Businesses Using Your Biometric Data

This weekend I went to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida to spend time with some family. While Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure has not changed much since I was last there a few years ago, there was one thing that stood out for me.

When I was buying the theme park tickets at the hotel, I was offered an exceedingly good deal by the ticket agent which amounted to a year-long free pass to the whole theme park for less than the price I was about to pay. Then, almost as an aside, the ticket agent mentioned that I would have to stop by the customer service kiosk at the park at some point that day to, get this, present my Florida driver’s license and give them a copy of my fingerprint.

Right away, all kinds of red flags went off in my head because to me, this deal sounded like some rather large corporation was trying to store my personal, government-issued information right alongside biometric data collected from my body.

The look I got from the ticket agent when I stopped the deal right away and paid almost 1.5 times the ticket price, was amazing. She looked at me like it was ME who was being stupid.

Apparently, according to this article, Universal Studios has been doing this since at least 2004. Does anyone else see this as a threat to personal privacy? If not, what happens when someone steals your identity INCLUDING your unmodifiable biometric data generated by your fingerprint or retina? Did anyone see the movie “Minority Report” or “Gattica”? Does anyone think that what happens in these movies could never actually happen in the future?

The government storing this information is bad enough but it looks to me like the corporations will start offering customers incentives to give up their unique unmodifiable data so that they can save a couple of dollars or a couple of minutes of time.

To me, it’s just not worth it.