Alex Tabarrok comments on Marginal Revolution:
Digital Cash
A glamorous Whole Foods market just opened in my neighborhood. You can pay for your groceries using just the swipe of your fingerprint. Cool.
Christopher Monnier said on the comments:
Cub Foods (owned by Supervalu) in Minneapolis has had this for a while, but I’m hesitant to sign up for the program and have my fingerprints floating around on some database. Is there any reason to believe that, if for some reason I was suspected of a crime, the government wouldn’t subpoena Cub Foods for my fingerprint so they could cross-reference the crime scene fingerprints against mine?
Who says you would even have to be suspect of a crime? Any subpoena against somebody that holds your fingerprint is likely to end up netting them your prints - and that of any other customer - much like what happened in the Balco doping scandal, where the entire database was taken because of 10 suspect athletes.