Florida's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles may soon be debuting a system which can electronically transmit driver's license photos to the POS to help fight check fraud. Last year alone the state lost $10 billion to fraud.
The new system will be able to send images of check writers to checkout lanes and cash registers all over the state. More than 14 million driver's license photos, along with the basic identifying information, will be sold to Image Data of New Hampshire who will dispense the data to merchants
If you're wondering if this violates any rights or brings up privacy issues, remember, it is perfectly legal for driver's license agencies to sell the data they collect on drivers.
Note: Now that technology has made creating perfect MICR encoded checks with good accounts number so easy for criminals, this state initiative seems to forget that this same technology is creating bogus picture IDS that are often as good and even better forgeries than the checks being presented.
