While the machine read, the human becomes negligent
In Brief: On the automatic reading of identity cards at your neighbourhood convenience store
Did you know that across Canada, convenience stores are getting electronic ID cards readers for customers under 25? This is part of the We Expect I.D. program of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association (CCSA). This program aims to ensure that buyers of lottery tickets, alcohol and tobacco have the required age. We Expect I.D. is implemented in Ontario, currently under deployment in Quebec and at its beginning in the Maritimes and in Western Canada.
Everywhere, convenience stores are thus acquiring, usually at their expense, software and hardware for their cash registers (such as the products of Legal Age ID System with which CCSA has an agreement). In Quebec, Loto-Quebec recently offered a similar service for free to all the convenience stores that already have a ticket lottery terminal. Hence, the great satisfaction CCSA, which, no doubt, will wish that such service be made available to all its members, by other provincial lotteries organizations for example.
The tools provided by Loto-Quebec:
- read the bar code of driver’s licence, displaying a red flag for under 18 or a green one for 18 years and over, and
- calculate actual age from date of birth for ID pieces that cannot be read by the terminal, such as passport or health insurance card.
According to Loto-Quebec and CCSA, no personal information is either recorded or stored once the operation is completed.
Finally, could we not say that these tools are only to help employees with poor mental arithmetic skills to determine actual age from a date of birth?
A simpler tool would be to merely display each day the date of birth marking transition to legal age: the employee would only have to compare this date to that recorded on any piece of identification to determine if the customer is major or not. The advantage here is that the attention of the employee would be concentrated on the document rather than on a screen. Indeed, several studies and tests conducted by the media indicate that bureaucratic or computerized procedures divert the attention of attendants from their primary task: to check if the piece presented is that of the person in front of them. Tests like those conducted by the Journal de Montreal, showed that a man with white skin can easily access services with cards bearing the picture of a woman, a person with black skin, etc. So, if a minor presents the valid driver’s license that he took from an adult to an automated reader…
Catégories : Brèves, Observations
Mots clés: Bar code, Convenience store, Identification, Loto-Québec