23 ms·

How to spot a good fake ID

243 points by klevertree 5y ago

rdtwo 5y ago
I mean really the objective is to show that you put in an effort that was good enough for the state inspector. Most places that check ID don’t care if it’s actually fake just that an effort was made
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
The sooner we use PKI for identification in some oauth2 like system (where we can choose to redact irrelevant information such as our name or address) the better. Brisbane Australia scans ID cards on entry to nightclubs (I think there’s a control where if you’re booted from one club you’re barred from all for the night). I’m all for a safe nightlife, but good luck asking a bouncer what their data retention, data privacy, and operational/technical security are without getting laughed out of the cue.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  But PKI still doesn‘t solve the „two people who look similar“ attack, right? All PKI can do is „this photo matches this information“ perfectly. It cannot do „this person matches this photo“ perfectly.
  - phyalow 5y ago
    Arguably PKI can do that exactly if it is paired with a facial recognition toolkit... A slippery slope.
  - bdhess 5y ago
    You could use the PKI’s revocation capabilities to ensure that each person only had one valid ID.
    - axiosgunnar 5y ago
      Yes but what about deliberate borrowing of a PKI from a similar looking friend?
  - gruez 5y ago
    You need some sort of smart card/secure element to ensure the ID itself can't be duplicated.
    - toast0 5y ago
      Duplication isn't needed if I just borrow a similar enough looking person's id and return it before they notice.
  - shalmanese 5y ago
    You could have an optional service where the DMV sends you a push notification/SMS every time your ID is scanned.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
    Yeah correct, but IDs are easily fake able anyway. The purpose of ID is to stop low leve falsification, high level ID forgery involves bribes for . Worst comes to it, I’d opt more for biometric verification provided the software / hardware is produced by a sane entity such as local government and not some seedy nightclub.
- markzzerella 5y ago
  I've left parties because they go to clubs that scan your ID and take your photo before you can enter on several occasions. Cryptographically verifiable identification is not a good idea, regardless of intentions.
  - nojito 5y ago
    What’s wrong with scanning your ID?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - wmf 5y ago
      I assume they get far more information about you than they need.
      - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
        Then sell it to marketing teams, or send goons to your house if they think you’re causing trouble, or stalk you.
        gwerbret 5y ago
        Hired goons?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
        Nightclub owners aren’t the least shady people, I’m sure there’s already some on their payrolls so no need for more…
      - mindslight 5y ago
        I'd assume the information on the 2d barcode is the same as what's printed on the front. The problem is that you have no idea whether a scanner is connected to a larger surveillance database. A GDPR-style law and real enforcement would go a long way to restoring some societal trust in the US. As things stand right now, it's prudent to put tape over the 2d barcode and the printed ID number, and only remove it when necessary (eg actually interacting with the police).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- StopHammoTime 5y ago
  They are not as complicated as you think. They don’t retain your ID, they simply OCR the license number and check against a known list of offenders.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    How can you tell? Plus, even if they're not as sophisticated yet, all it takes is some marketing oxygen-wasters to say that they could improve profits/conversions/etc by 1% by capturing ID information for this to become reality.
    - 15155 5y ago
      It's an advertised feature on this product: https://patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars https://patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars I have no idea where GP lives in that this information wouldn't be retained for some reason (in the US.)
  - 15155 5y ago
    Absolutely false. Dispensaries, nightclubs: many if not most all retain information parsed from the AAMVA-encoded text within the PDF417 barcode on the back. Most of these devices aren't using OCR, either, because why would you when you have a 2D barcode standard?
- zeeZ 5y ago
  The German ID card works something like that. The fields you as a vendor are approved for, you can make either required or optional server-side. The user can then choose what they want to add or to abort process. It can be read either with a pin that's printed on it, or with your Personal six digit pin, depending on use case. You can tell it to just do an age check (has completed nth year) or a place check (lives in community with x ID) and it'll just return yes or no. There's also a pseudonym function that returns a unique ID per card+vendor combination (so the same vendor can tell it's the same ID again, but a different vendor would receive a different ID). I can't see it used in night clubs though. There's a staggering amount of requirements you have to meet in order to receive certification to go to one of the handful of service providers that meet even more requirements to run a secure server that are connected to the PKI allowed to talk to the ID card.
internet2000 5y ago
Just let the teens drink.
- kibwen 5y ago
  Here in the US you need to be 17 to enlist in the armed forces. If a 17 year-old is mature enough to go to war, to potentially kill and be killed, then they're old enough to drink.
  - Igelau 5y ago
    Old enough to be drafted isn't old enough to drink. If that's not completely fucked, I don't know what is.
    - lupire 5y ago
      Old enough for the draft, old enough for a draught!
    - evgen 5y ago
      The last time anyone was drafted in the US the drinking laws in most states allowed 18 year olds to drink. So what is your point? I guess the government agrees with you: no one under 21 is allowed to drink and no one under 21 is being drafted.
  - mjthompson 5y ago
    The counterargument to this is that there is evidence young people are neurologically not full adults at 18 years of age, and alcohol impedes neurological development. I have no doubt war also has neurological effects, but they don't seem to be age specific. It is challenging, if not impossible, to otherwise defend it. If someone has the possibility to choose (or be forced) to harm themselves and shorten their life in war, then why shouldn't a choice apply to alcohol?
    - dndndjdjfndbr 5y ago
      But the prohibition doesn’t stop teens from drinking, just makes it a crime.
_Nat_ 5y ago
Weird that ID's still don't have, say, QR-codes or something similar with a cryptographic-signature to verify that the info's accurate. Or chips like with credit-cards. Lots of different ways stuff like that could be done. Holograms and such seem like a clumsy strategy.
- mcherm 5y ago
  The issue is that those are mechanisms to validate a card against a central authority. But most usages are in cases where the ID is self-validating and cannot be authenticated against a central authority.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    With pubkey crypto you could easily allow validating with a self-contained device. That's just a signature check. The obvious way to do that has some drawbacks though, the big one being that if the private key ever leaks, your whole system is now useless and needs to be replaced (cards, verifiers and all). And you'd need to either generate all the cards in one place, or the private key would need to be available in multiple places. Not really a recipe for success long-term.
    - _Nat_ 5y ago
      > The obvious way to do that has some drawbacks though, the big one being that if the private key ever leaks, your whole system is now useless and needs to be replaced (cards, verifiers and all). That's a problem addressed with [public key infrastructure (PKI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure). In practice, it could be done pretty securely and cheaply.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        > That's a problem addressed with [public key infrastructure (PKI)] I don't really agree. Yes, you want to use PKI. But it doesn't solve the problem of needing to immediately update all your equipment when there's a key leak, and replace or reprogram a huge number of cards. PKI just makes things a bit smoother in general. My suggestion is pretty simple. Have a few different locations that sign keys, have them all sign each card, and require multiple valid signatures. Exact details up to the implementer, but that way you could have at least one key leak without causing any user hassle.
daneel_w 5y ago
The item you referred to as "fake passport" is a Swedish national ID card. While not a passport, it will double as one when traveling within the European Union. How did you come across it?
- xioxox 5y ago
  I think he's wrong about reflectivity on passports too. My European passport picture page is extremely reflective - it's hard to read anything on it at the wrong angles, and the reflective holograms make my picture very hard to see. The photo is printed with very low contrast and uses an online user-supplied photo, too!
Igelau 5y ago
So I'm thinking my state-issued driver's license might be fake. Some of its qualities: - Does not have any raised lettering - Has weird edges around my hair from the shadows that look just like the ones the author called Photoshop evidence - The hologram looks like crap. Nice to see that Massachusetts doesn't skimp on it the way $STATE does. - The aspect ratio of the picture is squished because they just used my last photo. COVID, you know. - Clearly says "NOT FOR REAL ID PURPOSES" which I know refers to "RealID", but still makes me laugh.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  A large portion of states contract their driver's license printing equipment (on a maintenance & operation basis) to the same company, which I believe used to be a division of Polaroid but has been bought and sold since then. So many of the norms that this article mentions are specific to that equipment and to many US states, but not to all of them. There are still some states that use relatively commodity (uncontrolled) plastic stock and transfer or sublimation printers, that you can get on eBay used for under a thousand. You can imagine that results in more counterfeiting which encourages states to switch to the more expensive and controlled equipment and stock. Raised print is particularly variable, a lot of states don't use raised print. As I understand it, it's done by a specific machine that is especially costly (the rest of the laser features mostly come already done from the stock manufacturer). Edit: it's L-1 Identity Solutions. I believe the ID card printing component used to be with Identix before they merged with a newer company to form L-1.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    This kind of leads into the thing I was wondering about when reading the article: What about false positives? What are the consequences of denying entry to someone who did, in fact, have a real ID? Could they potentially sue the bar?
    - bigyikes 5y ago
      I don’t think there would be any standing for a lawsuit. The bar can deny entry or kick you out for any reason. You’re not entitled to entry.
cafard 5y ago
When I was in college, the laws were not quite so strict as they are now: in that state, persons over 18 could purchase 3.2 beer (3.2% alcohol by volume). Still, a fraternity or fraternities would bring in a fake-ID manufacturer every fall. Somebody on the student paper wanted to do an article on it. But his boss or bosses had had such a fake id. The article never ran. Let me add that the age of drinking was set to 21 across the country because the Reagan administration did not wish to make airbags mandatory. It was argued that raising the drinking age would produce an equivalent or greater savings in life compared to mandating airbags in new cars. The Department of Transportation could withhold funds from any state that allowed those under 21 to purchase alcoholic beverages. Those of you younger than I am will know how much effect raising the drinking age really had. My impression is, Not much.
- wil421 5y ago
  Do you have a source? That’s never been the story I’ve been told. MADD and a few other groups lobbied for the age to be 21 and they tied it to federal highway funds. It’s one of the reason Louisiana had really bad roads, they held out for longer or so the story goes. Mandatory airbags and seatbelts happened at the same time but MADD was focused on the alcohol part. 21-24 year olds had the highest rate of drunk driving but 37 year olds were the most to die in alcohol related crashes.[1]1993 https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/4/10/reagans-sober-legacy-pbtbhe-reagan-years/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/4/10/reagans-sober-l...
- DaveExeter 5y ago
  >Those of you younger than I am will know how much effect raising the drinking age really had. My impression is, Not much. I think it had a very negative effect of creating a cohort of second-class citizens, who had the responsibilities of adulthood but not the rights.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dhosek 5y ago
  Wisconsin was one of the states with a drinking age of 18 while Illinois had 21. The border between the states was referred to as a "blood border" because of the large number of drunk driving fatalities of 18–20 year olds crossing the border to be able to legally buy alcohol. So, yes, the fact that the drinking age was 21 didn't prevent me from consuming excessive quantities of alcohol during my first three years of college¹, but it also eliminated differential situations like Illinois-Wisconsin which had a measurable impact on reducing DUI fatalities, so it was a bit more than not much. --- 1. During the late 80s, the dorm soda machines were stocked by the students. Many of the machines had a slot dedicated to beer (often a "random" slot where you took your chances. You might get something good, you might get Coors Light. The soda machine of the era were capable of dispensing glass bottles of beers even though they were designed for cans. Mostly capable. Occasionally, your 60 cents would end up buying you a pile of broken glass and beer foam. Regardless, having campus being the only place to feasibly buy alcohol meant that drunk driving incidents were rare to non-existent.
mshroyer 5y ago
This author is almost as skilled as the staff at my local AMC Theatre, where I was a bystander to a woman getting denied a beer on account of her Washington, D.C. driver's license not being a "state-issued ID".
- blhack 5y ago
  Oh my god that is either hilariously stupid, or some top tier trolling.
  - aaronbrethorst 5y ago
    It's technically accurate, and some serious bullshit: 'No taxation without representation. But also, no beer until representation.'
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I haven't encountered this in years and years and especially with REALID standardization I assume it's vanishingly rare, but driver's licenses used to vary enormously from state to state and many didn't even have photos. So I assume the logic on requiring in-state government ID would be that a store clerk had no way of knowing whether an out-of-state license was a blatant forgery or not.
    - alibarber 5y ago
      I don’t think they meant ‘in’ state, more so ‘issued by a state’ which DC isn’t. I always thought it meant state as in ‘nation state’ - so a passport would count.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        It's usually "government issued photo ID." I have seen (but not for many years) cases where a store wouldn't accept out of state ID for alcohol purchases.
  - huy-nguyen 5y ago
    Then you probably haven’t heard of airport TSA agents turning away people with New Mexico license, thinking that New Mexico is in Mexico and not the US.
User23 5y ago
How many businesses actually care? Isn’t the business a victim of fraud if a customer uses dishonest papers to gain admittance? Last I knew fraud vitiates everything.
- lupire 5y ago
  Fraud does not vitiate statutory rape of a minor.
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    Usually in common-law jurisdictions, absolute liability (i.e. mens rea is not required and due diligence is not a valid defence) cannot legally apply to criminal offences. Is that not the case in your jurisdiction?
- toast0 5y ago
  Depends. My wife's identity was recently stolen, and the fraudster rented an apartment; it's not clear if the fraudster showed a fake ID in that process, but they may have. The apartment complex is likely going to be out rent for several months as this plays out, better vetting could have prevented that loss. If it's a bar, they might be on the hook for underage drinking if they don't do a decent job of checking. (PS, lock your credit reports)
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  What have they lost?
- evgen 5y ago
  > Last I knew fraud vitiates everything. Not even close. If you take a fake ID to a bar in the US, get drunk, drive home and slam into a bus full of nuns just before you reach your destination then the bartender who served you will need a criminal attorney as well as the bouncer who checked IDs at the door and probably the owner of the bar. Strict liability applies here.
gumby 5y ago
Why should a bar care? Just do a “decent” enough job to make the cops know you’re trying.
- catillac 5y ago
  They get huge fines from the state alcoholic beverage office. This is strict liability, and punishment can be gigantic fines and revocation of the alcohol selling license. So, intent doesn’t matter in most states and no matter how real an id appeared, selling underage creates these consequences.
- runnerup 5y ago
  This was how it was done in 2008 at least, when I bartended. Our bouncers were very, very good at identifying fake ID’s from almost any state. Sometimes when they confiscated them, the people would call the police and the police would look at the ID and hand it back (there’s not a lot of verification that can be done in the field). This is despite that the ID was, in fact, 100% fake - often our friends who were staff at other bars who were drinking as “regular” customers could confirm that they admitted in private it was fake afterwards. Depending on the night we’d instruct the bouncers to be either more strict or less strict about checking ID’s. Everyone’s paycheck came from the tips so if it was too quiet then staff might not be able to pay rent. If it was too crazy, staff might get hurt. Yes, technically serving minors is “strict liability” but the city police didn’t enforce it that way. If someone had a reasonable quality fake ID it would let us off the hook as far as the usual cops were concerned. Obviously it wouldn’t help us if the alcohol enforcement agency specifically showed up that night (very very rare) or if an underage drinker died in a drunk driving accident (never happened thank god). Our bouncers were better than police at checking fake ID’s because: 1) they check many orders of magnitude more ID’s than cops ever do 2) part of our on boarding is to give the new bouncers a pile (200+) of fake ID’s to study which we had because we confiscated them. These included real ID’s which we confiscated because they were being used by not-the-owner of the ID. Then 1-3 months later they are tested against a different set of fake/real ID’s and needed to get some absurdly high % correct.
  - aix1 5y ago
1970-01-01 5y ago
There are also several security features only visible with UV and IR light. Any good bouncer will have at least a UV light within reach.
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
The thing that gets me is that in order to get one of these dandy IDs with the holograms, micro lettering, and laser cutting is a birth certificate and an electric bill. My birth certificate is hand typed on an IBM Selectric typewriter on common security paper and the only real security feature is the embossed emblem of the rural county of the rural state I was born - and unless you have a sample to compare with you really can’t validate. Most utility bills are printed on cheap lightweight paper by a common laser printer and the only security feature might be a bit of color or a slightly non-standard size. Once you have a drivers license you are only a fee payment away from a passport. Granted I might get a lot more scrutiny if I walk into the DMV wearing an El Tri t-shirt and speaking with an accent but barring that it seems a very low bar to turn a crappy hand-typed 50s birth certificate into a modern secure ID.
- catillac 5y ago
  Surely one could not just make up a totally fake birth certificate from nothing and have any licensing office take that seriously? Surely there are additional electronic records or other security features?
  - djrogers 5y ago
    No, one could not do that. You’d need at least a real name with a valid SSN who’s birthplace and DOB matches what you’re trying to get issued. Definitely possible, but more work than just completely faking up a couple of papers.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Yeah it’s cross-referenced if possible. The hot shit is to use a baptismal record instead (accepted most anywhere but usually found only for older people).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zxcvbn4038 5y ago
    I know you can purchase books of identity documents from various locations and years and those give details of the various security features that were present and material samples to compare with but I’ve never encountered anyone using them. Usually it’s just making sure I have all the documents, compare with my application, then go stand in line for a picture. Though when I applied for the trusted traveler program they did keep my documents for a few weeks so they might have been doing that sort of verification.
woodruffw 5y ago
Having read this, I went and found my Global Entry[1] card. It has remarkably few of the security features mentioned: it's clearly machine cut and has visible laminate layers, and the raised features are incredibly easy to miss. I've used this card to enter and leave the United States multiple times, but every bartender thinks it's fake. Oh, and my picture on it is laughably bad. I distinctly remember the border agent using a consumer Logitech webcam to take it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Entry
- zaychikk 5y ago
  I have one of these too (including the terrible logitech portrait) and I think the important verification going on is that 1) once you're approved, your passport number is linked and the book can be cross-referenced and 2) I believe DHS is now doing facial recognition at global entry terminals, which does away with the card totally.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
funkdified 5y ago
Temporary paper IDs are issued in some states while you await receiving your real ID in the mail. They are easy to Photoshop and print and must be accepted with a photo ID with matching name, like a college ID.
- vzaliva 5y ago
  If you talking about temporary driver licenses, at least in californoa they say "NOT A VERIFIED IDENTIFICATION" on the top.
  - funkdified 5y ago
    Yes, that's what I'm talking about. It's possible that things have changed since I was in college ;)
    - resoluteteeth 5y ago
      You can use the temporary drivers licenses as driver licenses (for actual driving), but I don't think they are generally accepted in other situations.
      - funkdified 5y ago
        Once upon a time, it worked very well.
        ghaff 5y ago
        Once upon a time, alcohol usage among college students--regardless of age--was something that a blind eye was mostly turned to, including most local bars and the like to say nothing of the college itself. From what I can tell, this has mostly changed a lot.
nazrulmum10 5y ago
On your real ID, the laminate is almost unnoticeable, except for a slight glossy sheen. It ends at the end of the card, although if you look very closely at the edge of the card you can see two or three layers: the laminate, the card stock, and possibly another layer of laminate.
dpifke 5y ago
When I was 19, I had a perfectly valid California ID card for my 23 year old cousin who kinda looked like me. A bouncer in Seattle confiscated it because "every California license I've seen says 'driver's license,' not ID card."
- l33t2328 5y ago
  That’s theft. They can’t just take your property
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    Unfortunately, many bars are essentially criminal enterprises anyway. No concern of theirs. Not unlike towing companies that serve parking lots!
  - michaelt 5y ago
    Ah, but it wasn't his property, it was his 23 year old cousin's property.
blensor 5y ago
I worked at a project on automated border gates a while back and those automated scanners are really interesting. They usually scan the document in several stages using different light sources to check UV/ IR / visible light features and sometimes illuminated from different angles but usually with a fixed camera position. This leads to the interesting effect that you could present different images in quick succession to show the correct image for each spectrum even if you don't have a document that can appear correct in all spectral ranges at once. You can't obviously do that by hand but we ended up using a display (even a high dpi smartphone) that synced up to the scanning process for security testing. [1] if you are interested [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6975597 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6975597
- closeparen 5y ago
  Interesting that an automated scanner would care so much about the physical security measures. It’s not sufficient to look up the passport number to find the details it should contain, or check the digital signature?
  - icegreentea2 5y ago
    I assume it would part of layered defense, and specifically targeting someone replicating credentials.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - user5994461 5y ago
    >>> It’s not sufficient to look up the passport number to find the details it should contain, or check the digital signature? That would require access to the passport database of each country and 24/7 network connectivity. For border control in an airport, maybe it's possible to operate in these conditions. However the product certainly has more use cases.
    - blensor 5y ago
jagrsw 5y ago
It's interesting to observe the process of bartenders or club bouncers in USA verifying foreign driver licenses, esp. if someone looks like they are in their 30s or older. A person turns the driver license around a few times, too quick to read anything on it and gives it back to you, or they ask you where the birth date is and quickly check whether the four-digit number you pointed them to is smaller than whatever the current cut-off date is.
gorgoiler 5y ago
I wish more jurisdictions would make age verification cards. A photo of me, the police logo, and the words This person is plenty old enough. I don’t want to be identified. I just want a beer.
- JackFr 5y ago
  The biography “Genius” has a picture of Richard Feynman’s New Mexico drivers license from WWII. Under name it just shows “Engineer #123” (can’t remember actual number) and address is “Special List”.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    Checks out. [1] [1] https://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e2011571d063ac970b-pi https://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e2011571d0...
    - otterley 5y ago
      “Occupation: Housewife”
- teddyh 5y ago
  To quote myself¹: This would be great and all, but all parties who are in a position to choose to implement this kind of system or to keep the status quo are already motivated to keep (and expand) the existing systems, for any number of reasons. Everybody (except the end users) loves to keep that juicy metadata and incidental logs of everything. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26538052#26560821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26538052#26560821
- Aachen 5y ago
  There's an app for that! I Reveal My Attributes (IRMA) proves things like age without giving up SSN or whatever. I don't know the details but I've been hearing about it from nerds for years so I'm assuming there's a solid signature scheme behind it or some way to prove you're not carrying your of-age friend's phone. Doesn't seem like anyone's interested in rolling this out though... something something proof of vaccination in the EU without compromising privacy, perfect solution mumble mumble...
elygre 5y ago
If you want the details on security features of EU/EEC drivers licenses, the European Union has published a handbook for that: https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-96809-ea.pdf https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-96809-ea.pd...
anigbrowl 5y ago
Minimizing teen drinking is all very well, but I despise the permission-seeking society we've ended up with with you have to show ID in all kinds of places and beg for permission to exist. Last winter my wife was ill with a cold. I stuck my credit card in my pocket and went to the drugstore to buy a box of Theraflu, an over-the counter decongestant. They wouldn't sell it to me without ID and when I protested this they grabbed the box and told me to get out of the store or they would call over their armed security guy. This was a corporate change, I had bought the same product many times before without ever being asked for ID. People are forced to ask permission far more today than a few decades ago, and everyone is treated like a suspect if they object. I don't know who's more contemptible, the petty authoritarians or the people meekly giving up their privacy and dignity to get permission to engage in the most ordinary activities.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I would suggest that the problem here is corporatism rather than authoritarianism. The store will always have made a judgement call over whether you were responsible enough to be sold certain medications. What seems to have changed is the removal of that authority from the local shop workers, which has been centralised into a bureaucratic process. Scenarios like this are one reason why I believe we should proactively bias our economy against large organisations and in favour of smaller ones.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Just in case you're unaware of the context of these rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Manufacture_of_amphetamines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Manufacture_of... I'd perhaps prefer a world in which many drugs were legally sold, which might make this specific issue disappear but even then I'm happy that cigarettes and alcohol, and some other potentially dangerous items are age restricted.
    - isatty 5y ago
      From quickly looking at a few random Theraflu products - they don't seem to contain pseudo. Though asking a random store worker to know that would not be ideal, but a pharmacist should have definitely sold them this medicine without ID.
antihero 5y ago
I'm in the UK and it always perplexed me why the USA drinking ID laws are quite so strict. Surely people are going to get booze one way or another, and the idea is that by having some level of ID you're stopping most people from drinking underage in a bar? Most people over here start drinking in parks with mates around 13-16 and it's not big deal, if anything in my opinion it's safer they drink in pubs and bars where people can keep an eye on them.
- dannyw 5y ago
  also, 21 is crazy. making it it so that 18-21 year olds have to illegally buy booze is just a net negative.
- Zak 5y ago
  Your country created puritanism, which it exported to the US where it continues to influence policy. The US once outright banned alcohol. Prohibition tends not to be effective when there's broad demand for the prohibited item, especially when applied only to a small segment of society. In many places, it's customary to introduce teens to alcohol under parental supervision, which I suspect reduces later high-risk behavior.
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  On the other hand, the UK nightclubs (specifically) I’ve been to seem to usually require and scan everyone single person’s ID, no exceptions.
  - antihero 5y ago
    Yeah it's crazy. I think it's because the police seem to absolutely hate clubs and will turn the screw in any way they can under using the threat of taking away their license. The data almost certainly isn't stored in any sort of secure manner, either.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  I think part of it is the level of car use. Most places in the US, everything is quite far apart, and everyone has a car. The main way that people get home after drinking is driving. Hopefully they take an Uber or have someone else to drive them, but many times that is not the case unfortunately. So there are a lot of young people on the road or freeway on the weekends who have been drinking. And it is a fairly common cause of young people or the ones they crash into dying.
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
Why do bouncers in the US enjoy looking at IDs so much, even for OBVIOUSLY adult people? In Austria and Germany, you don't usually get asked for your id, unless you look underage AND the clerk/bouncer is in the mood to check. When I was clubbing in New York, the bouncer would even control my id very closly when I went back in after a smoke. It was cold, he saw me leave, he saw I wasn't wearing more than a t-shirt in the cold night. Yet he took 20 seconds to check my passport. People tell me I look like 35.
- rolleiflex 5y ago
  In your case, I think he was possibly just curious about your passport. In the general case, bouncers do this to not seen as slacking on the job by their peers or manager.
- mellosouls 5y ago
  Security; e.g. if trouble kicks off it helps to both identify people who may have left the scene, and warn entrants that facility is in use.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Had this in vegas. But it seems to depend on the bar/staff. One would absolutely refuse to serve me without seeing my passport, another wouldn’t even ask.
- Zak 5y ago
  The level of scrutiny you're describing sounds unusual for most parts of the US, but the broad answer is that the relevant enforcement authorities are more aggressive in the US than they are in Austria and Germany. This leads to inflexible policies so that the establishment's lawyer can more effectively defend against prosecution for any failures.
- coldpie 5y ago
  The police here send underage people to bars with fake IDs in order to try to punish the bars for serving the underage people the police sent. Really. The punishments are pretty severe, including losing their liquor license for some time or even being shut down entirely. So they are pretty rigorous in their ID checks. The system works, I guess.
omgwtf1000 5y ago
FYI in Texas it’s a driver license, not driver’s license.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  And everywhere it's daylight saving time. Doesn't stop people from saying daylight savings time.
  - omgwtf1000 5y ago
    Sorry, wasn’t trying to be pedantic… just thought it was an interesting point of trivia.
cm2187 5y ago
Not that I am a fan of gvt control, but why don’t modern IDs have a QR code containing the key attributes signed using PKI, and perhaps a link to a photo from a gvt website? That would make it unfalsifiable, without the person checking the ID needing to be an expert, they could just use a gvt issued app.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  In some more advanced countries, they do this exact thing (or in other cases, a barcode with a serial number that is used to double-check to a government-controlled database). Does not stop bribing government officials to make a genuine fake ID of course, but it significantly raises the bar of faking it.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  The very last thing we need, is any form of computer involved in spot id checks.
- w3ll_w3ll_w3ll 5y ago
  In Italy the new ID card (issued from 2015 onwards) has NFC capabilities. It contains key attributes (including the picture) that can be read via NFC signed from governament PKI. Some information can be unlocked using a code printed on it, some using the private PIN given to the citizien, and some other only from police/governament. Some innovative use cases could be using the ID also as a gym card or as transportation card.
resoluteteeth 5y ago
How do they know that some of these issues aren't just manufacturing defects? Once you suspect that an id is fakeis there a way to confirm it!
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
> You’ll notice it’s smooth with rounded corners. This is because your ID is laser cut. Does laser cutting give better surface finish than machine cut? I thought it was opposite
tyingq 5y ago
When I was a kid, we would make fake IDs using a huge poster board. We used pinstriping meant for cars to make the "grid" that all the text went into, rub-on letters for all the text, and a highlighter to draw "see through" stuff like the state seal. Then, you cut out the space where your photo went and actually held it in front of your face. A friend takes photos from various distances, then you pick the photo that's closest to the size of an actual license. They worked, even with the obvious flaws they had, because the bouncers really just wanted plausible proof that they had checked.
uncomputation 5y ago
This is a well designed web site. Kudos

243 points by klevertree 5y ago

I mean really the objective is to show that you put in an effort that was good enough for the state inspector. Most places that check ID don’t care if it’s actually fake just that an effort was made

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago

The sooner we use PKI for identification in some oauth2 like system (where we can choose to redact irrelevant information such as our name or address) the better. Brisbane Australia scans ID cards on entry to nightclubs (I think there’s a control where if you’re booted from one club you’re barred from all for the night). I’m all for a safe nightlife, but good luck asking a bouncer what their data retention, data privacy, and operational/technical security are without getting laughed out of the cue.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
But PKI still doesn‘t solve the „two people who look similar“ attack, right? All PKI can do is „this photo matches this information“ perfectly. It cannot do „this person matches this photo“ perfectly.
- phyalow 5y ago
  Arguably PKI can do that exactly if it is paired with a facial recognition toolkit... A slippery slope.
- bdhess 5y ago
  You could use the PKI’s revocation capabilities to ensure that each person only had one valid ID.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    Yes but what about deliberate borrowing of a PKI from a similar looking friend?
- gruez 5y ago
  You need some sort of smart card/secure element to ensure the ID itself can't be duplicated.
  - toast0 5y ago
    Duplication isn't needed if I just borrow a similar enough looking person's id and return it before they notice.
- shalmanese 5y ago
  You could have an optional service where the DMV sends you a push notification/SMS every time your ID is scanned.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  Yeah correct, but IDs are easily fake able anyway. The purpose of ID is to stop low leve falsification, high level ID forgery involves bribes for . Worst comes to it, I’d opt more for biometric verification provided the software / hardware is produced by a sane entity such as local government and not some seedy nightclub.
markzzerella 5y ago
I've left parties because they go to clubs that scan your ID and take your photo before you can enter on several occasions. Cryptographically verifiable identification is not a good idea, regardless of intentions.
- nojito 5y ago
  What’s wrong with scanning your ID?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wmf 5y ago
    I assume they get far more information about you than they need.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
      Then sell it to marketing teams, or send goons to your house if they think you’re causing trouble, or stalk you.
      - gwerbret 5y ago
        Hired goons?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
        Nightclub owners aren’t the least shady people, I’m sure there’s already some on their payrolls so no need for more…
    - mindslight 5y ago
      I'd assume the information on the 2d barcode is the same as what's printed on the front. The problem is that you have no idea whether a scanner is connected to a larger surveillance database. A GDPR-style law and real enforcement would go a long way to restoring some societal trust in the US. As things stand right now, it's prudent to put tape over the 2d barcode and the printed ID number, and only remove it when necessary (eg actually interacting with the police).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
StopHammoTime 5y ago
They are not as complicated as you think. They don’t retain your ID, they simply OCR the license number and check against a known list of offenders.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  How can you tell? Plus, even if they're not as sophisticated yet, all it takes is some marketing oxygen-wasters to say that they could improve profits/conversions/etc by 1% by capturing ID information for this to become reality.
  - 15155 5y ago
    It's an advertised feature on this product: https://patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars https://patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars I have no idea where GP lives in that this information wouldn't be retained for some reason (in the US.)
- 15155 5y ago
  Absolutely false. Dispensaries, nightclubs: many if not most all retain information parsed from the AAMVA-encoded text within the PDF417 barcode on the back. Most of these devices aren't using OCR, either, because why would you when you have a 2D barcode standard?
zeeZ 5y ago
The German ID card works something like that. The fields you as a vendor are approved for, you can make either required or optional server-side. The user can then choose what they want to add or to abort process. It can be read either with a pin that's printed on it, or with your Personal six digit pin, depending on use case. You can tell it to just do an age check (has completed nth year) or a place check (lives in community with x ID) and it'll just return yes or no. There's also a pseudonym function that returns a unique ID per card+vendor combination (so the same vendor can tell it's the same ID again, but a different vendor would receive a different ID). I can't see it used in night clubs though. There's a staggering amount of requirements you have to meet in order to receive certification to go to one of the handful of service providers that meet even more requirements to run a secure server that are connected to the PKI allowed to talk to the ID card.

internet2000 5y ago

Just let the teens drink.

kibwen 5y ago
Here in the US you need to be 17 to enlist in the armed forces. If a 17 year-old is mature enough to go to war, to potentially kill and be killed, then they're old enough to drink.
- Igelau 5y ago
  Old enough to be drafted isn't old enough to drink. If that's not completely fucked, I don't know what is.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Old enough for the draft, old enough for a draught!
  - evgen 5y ago
    The last time anyone was drafted in the US the drinking laws in most states allowed 18 year olds to drink. So what is your point? I guess the government agrees with you: no one under 21 is allowed to drink and no one under 21 is being drafted.
- mjthompson 5y ago
  The counterargument to this is that there is evidence young people are neurologically not full adults at 18 years of age, and alcohol impedes neurological development. I have no doubt war also has neurological effects, but they don't seem to be age specific. It is challenging, if not impossible, to otherwise defend it. If someone has the possibility to choose (or be forced) to harm themselves and shorten their life in war, then why shouldn't a choice apply to alcohol?
  - dndndjdjfndbr 5y ago
    But the prohibition doesn’t stop teens from drinking, just makes it a crime.

_Nat_ 5y ago

Weird that ID's still don't have, say, QR-codes or something similar with a cryptographic-signature to verify that the info's accurate. Or chips like with credit-cards. Lots of different ways stuff like that could be done. Holograms and such seem like a clumsy strategy.

mcherm 5y ago
The issue is that those are mechanisms to validate a card against a central authority. But most usages are in cases where the ID is self-validating and cannot be authenticated against a central authority.
- kadoban 5y ago
  With pubkey crypto you could easily allow validating with a self-contained device. That's just a signature check. The obvious way to do that has some drawbacks though, the big one being that if the private key ever leaks, your whole system is now useless and needs to be replaced (cards, verifiers and all). And you'd need to either generate all the cards in one place, or the private key would need to be available in multiple places. Not really a recipe for success long-term.
  - _Nat_ 5y ago
    > The obvious way to do that has some drawbacks though, the big one being that if the private key ever leaks, your whole system is now useless and needs to be replaced (cards, verifiers and all). That's a problem addressed with [public key infrastructure (PKI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure). In practice, it could be done pretty securely and cheaply.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > That's a problem addressed with [public key infrastructure (PKI)] I don't really agree. Yes, you want to use PKI. But it doesn't solve the problem of needing to immediately update all your equipment when there's a key leak, and replace or reprogram a huge number of cards. PKI just makes things a bit smoother in general. My suggestion is pretty simple. Have a few different locations that sign keys, have them all sign each card, and require multiple valid signatures. Exact details up to the implementer, but that way you could have at least one key leak without causing any user hassle.

daneel_w 5y ago

The item you referred to as "fake passport" is a Swedish national ID card. While not a passport, it will double as one when traveling within the European Union. How did you come across it?

xioxox 5y ago
I think he's wrong about reflectivity on passports too. My European passport picture page is extremely reflective - it's hard to read anything on it at the wrong angles, and the reflective holograms make my picture very hard to see. The photo is printed with very low contrast and uses an online user-supplied photo, too!

Igelau 5y ago

So I'm thinking my state-issued driver's license might be fake. Some of its qualities: - Does not have any raised lettering - Has weird edges around my hair from the shadows that look just like the ones the author called Photoshop evidence - The hologram looks like crap. Nice to see that Massachusetts doesn't skimp on it the way $STATE does. - The aspect ratio of the picture is squished because they just used my last photo. COVID, you know. - Clearly says "NOT FOR REAL ID PURPOSES" which I know refers to "RealID", but still makes me laugh.

jcrawfordor 5y ago
A large portion of states contract their driver's license printing equipment (on a maintenance & operation basis) to the same company, which I believe used to be a division of Polaroid but has been bought and sold since then. So many of the norms that this article mentions are specific to that equipment and to many US states, but not to all of them. There are still some states that use relatively commodity (uncontrolled) plastic stock and transfer or sublimation printers, that you can get on eBay used for under a thousand. You can imagine that results in more counterfeiting which encourages states to switch to the more expensive and controlled equipment and stock. Raised print is particularly variable, a lot of states don't use raised print. As I understand it, it's done by a specific machine that is especially costly (the rest of the laser features mostly come already done from the stock manufacturer). Edit: it's L-1 Identity Solutions. I believe the ID card printing component used to be with Identix before they merged with a newer company to form L-1.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  This kind of leads into the thing I was wondering about when reading the article: What about false positives? What are the consequences of denying entry to someone who did, in fact, have a real ID? Could they potentially sue the bar?
  - bigyikes 5y ago
    I don’t think there would be any standing for a lawsuit. The bar can deny entry or kick you out for any reason. You’re not entitled to entry.

cafard 5y ago

When I was in college, the laws were not quite so strict as they are now: in that state, persons over 18 could purchase 3.2 beer (3.2% alcohol by volume). Still, a fraternity or fraternities would bring in a fake-ID manufacturer every fall. Somebody on the student paper wanted to do an article on it. But his boss or bosses had had such a fake id. The article never ran. Let me add that the age of drinking was set to 21 across the country because the Reagan administration did not wish to make airbags mandatory. It was argued that raising the drinking age would produce an equivalent or greater savings in life compared to mandating airbags in new cars. The Department of Transportation could withhold funds from any state that allowed those under 21 to purchase alcoholic beverages. Those of you younger than I am will know how much effect raising the drinking age really had. My impression is, Not much.

wil421 5y ago
Do you have a source? That’s never been the story I’ve been told. MADD and a few other groups lobbied for the age to be 21 and they tied it to federal highway funds. It’s one of the reason Louisiana had really bad roads, they held out for longer or so the story goes. Mandatory airbags and seatbelts happened at the same time but MADD was focused on the alcohol part. 21-24 year olds had the highest rate of drunk driving but 37 year olds were the most to die in alcohol related crashes.[1]1993 https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/4/10/reagans-sober-legacy-pbtbhe-reagan-years/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/4/10/reagans-sober-l...
DaveExeter 5y ago
>Those of you younger than I am will know how much effect raising the drinking age really had. My impression is, Not much. I think it had a very negative effect of creating a cohort of second-class citizens, who had the responsibilities of adulthood but not the rights.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dhosek 5y ago
Wisconsin was one of the states with a drinking age of 18 while Illinois had 21. The border between the states was referred to as a "blood border" because of the large number of drunk driving fatalities of 18–20 year olds crossing the border to be able to legally buy alcohol. So, yes, the fact that the drinking age was 21 didn't prevent me from consuming excessive quantities of alcohol during my first three years of college¹, but it also eliminated differential situations like Illinois-Wisconsin which had a measurable impact on reducing DUI fatalities, so it was a bit more than not much. --- 1. During the late 80s, the dorm soda machines were stocked by the students. Many of the machines had a slot dedicated to beer (often a "random" slot where you took your chances. You might get something good, you might get Coors Light. The soda machine of the era were capable of dispensing glass bottles of beers even though they were designed for cans. Mostly capable. Occasionally, your 60 cents would end up buying you a pile of broken glass and beer foam. Regardless, having campus being the only place to feasibly buy alcohol meant that drunk driving incidents were rare to non-existent.

mshroyer 5y ago

This author is almost as skilled as the staff at my local AMC Theatre, where I was a bystander to a woman getting denied a beer on account of her Washington, D.C. driver's license not being a "state-issued ID".

blhack 5y ago
Oh my god that is either hilariously stupid, or some top tier trolling.
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago
  It's technically accurate, and some serious bullshit: 'No taxation without representation. But also, no beer until representation.'
- ghaff 5y ago
  I haven't encountered this in years and years and especially with REALID standardization I assume it's vanishingly rare, but driver's licenses used to vary enormously from state to state and many didn't even have photos. So I assume the logic on requiring in-state government ID would be that a store clerk had no way of knowing whether an out-of-state license was a blatant forgery or not.
  - alibarber 5y ago
    I don’t think they meant ‘in’ state, more so ‘issued by a state’ which DC isn’t. I always thought it meant state as in ‘nation state’ - so a passport would count.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      It's usually "government issued photo ID." I have seen (but not for many years) cases where a store wouldn't accept out of state ID for alcohol purchases.
- huy-nguyen 5y ago
  Then you probably haven’t heard of airport TSA agents turning away people with New Mexico license, thinking that New Mexico is in Mexico and not the US.

User23 5y ago

How many businesses actually care? Isn’t the business a victim of fraud if a customer uses dishonest papers to gain admittance? Last I knew fraud vitiates everything.

lupire 5y ago
Fraud does not vitiate statutory rape of a minor.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  Usually in common-law jurisdictions, absolute liability (i.e. mens rea is not required and due diligence is not a valid defence) cannot legally apply to criminal offences. Is that not the case in your jurisdiction?
toast0 5y ago
Depends. My wife's identity was recently stolen, and the fraudster rented an apartment; it's not clear if the fraudster showed a fake ID in that process, but they may have. The apartment complex is likely going to be out rent for several months as this plays out, better vetting could have prevented that loss. If it's a bar, they might be on the hook for underage drinking if they don't do a decent job of checking. (PS, lock your credit reports)
anigbrowl 5y ago
What have they lost?
evgen 5y ago
> Last I knew fraud vitiates everything. Not even close. If you take a fake ID to a bar in the US, get drunk, drive home and slam into a bus full of nuns just before you reach your destination then the bartender who served you will need a criminal attorney as well as the bouncer who checked IDs at the door and probably the owner of the bar. Strict liability applies here.

gumby 5y ago

Why should a bar care? Just do a “decent” enough job to make the cops know you’re trying.

catillac 5y ago
They get huge fines from the state alcoholic beverage office. This is strict liability, and punishment can be gigantic fines and revocation of the alcohol selling license. So, intent doesn’t matter in most states and no matter how real an id appeared, selling underage creates these consequences.
runnerup 5y ago
This was how it was done in 2008 at least, when I bartended. Our bouncers were very, very good at identifying fake ID’s from almost any state. Sometimes when they confiscated them, the people would call the police and the police would look at the ID and hand it back (there’s not a lot of verification that can be done in the field). This is despite that the ID was, in fact, 100% fake - often our friends who were staff at other bars who were drinking as “regular” customers could confirm that they admitted in private it was fake afterwards. Depending on the night we’d instruct the bouncers to be either more strict or less strict about checking ID’s. Everyone’s paycheck came from the tips so if it was too quiet then staff might not be able to pay rent. If it was too crazy, staff might get hurt. Yes, technically serving minors is “strict liability” but the city police didn’t enforce it that way. If someone had a reasonable quality fake ID it would let us off the hook as far as the usual cops were concerned. Obviously it wouldn’t help us if the alcohol enforcement agency specifically showed up that night (very very rare) or if an underage drinker died in a drunk driving accident (never happened thank god). Our bouncers were better than police at checking fake ID’s because: 1) they check many orders of magnitude more ID’s than cops ever do 2) part of our on boarding is to give the new bouncers a pile (200+) of fake ID’s to study which we had because we confiscated them. These included real ID’s which we confiscated because they were being used by not-the-owner of the ID. Then 1-3 months later they are tested against a different set of fake/real ID’s and needed to get some absurdly high % correct.
- aix1 5y ago

1970-01-01 5y ago

There are also several security features only visible with UV and IR light. Any good bouncer will have at least a UV light within reach.

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

The thing that gets me is that in order to get one of these dandy IDs with the holograms, micro lettering, and laser cutting is a birth certificate and an electric bill. My birth certificate is hand typed on an IBM Selectric typewriter on common security paper and the only real security feature is the embossed emblem of the rural county of the rural state I was born - and unless you have a sample to compare with you really can’t validate. Most utility bills are printed on cheap lightweight paper by a common laser printer and the only security feature might be a bit of color or a slightly non-standard size. Once you have a drivers license you are only a fee payment away from a passport. Granted I might get a lot more scrutiny if I walk into the DMV wearing an El Tri t-shirt and speaking with an accent but barring that it seems a very low bar to turn a crappy hand-typed 50s birth certificate into a modern secure ID.

catillac 5y ago
Surely one could not just make up a totally fake birth certificate from nothing and have any licensing office take that seriously? Surely there are additional electronic records or other security features?
- djrogers 5y ago
  No, one could not do that. You’d need at least a real name with a valid SSN who’s birthplace and DOB matches what you’re trying to get issued. Definitely possible, but more work than just completely faking up a couple of papers.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Yeah it’s cross-referenced if possible. The hot shit is to use a baptismal record instead (accepted most anywhere but usually found only for older people).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zxcvbn4038 5y ago
  I know you can purchase books of identity documents from various locations and years and those give details of the various security features that were present and material samples to compare with but I’ve never encountered anyone using them. Usually it’s just making sure I have all the documents, compare with my application, then go stand in line for a picture. Though when I applied for the trusted traveler program they did keep my documents for a few weeks so they might have been doing that sort of verification.

woodruffw 5y ago

Having read this, I went and found my Global Entry[1] card. It has remarkably few of the security features mentioned: it's clearly machine cut and has visible laminate layers, and the raised features are incredibly easy to miss. I've used this card to enter and leave the United States multiple times, but every bartender thinks it's fake. Oh, and my picture on it is laughably bad. I distinctly remember the border agent using a consumer Logitech webcam to take it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Entry

zaychikk 5y ago
I have one of these too (including the terrible logitech portrait) and I think the important verification going on is that 1) once you're approved, your passport number is linked and the book can be cross-referenced and 2) I believe DHS is now doing facial recognition at global entry terminals, which does away with the card totally.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

funkdified 5y ago

Temporary paper IDs are issued in some states while you await receiving your real ID in the mail. They are easy to Photoshop and print and must be accepted with a photo ID with matching name, like a college ID.

vzaliva 5y ago
If you talking about temporary driver licenses, at least in californoa they say "NOT A VERIFIED IDENTIFICATION" on the top.
- funkdified 5y ago
  Yes, that's what I'm talking about. It's possible that things have changed since I was in college ;)
  - resoluteteeth 5y ago
    You can use the temporary drivers licenses as driver licenses (for actual driving), but I don't think they are generally accepted in other situations.
    - funkdified 5y ago
      Once upon a time, it worked very well.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Once upon a time, alcohol usage among college students--regardless of age--was something that a blind eye was mostly turned to, including most local bars and the like to say nothing of the college itself. From what I can tell, this has mostly changed a lot.

nazrulmum10 5y ago

On your real ID, the laminate is almost unnoticeable, except for a slight glossy sheen. It ends at the end of the card, although if you look very closely at the edge of the card you can see two or three layers: the laminate, the card stock, and possibly another layer of laminate.

dpifke 5y ago

When I was 19, I had a perfectly valid California ID card for my 23 year old cousin who kinda looked like me. A bouncer in Seattle confiscated it because "every California license I've seen says 'driver's license,' not ID card."

l33t2328 5y ago
That’s theft. They can’t just take your property
- sebmellen 5y ago
  Unfortunately, many bars are essentially criminal enterprises anyway. No concern of theirs. Not unlike towing companies that serve parking lots!
- michaelt 5y ago
  Ah, but it wasn't his property, it was his 23 year old cousin's property.

blensor 5y ago

I worked at a project on automated border gates a while back and those automated scanners are really interesting. They usually scan the document in several stages using different light sources to check UV/ IR / visible light features and sometimes illuminated from different angles but usually with a fixed camera position. This leads to the interesting effect that you could present different images in quick succession to show the correct image for each spectrum even if you don't have a document that can appear correct in all spectral ranges at once. You can't obviously do that by hand but we ended up using a display (even a high dpi smartphone) that synced up to the scanning process for security testing. [1] if you are interested [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6975597 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6975597

closeparen 5y ago
Interesting that an automated scanner would care so much about the physical security measures. It’s not sufficient to look up the passport number to find the details it should contain, or check the digital signature?
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  I assume it would part of layered defense, and specifically targeting someone replicating credentials.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- user5994461 5y ago
  >>> It’s not sufficient to look up the passport number to find the details it should contain, or check the digital signature? That would require access to the passport database of each country and 24/7 network connectivity. For border control in an airport, maybe it's possible to operate in these conditions. However the product certainly has more use cases.
  - blensor 5y ago

jagrsw 5y ago

It's interesting to observe the process of bartenders or club bouncers in USA verifying foreign driver licenses, esp. if someone looks like they are in their 30s or older. A person turns the driver license around a few times, too quick to read anything on it and gives it back to you, or they ask you where the birth date is and quickly check whether the four-digit number you pointed them to is smaller than whatever the current cut-off date is.

gorgoiler 5y ago

I wish more jurisdictions would make age verification cards. A photo of me, the police logo, and the words This person is plenty old enough. I don’t want to be identified. I just want a beer.

JackFr 5y ago
The biography “Genius” has a picture of Richard Feynman’s New Mexico drivers license from WWII. Under name it just shows “Engineer #123” (can’t remember actual number) and address is “Special List”.
- Maursault 5y ago
  Checks out. [1] [1] https://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e2011571d063ac970b-pi https://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e2011571d0...
  - otterley 5y ago
    “Occupation: Housewife”
teddyh 5y ago
To quote myself¹: This would be great and all, but all parties who are in a position to choose to implement this kind of system or to keep the status quo are already motivated to keep (and expand) the existing systems, for any number of reasons. Everybody (except the end users) loves to keep that juicy metadata and incidental logs of everything. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26538052#26560821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26538052#26560821
Aachen 5y ago
There's an app for that! I Reveal My Attributes (IRMA) proves things like age without giving up SSN or whatever. I don't know the details but I've been hearing about it from nerds for years so I'm assuming there's a solid signature scheme behind it or some way to prove you're not carrying your of-age friend's phone. Doesn't seem like anyone's interested in rolling this out though... something something proof of vaccination in the EU without compromising privacy, perfect solution mumble mumble...

elygre 5y ago

If you want the details on security features of EU/EEC drivers licenses, the European Union has published a handbook for that: https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-96809-ea.pdf https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-96809-ea.pd...

anigbrowl 5y ago

Minimizing teen drinking is all very well, but I despise the permission-seeking society we've ended up with with you have to show ID in all kinds of places and beg for permission to exist. Last winter my wife was ill with a cold. I stuck my credit card in my pocket and went to the drugstore to buy a box of Theraflu, an over-the counter decongestant. They wouldn't sell it to me without ID and when I protested this they grabbed the box and told me to get out of the store or they would call over their armed security guy. This was a corporate change, I had bought the same product many times before without ever being asked for ID. People are forced to ask permission far more today than a few decades ago, and everyone is treated like a suspect if they object. I don't know who's more contemptible, the petty authoritarians or the people meekly giving up their privacy and dignity to get permission to engage in the most ordinary activities.

nicoburns 5y ago
I would suggest that the problem here is corporatism rather than authoritarianism. The store will always have made a judgement call over whether you were responsible enough to be sold certain medications. What seems to have changed is the removal of that authority from the local shop workers, which has been centralised into a bureaucratic process. Scenarios like this are one reason why I believe we should proactively bias our economy against large organisations and in favour of smaller ones.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Just in case you're unaware of the context of these rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Manufacture_of_amphetamines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Manufacture_of... I'd perhaps prefer a world in which many drugs were legally sold, which might make this specific issue disappear but even then I'm happy that cigarettes and alcohol, and some other potentially dangerous items are age restricted.
  - isatty 5y ago
    From quickly looking at a few random Theraflu products - they don't seem to contain pseudo. Though asking a random store worker to know that would not be ideal, but a pharmacist should have definitely sold them this medicine without ID.

antihero 5y ago

I'm in the UK and it always perplexed me why the USA drinking ID laws are quite so strict. Surely people are going to get booze one way or another, and the idea is that by having some level of ID you're stopping most people from drinking underage in a bar? Most people over here start drinking in parks with mates around 13-16 and it's not big deal, if anything in my opinion it's safer they drink in pubs and bars where people can keep an eye on them.

dannyw 5y ago
also, 21 is crazy. making it it so that 18-21 year olds have to illegally buy booze is just a net negative.
Zak 5y ago
Your country created puritanism, which it exported to the US where it continues to influence policy. The US once outright banned alcohol. Prohibition tends not to be effective when there's broad demand for the prohibited item, especially when applied only to a small segment of society. In many places, it's customary to introduce teens to alcohol under parental supervision, which I suspect reduces later high-risk behavior.
Cederfjard 5y ago
On the other hand, the UK nightclubs (specifically) I’ve been to seem to usually require and scan everyone single person’s ID, no exceptions.
- antihero 5y ago
  Yeah it's crazy. I think it's because the police seem to absolutely hate clubs and will turn the screw in any way they can under using the threat of taking away their license. The data almost certainly isn't stored in any sort of secure manner, either.
ilaksh 5y ago
I think part of it is the level of car use. Most places in the US, everything is quite far apart, and everyone has a car. The main way that people get home after drinking is driving. Hopefully they take an Uber or have someone else to drive them, but many times that is not the case unfortunately. So there are a lot of young people on the road or freeway on the weekends who have been drinking. And it is a fairly common cause of young people or the ones they crash into dying.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

Why do bouncers in the US enjoy looking at IDs so much, even for OBVIOUSLY adult people? In Austria and Germany, you don't usually get asked for your id, unless you look underage AND the clerk/bouncer is in the mood to check. When I was clubbing in New York, the bouncer would even control my id very closly when I went back in after a smoke. It was cold, he saw me leave, he saw I wasn't wearing more than a t-shirt in the cold night. Yet he took 20 seconds to check my passport. People tell me I look like 35.

rolleiflex 5y ago
In your case, I think he was possibly just curious about your passport. In the general case, bouncers do this to not seen as slacking on the job by their peers or manager.
mellosouls 5y ago
Security; e.g. if trouble kicks off it helps to both identify people who may have left the scene, and warn entrants that facility is in use.
Aeolun 5y ago
Had this in vegas. But it seems to depend on the bar/staff. One would absolutely refuse to serve me without seeing my passport, another wouldn’t even ask.
Zak 5y ago
The level of scrutiny you're describing sounds unusual for most parts of the US, but the broad answer is that the relevant enforcement authorities are more aggressive in the US than they are in Austria and Germany. This leads to inflexible policies so that the establishment's lawyer can more effectively defend against prosecution for any failures.
coldpie 5y ago
The police here send underage people to bars with fake IDs in order to try to punish the bars for serving the underage people the police sent. Really. The punishments are pretty severe, including losing their liquor license for some time or even being shut down entirely. So they are pretty rigorous in their ID checks. The system works, I guess.

omgwtf1000 5y ago

FYI in Texas it’s a driver license, not driver’s license.

aidenn0 5y ago
And everywhere it's daylight saving time. Doesn't stop people from saying daylight savings time.
- omgwtf1000 5y ago
  Sorry, wasn’t trying to be pedantic… just thought it was an interesting point of trivia.

cm2187 5y ago

Not that I am a fan of gvt control, but why don’t modern IDs have a QR code containing the key attributes signed using PKI, and perhaps a link to a photo from a gvt website? That would make it unfalsifiable, without the person checking the ID needing to be an expert, they could just use a gvt issued app.

zinekeller 5y ago
In some more advanced countries, they do this exact thing (or in other cases, a barcode with a serial number that is used to double-check to a government-controlled database). Does not stop bribing government officials to make a genuine fake ID of course, but it significantly raises the bar of faking it.
bbarnett 5y ago
The very last thing we need, is any form of computer involved in spot id checks.
w3ll_w3ll_w3ll 5y ago
In Italy the new ID card (issued from 2015 onwards) has NFC capabilities. It contains key attributes (including the picture) that can be read via NFC signed from governament PKI. Some information can be unlocked using a code printed on it, some using the private PIN given to the citizien, and some other only from police/governament. Some innovative use cases could be using the ID also as a gym card or as transportation card.

resoluteteeth 5y ago

How do they know that some of these issues aren't just manufacturing defects? Once you suspect that an id is fakeis there a way to confirm it!

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

> You’ll notice it’s smooth with rounded corners. This is because your ID is laser cut. Does laser cutting give better surface finish than machine cut? I thought it was opposite

tyingq 5y ago

When I was a kid, we would make fake IDs using a huge poster board. We used pinstriping meant for cars to make the "grid" that all the text went into, rub-on letters for all the text, and a highlighter to draw "see through" stuff like the state seal. Then, you cut out the space where your photo went and actually held it in front of your face. A friend takes photos from various distances, then you pick the photo that's closest to the size of an actual license. They worked, even with the obvious flaws they had, because the bouncers really just wanted plausible proof that they had checked.

uncomputation 5y ago

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