England Starts Fingerprinting Drinkers

[TehBorken]

Not a joke. Talk about Big Brother.....
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]England Starts Fingerprinting Drinkers

In an effort to reduce alcohol related violence, England is rolling out [a href="vny!://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/20/pub_fingerprints/"]mandatory fingerprinting of all pub patrons.[/a] If a pub owner refuses to comply with the new system, and fails to show 'considerable' reductions in alcohol-related crimes, they will lose their license. Supposedly the town that piloted this program had a 48% reduction in alcohol-related crime.*"

From the article: "Offenders can be banned from one pub or all of them for a specified time - usually a period of months - by a committee of landlords and police called Pub Watch. Their offenses are recorded against their names in the fingerprint system. Bradburn noted the system had a 'psychological effect' on offenders."

*NOTE: From 4 "incidents" down to 2. Hardly a valid statistical sample.
 

[Russ]

Typical, not long before they want us to have chips in us so we can be tracked everywhere and instant ID.

  In the UK from what I can gather from the guys on the ships Im on that live there, dont have to carry picture ID or otherwise. And their drivers lisences do not have pictures. So this is really interesting where they will be fingerprinted and bars are forced to comply.

  From what I understand this system is digital, right? It doesnt come out and say that, I was confused for the first little bit.

[Gopher]

A lot of things going on at present in England which point to the not too far distant imposition of id cards. They seem to be undergoing a rapid erosion of civil liberties under the Blair regime.