2 Jul 2010 kgb   » (Master)

DMV Bans Smiles in License Photos

Because more and more government systems are implementing face recognition technology, they are requiring that everyone have an unemotional expression when having photos taken in order for the software to better match the faces. A story came out today that the Virginia DMV Bans Smiles in Driver’s License Photos.

It seems to be standard practice lately for agencies and law enforcement to adopt obviously inappropriate policies on its citizens and wait until they are fought to have them removed. It wasn’t until the last few years that social security numbers were removed as an ID number. We seem to be one large beta test population groups for every piece of photo and scanning technology the government buys. It may be easier to apologize than ask permission, but it’s usually more expensive too. I hope someone challenges this in court because it should never be illegal to smile, or be refused your tax paid government services because you do smile.

The Declaration of Independence says “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. We need more happiness. All government IDs are going to look like mug shots. And it’s not a matter of choice – the DMV software will actually reject your photo if you do smile and ask you to do it again, so unless you co-operate you do not get a driver’s license.

Remember that as you continue to give away your freedom and privacy, you are also not allowed to smile in the process.

Syndicated 2009-06-04 06:37:22 from Keith Barrett Online » Technology

Latest blog entries     Older blog entries

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!