unOfficial ID Card

[fallenpegasus]

A fun business idea I occationally mull over is to buy a high quality laminate card printer, the sort of thing that is used to make id cards, and make unofficial IDs. A general purpose ID card, with photo, name, address, number, etc. Press passes for "USENET News Service". "Member of the Right Wing Conspiracy". "Member of the Left Wing

Comments

[beamjockey]

I see that a Senate hearing on the Real ID law is up on C-SPAN, and will probably remain there for a week or so. My pal Bruce Schneier, among others, testified.

[zsero]

If your job requires checking IDs, for your own sanity, you need to understand that it's ineffective makework that your boss makes you do, not because it's actually useful.
It depends for what purpose, and how important it is to keep out the wrong people. There are many cases where if no checking is done lots of people will try to scam their way in, but it's not worth their while to fake up an ID card for the occasion, and nor will it be the end of the world if you admit the occasional geek who always carried his fake ID with him. For purposes where it's really important to identify people, and the cost of passing the wrong people is high enough, there are biometrics and hard-to-fake documents that get checked carefully

[roseembolism]

I for one wouldn't mind a few ID cards labeled "Republic of Usenet", "RPG Grognard" or "Actually from California". Maybe for James Nicoll, you could whip up a "Deleted from Wikipedia" card?

[paraventur]

They aren't hard to get. I have a very nice professional looking one that identifies me as Imperial Security, Special Interrogations (complete with seal). The only reason it might not get me into places is that part of it is in pseudo russian.

[samildanach]

I'm tempted to put one of these together myself...

... with an OpenID server as the database back end.