The Texas Department of Public Safety might as well be called the Texas Department of Public Invasiveness.They’ve launched a plan to fingerprint every single person of driving age in the state, after which they will add the person’s prints to the criminal database.

Is it just me or is that a rather Dystopian plan?

Jon Cassidy of Watchdog.org writes:

The credit for breaking the news on those two items goes to consumer affairs columnist Dave Lieber of the Dallas Morning News, whose long-running “Watchdog” column often shows up in my Google Alerts, for obvious reasons.Last month, Lieber broke the news that DPS had started collecting full sets of fingerprints on everyone who went in to renew their license.Lieber quotes an entire email from DPS spokesman Tom Vinger, who quotes Transportation Code Sec. 521.059 at length, including the key phrase, “The department shall establish an image verification system based on the following identifiers collected by the department: ….an applicant’s thumbprints or fingerprints.

So the gist of this is: if you don’t allow the “authorities” to take your prints and file them away in the event that you commit some heinous crime in the future, you won’t be issued a driver’s license in the state of Texas. This means you’d theoretically be unable to drive or get insurance, because you’d be unlicensed. If you can’t get insurance, it will be difficult to own a car.
This, of course, could affect your livelihood, your ability to get your kids to school, and myriad other day-to-day issues. I’m a big fan of opting out, but this makes it a lot more difficult for the average Joe or Josephine to do so.

Doesn’t this sound like a pre-crime system, gathering evidence for the potential day in the future when they wish to use a person’s cataloged prints to identify them? At the very least, it is an invasion of personal privacy that is being enforced by hindering one’s ability to travel freely.

Via Activist Post