Re: signature pads

[Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>]

At 03:08 PM 3/1/99 +0100, Some Allegedly Anonymous Person wrote:
> Does anyone have any information regarding the legality of those 
> annoying signature pads used by CompUSA, Sears and a million other 
> retail stores?  It seems to me that recording signatures and 
> compiling a database of them is a major civil liberties violation.  
> Comments?

There's no civil liberties issue* - you're free to sign or not,
or to ask the manager what they do with the signature data
(not that he'll have a clue beyond "it goes in the computer",
but managers do understand large numbers of complaints when they see them.)
Besides, credit card receipts often get scanned anyway.
And they're collecting lots of other data about you.

Just because it's not a civil liberties issue doesn't mean
you have to cooperate with it or like it, though;
it's still a privacy issue.

There may be problems if somebody uses the signatures to
sign other things...

In Europe, it may count as a data protection law issue,
depending on what they do with the signature.

[ *well, assuming it's not government-funded signature collection,
like the Secret Service Driver's License Photo database.]


				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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