From: John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 11:50:29 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RE: Internal Passports
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960807194053.0096f9ac@labg30>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:39 AM 8/7/96 EST, jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca wrote:
>
>I've seen the same problem in a department store in Ottawa. They would not
>accept a Canadian Passport as identification for payment by cheque but would
>accept various credit cards and similar devices.
>
>My conclusion was that they wanted something that would show my friend's credit
>worthiness, not prove his identity.

Being employed by a department store, and working closely with our trainers
and our loss prevention people, for the last ten years has given me a pretty
good vantage point into seeing what actually happens on the sales floor as
well as what goes into the policy manual.

I'd suggest that it's probably an oversight by their training department.
Their trainers are just humans that looked around one day and said, "we need
to define what an ID is."  They Xeroxed a couple of dummied-up driver's
licenses and provincial ID cards, pasted them in a book, and said, "there,
that looks like all the acceptable ID I've ever seen around here."  Using
passports as internal ID is not a common occurrance, and this usage probably
simply didn't occur to the trainers.  It almost certainly was not the
"fault" of the person on the sales floor; they're usually trained to look at
these pretty pictures in a procedures book, and deny anything else.

That said, it certainly *could* be true that their loss prevention or credit
or audit departments decided that only "credit-worthy" people should be able
to write checks.

On the whole, though, I have been finding that people ascribe all sorts of
paranoid evils to all sorts of organizations, when the ultimate truth
usually starts out more like a Dilbert cartoon.  Internally, I can usually
spot the truly evil corporate deception practices.  Externally, though,
people can only make guesses based on actions that they've become party to.
And who can blame someone for that?

John
--
J. Deters  "Captain's log, stardate 25970-point-5.  I am nailed to the hull."
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