some retailers might decide
| that "scissors" are really knives and so they'd best act as
| though you're buying a knife that is not the law. So, this
| is not something you "have to" do, it's a store policy,
| like if they won't sell you more than six rolls of toilet
| paper at a time.
|
| Two, if you're old (which unfortunately I am) then your
| apparent age is enough anyway. I do not ordinarily carry
| ID. Nobody stops me buying alcohol, entering nightclubs,
| watching movies, or doing other age-restricted activities,
| because "This person is obviously like, fifty?" is enough.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| There _are_ places with a policy of asking everyone for
| ID -- I know because they 're the only places where _I
| 've_ been asked for ID.
|
| Of course, for both the knife and the alcohol
| regulations, the law is around age. ID is merely the
| mechanism that everyone uses to validate age, as it's
| settled practice that doing so will prove the ID card
| holder's age sufficiently for the purpose of the
| legislation.
| [deleted]
| grawprog wrote:
| It's gotten ridiculous. The drinking age here is 19. Anywhere
| that sells alcohol is required to ID anyone that appears to be
| 30 or under. By the time you're 30 you haven't been 19 for 11
| years.
|
| I've been refused for having expired ID, despite the picture
| very obviously being me, and my age very obviously being well
| over the legal age.
|
| My wife's been refused because apparently her federally issued
| citizenship card, with a photo that showed she was well over
| age wasn't apparently good enough.
|
| I actually remember one time when i was fairly young, early
| 20's, I'd let my license expire because I wasn't driving and
| couldn't be bothered to renew it at the time. I got refused at
| the liquor store and there was an old guy behind me. He just
| started ranting at the cashier about how I'm obviously legal
| age and how you don't need a license to drink and all this
| stuff. The cashier actually relented and sold it to me after,
| but that old guy's rant always stuck with me since.
|
| And, it's made me notice how more and more, it's not even about
| how old you are, it doesn't seem to be about protecting minors,
| it just seems to be a way of training people to provide ID any
| time regardless of the reason.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Why on earth does it matter if your ID is expired?? Do you
| stop being the person on the ID once the expiry date is
| reached?
| dallbee wrote:
| This enables newer cards to have updated security features.
| If there were no expirations, then you'd just make fake ids
| targeting older versions.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've pointed out that my place and date of birth haven't
| changed since the ID expired. The sarcasm is never
| appreciated, but it feels good.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I would suggest that the problem here is corporatism rather
| than authoritarianism. The store will always have made a
| judgement call over whether you were responsible enough to be
| sold certain medications. What seems to have changed is the
| removal of that authority from the local shop workers, which
| has been centralised into a bureaucratic process. Scenarios
| like this are one reason why I believe we should proactively
| bias our economy against large organisations and in favour of
| smaller ones.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Just in case you're unaware of the context of these rules:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Manufacture_of.
| ..
|
| I'd perhaps prefer a world in which many drugs were legally
| sold, which might make this specific issue disappear but even
| then I'm happy that cigarettes and alcohol, and some other
| potentially dangerous items are age restricted.
| isatty wrote:
| From quickly looking at a few random Theraflu products -
| they don't seem to contain pseudo. Though asking a random
| store worker to know that would not be ideal, but a
| pharmacist should have definitely sold them this medicine
| without ID.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They (like many other brands) phased it out to avoid this
| situation, whether it was the case at the time of this
| anecdote is unclear.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd encountered a similar incident some years ago. I was fine
| with _showing_ an ID, but when the clerk then tried to take it
| from my hand, I held it firmly.
|
| I left my purchase at the counter and went elsewhere to buy
| herbal teas.
|
| Subsequent research suggests that few cold remedies are
| effective at all (though decongestants can improve breathing).
| Teas with slippery elm and eucalyptus seem at least somewhat
| effective, don't require IDs, and are not meth precursors.
|
| On why / how older generations may be primed to object: I
| remember reading a science fiction story in the late 1970s /
| early 1980s, a short in a compilation (likey a Hugo or similar
| award collection), in which a data system with universal
| identification system, with one of the designers of the system
| being given the opportunity to opt out.
|
| He does.
|
| I think of that story often.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I couldn't agree more and I see that this is more prevalent in
| the US than most other countries.
|
| I've lived abroad for sometime now and last time I went home to
| California to visit, I went to a restaurant to have a beer and
| dinner with my dad.
|
| I've been gone for so long, I no longer have a drivers license
| or ID except for my passport, which I don't carry around with
| me.
|
| I tried to order a beer and they refused. I was very upset as
| I'm 35 and obviously not a kid. I was just trying to have a
| beer and catch up with my dad.
|
| Just a huge lack of sensibility in the US these days. They
| would never do this in 90% of the world. Unless of course
| you're obviously young.
| mellavora wrote:
| Just to defend the waitstaff at this restaurant-- the law
| could be that if the waiter didn't verify the ID, the waiter
| would be personally liable, fines easily equal to 1-3 months
| income. Also, cops do 'sting' operations where they try to
| persuade waiters to let them buy drinks without showing ID.
|
| This doesn't change your basic premise (the law is nuts),
| rather it extends it (the law is even more nuts than you
| expected).
| ghaff wrote:
| The situation isn't common--I don't know the last time I've
| been asked for ID to purchase alcohol as someone who is
| very obviously not underage--but every now and then you'll
| run across a place that IDs _everyone_. Presumably, they
| 've been busted for selling to underage and management has
| just taken judgement out of the hands of
| waitstaff/bartenders.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| > I despise the permission-seeking society we've ended up with
| with you have to show ID in all kinds of places and beg for
| permission to exist.
|
| If you think it's bad now, wait until they roll out vaccine
| passports.
| kqr wrote:
| I completely agree with you.
|
| Some advice you never asked for: in that situation, protesting
| often makes things worse. Learning a little bit of negotiation
| and sales is an invaluable investment in life.
|
| A simple _you seem concerned about selling this to the wrong
| people_ / _I 'm about to make your day a little bit more
| difficult_ / _you probably think I 'm being unreasonable_ / _is
| it absolutely impossible for me to come home with the
| medication my wife expects me to?_ / _I don 't want you to do
| something you're uncomfortable with_ / _how can I explain this
| to my wife?_ can go a long way.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| In the UK, once someone's asked you for ID for an age-
| restricted item, they're not allowed (by law) to back down.
| You show ID, or you leave without the item.
|
| In general, I think it's unfair to ask a probably-underpaid
| cashier to break policy in this way -- they almost certainly
| have no control over the policy, and quite possibly face
| severe consequences if they acquiesce.
| kqr wrote:
| I was not aware that was the law in the U.K. I would
| probably have found out by being nice. Less likely to find
| out by being abrasive.
|
| ----
|
| The probably-underpaid people who break policy make the
| world go around. We'd get nothing real done if people just
| followed policy all day long.
|
| It might sound like I'm joking, but I don't. I have huge
| amounts of respect for those people, and obviously if they
| help me out I will do what I can to help them out. (Even if
| it's just paying it forward and breaking policy when
| necessary myself.)
|
| I'm not anti-policy. I love good policy, and I rarely have
| reason to break it. The policy that often needs breaking is
| the bad policy.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think you are generally in a state of mind to
| symphatize with someone that just refused to sell you a
| perfectly legal product regardless of your age.
| kqr wrote:
| Well, then my advice would be to practise entering that
| state of mind when a person deserves it the least (because
| then you are likely to benefit from it the most.)
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Nonsense, getting angry and salty is always the way to
| go.
|
| On a more serious note, I wonder just how people end up
| with unpleasantness being the standard go-to behaviour
| when people behind the counter aren't just giving them
| what they want.
|
| _Surely_ at some point in their lives they must have
| noticed that being polite and pleasant is far more likely
| to get you what you want than acting like a dick?
|
| Usually the guy behind the counter has no say on company
| policy, and going against it is very much not in their
| interest. They'll be even less inclined to breaking
| policy over someone that acts like an asshole
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I won't say it's always the case but if you're
| asking some low-paid worker to bend a rule for you the
| way to guarantee they won't is to be rude, no matter how
| ridiculously inflexible they seem to be being.
| closeparen wrote:
| There's no world without identity, reputation, and trust. It's
| just that they're either systematized and scalable, or
| informal. Systematized has a lot of things going for it over
| informal; for example, the pharmacist _isn't_ checking "do I
| know his family and is their reputation in the community a good
| one?" or "does he have the skin color, facial features, and
| clothing of an upstanding citizen?" It is very specifically,
| how much pseudoephedrine have you already purchased? I call
| that progress.
| air7 wrote:
| The worst I've encountered of this type of head-in-the-sand
| logic was in NZ. They have a law that if a person buys alcohol
| with companions, the clerk will check the IDs of all of them,
| not just the buyer's. Presumably this is to stop underage kids
| having an older friend buy them booze. In reality obviously,
| teens without IDs just wait outside and literally 100% of the
| times this law is applied is when an over-age-but-without-ID is
| accompanying someone shopping for some dinner wine. Like me and
| my ex gf...
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| This is standard practice in the UK too - if you're buying
| alcohol as a group, they'll ask for everyone's ID if any of
| you look too young.
|
| But this isn't specifically written into the law, i.e. the
| law doesn't say "you must check the ID of everyone in the
| group." Rather, it's that businesses receive ENORMOUS fines
| if they're caught selling alcohol to underage people - so
| most of them have very strict internal policies to minimise
| the chances of a false negative.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I had something similar at a liquor store in Utah.
|
| My mom (well over 21) tried to buy liquor, but was refused
| because a lack of ID. She sent me (also well over 21) to buy
| instead. At the register, I made a passive aggressive comment
| about how my mom was refused 30 mins ago. So they refused ME
| because they wanted to "ID all people at my party" - or
| something like that.
| dmd wrote:
| Does that mean you can't bring your kid on a trip to the
| supermarket?
| m-p-3 wrote:
| At the liquor store where I live you can't bring your kids
| inside with you to buy alcohol.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >Does that mean you can't bring your kid on a trip to the
| supermarket?
|
| I would support a law that prohibits kids in a grocery
| store
| internet_hugs wrote:
| You clearly have never cared for a child.
| koolba wrote:
| If it was the "real" Theraflu, which contains pseudoephedrine,
| then it happened because _all_ sales of products that contain
| pseudoephedrine are tracked. It's to prevent it from being used
| in bulk as a raw material to make meth.
|
| Most stores sell non-pseudoephedrine versions of the same
| medications that usually have phenylephrine which does not
| require showing and tracking your ID. But anyone whose taken it
| know that phenylephrine is a poor substitute and barely acts as
| a decongestant.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Phenylephrine is highly effective at raising blood pressure,
| though!
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| This is a classic example of punishing ordinary people for
| the actions of a few. The alternative decongestants are a
| placebo at best, they do absolutely sod all for me.
| smogcutter wrote:
| This is 1000% what was going on if they asked for ID for
| theraflu.
|
| Sounds like they could've done a better job explaining what
| was going on. But I imagine that as a pharmacist, "guy who's
| mad he can't buy pseudo anonymously" isn't someone you have a
| lot of patience with.
| Aachen wrote:
| Which is honestly sad. Would we ideally not show equal
| respect for those who don't care to have their ID
| registered for every little thing? Isn't that a reasonable
| thing to want anymore?
|
| If they're loud, obnoxious or stubborn about it (if they
| don't accept a reasonable explanation), that's obviously
| something else. I'm not talking about people being a dick.
| Just the general principle of taking that moment to explain
| the why rather than assuming anyone who doesn't immediately
| comply with a "hand over your ID for registration" order
| must have security called upon them as in the example
| above.
|
| Full disclosure: I'm also this kind of person. Needed to
| authenticate myself to get a phone number (a regular phone
| number, both pre and post paid at different times so that's
| not the difference) at a local office. The person behind
| the register takes my ID, I figured she'd check and we'd be
| good, but then she puts both sides under some reader. I
| happen to know it's illegal to copy the national identifier
| code (BSN in Dutch) but I don't want to be obnoxious right?
| Not as if she's a lawyer, she's just doing what she's told
| to. So I just ask (politely, I thought, not stopping her or
| anything) which field(s) the machine copies. Well now did I
| want to let her do her job or should I find myself another
| carrier maybe? was the retort.
|
| Hotels, similar thing. Photocopying an ID in that situation
| is illegal for the same reason. Employees get hostile
| faster than a tesla gets to 60, and I'm left feeling of a
| different generation before I'm even 30 years old.
| Anonymity is not an option, heck even complying with GDPR
| is not something one can expect, but refusing to even
| inform me what they're doing? That's off limits now?
| cainxinth wrote:
| I know people that leave the house without their phone and ID
| on them, but I'm not one of them. Also, the annoyance of
| having to produce my ID is so trivial in comparison to the
| meth crisis. If this helps, I'm ok with it.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| But it doesn't help, it's just security theater like the
| TSA. Meth makers are still making plenty of meth. It's like
| the war on drugs, a complete failure. It's just an
| inconvenience for legit people using theraflu/sudafed and
| in no way slows down meth production in any meaningful way.
| no_time wrote:
| I don't consider myself a conspiracy theory type of guy but I
| can see why people are quoting Revelation 13:16 more and more
| as e-payments and e-id becomes harder to avoid.
| cognaitiv wrote:
| That seems difficult to test. For convenience here is the
| text:
|
| Revelation 13:16-18 New International Version
|
| 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor,
| free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on
| their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless
| they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the
| number of its name.
|
| 18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight
| calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a
| man. That number is 666.
| darepublic wrote:
| The algorithm of the beast is Sha 256
| mrslave wrote:
| The chmod of the beast is 666. Also daemons are
| everywhere.
| [deleted]
| neither_color wrote:
| I'm not religious but I think this is brilliant. Some 2000
| years ago they'd already realized how dangerous it is if a
| tyrannical government has a way of IDing everyone and using
| that ID to arbitrarily grant or deny people rights and
| services on a whim. It's like anti-totalitarianism built
| right into the religion.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I don't think it was an "if", there is speculation that
| the mark is reference to Nero [0]. If true this means it
| wasn't a guess about the future but a commentary on
| current day events.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_beast#Nero
| megablast wrote:
| You might not. Other people do.
| no_time wrote:
| sympathizing with someone's point of view != agreeing
| csomar wrote:
| A store, at least a sane one, would never refuse from making a
| sale and wouldn't make it hard to make such a sale.
|
| What the store is doing is not preventing teens from buying
| Alcohol or Tobacco, it's simply covering its ass. There is a
| certain liability with certain transactions. In that case, the
| store covers. If it can't cover, it doesn't make the
| transaction as the liability is too high for whatever profit
| there is.
| MatthewWilkes wrote:
| I do find it funny that many US-Americans online joke about the
| UK having TV licence by asking if we "have a loicence" for
| various unrelated things, while the US seems obsessed with
| providing driving licences for all sorts of every-day
| activities.
| teddyh wrote:
| Not only US-Americans joke about that.
|
| " _I need a license for my pet fish, Eric._ "
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Having lived in the US and the UK (as well as several other
| countries within Europe) for several years, I can say that in
| my experience the "license/permission to do X" is generally
| far more prominent in the UK/most European countries than it
| is in the US.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I was in a hotel today, where I was staying with my family, in
| a small 20sqm room.
|
| When we went to the restaurant to have breakfast, they
| adamantly refused to remove the clear plastic partition
| dividing the table in two.
|
| We couldn't move it to the side, we couldn't move it anywhere
| else. It had to physically separate my wife and I. To what
| purpose, I have no clue.
|
| Oh, we're both vaccinated. But it is corporate policy, so
| nothing we (or the staff) can do, even though anyone with a
| brain could see that it was pointless.
| xwdv wrote:
| At this point you should have just sat on the same side of
| the table as your wife and left the other side empty.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I really do hate those Perspex dividers, they're the epitome
| of corporate "we have to look like we're doing something even
| if it's about as useful as a water pistol against a
| battleship".
| Nemi wrote:
| I call this "Pandemic theater"
| throwdc2021 wrote:
| Was told that I was required to show government issued ID to
| buy a iPhone at Target. With cash! Insanity.
| cududa wrote:
| When you buy any phone with cash it's a legal requirement
| deviledeggs wrote:
| It's because it contains a chemical used to make meth. It has
| nothing to do with corporate, it's federal law. Sales are
| tracked nationwide because gangs were bussing groups of people
| to different stores when they couldn't buy large quantities
| anymore.
|
| Hardly "petty authoritarians". I worked at the drugstore
| counter for years and people entitled enough to make a scene
| because they needed ID to buy a drug precursor were one of the
| worst parts of the job.
|
| There's a certain portion of US population that thinks it's
| trendy to protest anything they don't understand. Which is why
| people are getting kicked off planes and out of restaurants at
| record highs. We had a certain leader that normalized bad
| behavior and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.
| JackFr wrote:
| Legal requirement of the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of
| 2005.
|
| https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/meth/#sales
| antihero wrote:
| I'm in the UK and it always perplexed me why the USA drinking ID
| laws are quite so strict. Surely people are going to get booze
| one way or another, and the idea is that by having some level of
| ID you're stopping _most_ people from drinking underage in a bar?
| Most people over here start drinking in parks with mates around
| 13-16 and it 's not big deal, if anything in my opinion it's
| safer they drink in pubs and bars where people can keep an eye on
| them.
| dannyw wrote:
| also, 21 is crazy. making it it so that 18-21 year olds have to
| illegally buy booze is just a net negative.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| On the other hand, the UK nightclubs (specifically) I've been
| to seem to usually require and scan everyone single person's
| ID, no exceptions.
| user5994461 wrote:
| The UK is the worst. Grocery shops have adopted an "under 25"
| policy.
|
| You only need to be 18 to buy alcohol but staff will
| systematically ask for ID if you look anywhere near 25.
|
| This causes folks in their 30s (close enough to not be sure) to
| systematically be asked for ID. It's super annoying to be
| treated like a teenager. :(
| alibarber wrote:
| If that's how you're defining 'worst', I'd suggest a trip to
| the Nordics to make you re-asses.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| Not as bad as NZ. NZ only serves beer and wine in the
| supermarket for starters. They have the same under 25 policy.
| They also have policies where if they smell alcohol on you
| they won't allow a sale. Not only that but if they smell
| alcohol on someone next to you, they won't allow the sale.
| Not only that but if the person next to you looks like they
| could be under-age and don't have ID on them then they will
| stop a sale. Is truly ridiculous. Once I bought some alcohol
| and they asked my mum for ID. My mum had me when she was 25.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| They do this because the risk is very assymetrical. If
| someone is >18 and they ask for ID, no big deal. If someone
| is too young and they don't ask for ID, they risk a huge
| fine, criminal prosecution and possible loss of their
| license. So they instruct their staff to "think 25" to
| minimise the possibility of the latter. It's understandable.
|
| I'm 30 and I still get asked for ID occasionally, and you
| know what? I don't care - because I've been on the other
| side. I've worked in those shitty low-paying jobs where you
| often have to ask people for ID and I've seen how rude, pissy
| and entitled people can be when you make them suffer the
| enormous inconvenience of flashing their ID so I can avoid
| the risk of getting fined thousands of pounds and fired. If
| you think it's such an indignity to be asked to prove you're
| above 18 then I suggest you spend more time working in
| service jobs.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think part of it is the level of car use. Most places in the
| US, everything is quite far apart, and everyone has a car. The
| main way that people get home after drinking is driving.
| Hopefully they take an Uber or have someone else to drive them,
| but many times that is not the case unfortunately. So there are
| a lot of young people on the road or freeway on the weekends
| who have been drinking. And it is a fairly common cause of
| young people or the ones they crash into dying.
| Zak wrote:
| Your country created puritanism, which it exported to the US
| where it continues to influence policy. The US once outright
| banned alcohol.
|
| Prohibition tends not to be effective when there's broad demand
| for the prohibited item, especially when applied only to a
| small segment of society. In many places, it's customary to
| introduce teens to alcohol under parental supervision, which I
| suspect reduces later high-risk behavior.
| omgwtf1000 wrote:
| FYI in Texas it's a driver license, not driver's license.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| And everywhere it's daylight saving time. Doesn't stop people
| from saying daylight savings time.
| omgwtf1000 wrote:
| Sorry, wasn't trying to be pedantic... just thought it was an
| interesting point of trivia.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Not that I am a fan of gvt control, but why don't modern IDs have
| a QR code containing the key attributes signed using PKI, and
| perhaps a link to a photo from a gvt website? That would make it
| unfalsifiable, without the person checking the ID needing to be
| an expert, they could just use a gvt issued app.
| w3ll_w3ll_w3ll wrote:
| In Italy the new ID card (issued from 2015 onwards) has NFC
| capabilities. It contains key attributes (including the
| picture) that can be read via NFC signed from governament PKI.
| Some information can be unlocked using a code printed on it,
| some using the private PIN given to the citizien, and some
| other only from police/governament.
|
| Some innovative use cases could be using the ID also as a gym
| card or as transportation card.
| zinekeller wrote:
| In some more advanced countries, they do this exact thing (or
| in other cases, a barcode with a serial number that is used to
| double-check to a government-controlled database). Does not
| stop bribing government officials to make a genuine fake ID of
| course, but it significantly raises the bar of faking it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| The very last thing we need, is any form of computer involved
| in spot id checks.
| internet2000 wrote:
| Just let the teens drink.
| kibwen wrote:
| Here in the US you need to be 17 to enlist in the armed forces.
| If a 17 year-old is mature enough to go to war, to potentially
| kill and be killed, then they're old enough to drink.
| Igelau wrote:
| Old enough to be drafted isn't old enough to drink. If that's
| not completely fucked, I don't know what is.
| evgen wrote:
| The last time anyone was drafted in the US the drinking
| laws in most states allowed 18 year olds to drink. So what
| is your point? I guess the government agrees with you: no
| one under 21 is allowed to drink and no one under 21 is
| being drafted.
| lupire wrote:
| Old enough for the draft, old enough for a draught!
| mjthompson wrote:
| The counterargument to this is that there is evidence young
| people are neurologically not full adults at 18 years of age,
| and alcohol impedes neurological development.
|
| I have no doubt war also has neurological effects, but they
| don't seem to be age specific.
|
| It is challenging, if not impossible, to otherwise defend it.
| If someone has the possibility to choose (or be forced) to
| harm themselves and shorten their life in war, then why
| shouldn't a choice apply to alcohol?
| dndndjdjfndbr wrote:
| But the prohibition doesn't stop teens from drinking, just
| makes it a crime.
| mjthompson wrote:
| The argument in response is that it is legitimate for the
| government to legislate to promote the health of its
| citizens, as we are seeing with lockdown laws in
| COVID-19. That people break lockdown laws is not a reason
| not to have lockdown laws. So the argument involves a bit
| more analysis than simply accepting that 'prohibition
| doesn't stop teens from drinking'.
|
| So, this just invites the same perennial arguments
| frequently made in relation to drug decriminilisation.
|
| On my part, had the drinking age been 21 where I live, I
| wouldn't have started drinking until I was 21.
| ixacto wrote:
| Tell that to the 73.6%[0] of Americans who are overweight
| or obese, but that the government doesn't care too much
| about it, in fact they subsidize it[1] via the farm bill
| & friends. Being overweight or obese will shorten your
| life [2]. Also the US gov doesn't care, as it's own
| dietary reccomendations differ from accepted nutritional
| guidelines e.g. Harvard nutrition plate[3].
|
| IMO the government should not be in the business of
| policing one's health, or advocating for the people's
| health, as the USDA and associated agencies are
| demonstrably corrupted.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-
| overweight.htm [1] https://www.usda.gov/farmbill [2] http
| s://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12513041/#:~:text=Conclusion.
| ... [3]
| https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-
| eating-...
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Most of this isn't accurate despite the links, which is
| kinda odd to see. To tick off some stuff:
|
| 1. The government _does_ care about overweight /obesity;
| it comes up a lot in discussing issues with the
| healthcare system
| (https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html). A lack of
| regulation isn't the same thing as not caring -- for
| example, there's no regulation requiring Americans to get
| vaccinated, either.
|
| 2. Farm subsidies seem unlikely to be a problem.. it's
| not like access to food makes people obese -- in fact,
| the opposite seems to be true
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781054/).
| Usually affordable-food helps folks eat better rather
| than more.
|
| 3. The US government's dietary recommendations not being
| a copy/paste of another set of recommendations isn't a
| meaningful observation... why would you think otherwise?
| For example, are you under the impression that someone
| following the US's nutritional guidelines would be worse
| off for it? (In case you're not American: the problem
| isn't the guidelines, but rather that most Americans
| don't follow them.)
|
| 4. The US government's call to regulate teen-drinking was
| based on a historical uptick in drunk-driving accidents
| when the drinking-ages were relaxed (https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_minimu...). This is,
| the argument wasn't based on a teen's personal health but
| rather people were crashing cars on public roads, which
| is definitely a reasonable concern for a government to
| have.
| Igelau wrote:
| > had the drinking age been 21 where I live, I wouldn't
| have started drinking until I was 21.
|
| You really don't know then. As someone who lives where it
| is 21, I'm qualified to tell you that you're very likely
| wrong.
|
| Before the "Source? Study?" parrots show up, you're darn
| right this is anecdotal. The "real data" is going to be
| from kids who aren't telling the truth.
| coolspot wrote:
| 17 yo can't be deployed to a warzone:
|
| > The US has signed an international agreement barring child
| soldiers. What that means in practicality is only that you
| are non-deployable until you turn 18. (you must be 18 to
| actually fight).
|
| > If you graduate High school early yes, you can join at 17
| with parental consent, you can ship, train, you can join a
| unit and be active duty, you are just FLAGGED as non-
| deployable until your 18th birthday, when the flag is lifted.
|
| https://www.quora.com/What-happens-when-you-join-the-US-
| mili...
| kibwen wrote:
| Good catch. The point still stands, sadly.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I believe 18 year olds are allowed to drink on Army
| bases.
| Igelau wrote:
| Only as long as said base isn't in the US.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| And the installation commander can keep it at 21. It's
| not an inalienable right of younger than 21 service
| members.
| microtherion wrote:
| And in the US, 14 year-olds can be tried as adults. I wonder
| whether that is ever applied to charges of underage drinking?
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Most folks don't want to share the roads with drunken teenage
| drivers.
|
| Don't get me wrong -- some teens are probably more than
| responsible enough to be trusted with controlling their own
| drinking. However, it's those that aren't that're the concern.
|
| Parents generally don't want to have to worry about bars being
| allowed to serve their kids, either. Maybe not all parents feel
| that way, though I'd guess that those who'd be against their
| kids drinking would tend to have stronger feelings on the topic
| than those who'd be okay with it.
|
| Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/minimum-
| legal-drinki...
| dkersten wrote:
| Doesn't seem to be a major problem in europe, where many
| countries have a legal drinking age of 18 or even 16 for
| beer. Besides, the law doesn't stop teens who want to drink
| from drinking, only from going to bars and makes them jump
| through more hoops to get their alcohol.
| kuschku wrote:
| The difference is that the US has basically no public
| transport and the suburbs are designed so you're forced to
| drive.
|
| Drunk driving is a lot easier to avoid if you can get
| anywhere easily without driving at all.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Here in the NL, it costs multiple thousands of EUR to get a
| drivers license. My friends won't get behind the wheel
| after even one drink, just because it's so clear how much
| driving is a privilege. In the states, it cost me less than
| $30. I knew people in the states who got a DUI, and their
| license (restricted) back after just a couple of weeks.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| It's a problem in the US even with laws making it difficult
| for teens to get alcohol.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving#age-5056
| selectodude wrote:
| >NHTSA estimates that minimum-drinking-age laws have
| saved 31,959 lives from 1975 to 2017.
|
| I wonder how many assaults and deaths have happened due
| to underage drinkers being too worried about going to the
| police or hospital due to their illegal consumption.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| And how many didn't need police-assistance or
| hospitalization because they were sober?
|
| If there's a perfect solution to ensuring that teens
| suffer no harm from alcohol, that'd be a neat thing!
| However broadly repealing prohibitions against teen-
| drinking wouldn't seem to be such a solution.
| sebmellen wrote:
| And yet, for all intents and purposes, it works fine in
| Europe to have the drinking age at 16/18. Perhaps even
| better than in the US! And with fewer drunk driving
| deaths as a percentage of fatal crashes [0].
|
| Maybe because the driving age is slightly higher,
| training to become a driver is usually more rigorous, and
| max BAC levels are around 0.05%.
|
| Another aspect might be cultural -- in my experience
| alcohol is much more taboo and _simultaneously_ more
| likely to be abused by youth in the US than in Europe.
| This is probably because many grandmothers will give
| their grandkids a small glass of wine with dinner or a
| schnapps for New Years or other stuff like that. This de-
| stigmatizes the drug, thereby making it less edgy and
| cool to drink.
|
| I remember being 14 at a wedding in Germany and everyone
| very jovially encouraging me to have a small schnapps
| shot, and getting very drunk on absinthe at maybe 16/17
| in France. No one really cared, and the lesson of the
| hangover was plenty to whip me into shape.
|
| [0]: https://www.statista.com/chart/5504/the-worst-
| countries-in-t...
| Archelaos wrote:
| I can endorse what you have written about Germany. I
| think that the vast majority of people in my country
| consider it a good strategy for preventing alcohol abuse
| by their children in teaching them to handle it in a
| cultivated manner themselves. Not in theory, but in
| practice. And this needs to be done before they start to
| drink in secret with their friends.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Might require some investigation and modeling to figure
| out a good cause. For example, the stats based on drunk-
| driving incidents compared to total might be misleading
| as the totals might vary significantly.. we'd probably
| want something more like [drunk-driving-
| incidents]-per-[driving-hour] for a starting point. Then
| probably explore stuff how frequently police catch people
| and typical consequences, how much folks in an area
| drink, how people drink (late nights at bars, or earlier
| at dinner?), if people in an area tend to car-pool, how
| the roadways might play in (safety features and well
| lit?; twisty backroads?), etc..
|
| Really seems like there should be research on this sorta
| thing already, but not immediately seeing one on Google,
| which is odd..
|
| But, yeah, dunno why folks'd do it in the first place.
| Seems like simple self-destructive behavior.
|
| ---
|
| [This study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PM
| C3823314/) seems to use a multi-linear-regression (rather
| than a causative model), but still looks neat.
|
| Overall, looks like they found that stricter regulations
| and beer-taxes significantly reduced drunk-driving
| incidents, while drivers-under-24, higher speed-limits,
| and unemployment had the opposite effect.
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