Texas may start scanning fingerprints for age verification purposes for buying tobacco, etc.

If bills heard this week before the House and Senate transportation committees pass muster and become law, Texans could soon be using their "involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of a finger" for age-verification purposes, i.e. to buy tobacco, liquor and tickets for the Lotto or R-rated movies. Lobbyists from biometric company Pay By Touch likened their electronic fingerprint identification system to having a "virtual wallet" that can be accessed with the touch of a digit to a scanner. Rather than getting carded for booze, you get fingered instead. Even more unsettling is that electronic fingerprints could be linked to people's bank accounts or credit cards, for the dissemination of welfare funds from the state or the purchase of a candy bar at the neighborhood Albertson's (or Piggly Wiggly). Biometric payment systems: A strange but appropriate bedfellow to automated, human-less checkout lanes.