WAY DO AMERICAN STATES WANT TO REQUIRE ID TO BUY THE MOST MUNDANE OF PRODUCTS?
I remember the first time, and every time after, a teller at a grocery store asked me for ID in the form of my driver’s license just to buy beer. And no, I’m not talking about age verification. I’m talking about them taking the card from my hand and literally scanning it. The first time this happened, I was kind of stunned. Because I knew that transaction -me, buying a six-pack of beer- was going into a log, and then on to a database. In other words, there was now a record of not only that I bought beer, but which beer, when and where. I thought this was kind of insane. But apparently, a lot of American states are now requiring ID to buy totally mundane products, too.
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CALIFORNIA WANTS TO MAKE YOU SHOW ID JUST TO BUY FACE CREAM WITH VITAMIN A
Personally, I feel that if I’m old enough to buy beer, I’m old enough to drink it with total anonymity and privacy. It’s not like I’m buying some kind of cold medicine and then having to verify verbally that it was to be used for its intended function; treating cold symptoms instead of making illicit street drugs. But a bunch of American states are moving to pretty shocking Big Brother authoritarian consumer purchase surveillance. And oddly, California is making some of the biggest moves in this regard. California has a proposal, AB-728, that would require you and anyone else to show ID just to buy…. Any kind of face cream containing Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy acids.
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AND ID FOR DATING APPS, DIET PILLS; WHAT’S NEXT, RECORD EVERYTHING WE BUY?
Face cream! And then there’s New York state’s A3323 bill that makes anyone using a dating app to first submit both ID and location data before swiping right. So New York wants to track every move you make on dating apps. Then, there’s Washington state’s SB 5622, which will require the collection of your personal data if you want to buy diet pills. Isn’t this totally crazy and disturbing? You need ID to buy face cream? But I must admit I’m still appalled that somewhere (or multiple somewhere) my identity is logged every time I bought beer at various retailers.
It’s nobody’s fucking business. But our data is clearly big business, for actors that can only be bad. And don’t forget, soon everyone will have a digital ID, which means some folks want to know everything about everything we buy.
